Surprised looks appeared from both packs in Meesei's direction regarding her last anecdote. Few enough among them even knew of a woman falling in love another woman as a concept, but with it being such a rare occurance, none had expected Meesei to put such little emphasis on it. Regardless, Meesei continued and turned the conversation unerringly towards the beleaguered Gallus.

"Me? Well, I suppose it would be similar to what you said," Gallus tried playing it all off and did not succeed, "I would say it is bland in comparison. Uneventful. You know, not with any drama or..."

"Gallus," Uthri's accented voice was teeming with a distinct lack of amusement. She crossed her arms and gave him a wide eyed stare. "You would run this far from Bruma for the express purpose of getting away from the trouble you put yourself in and you try to lie to our faces? Try again. Tell us about Persephone and Olivia."

"Well that would hardly be fair, that's my present, not my past," Gallus attempted to retort. Although, as he looked around to everyone else, he could see that their curiosity would not allow him to run any further. He bowed his head suddenly and spoke with defeat in his voice, "Not fair, Uthri. Very well..." His head looked up to them and he smiled, trying to be good-natured about it. His tone inflected the end of his sentences as if he was asking rhetorical questions. "So, about seven months ago, a lovely Imperial girl named Sephy and myself hit it off with what I thought was a casual interaction. We were both under father's section, we were friends...who sometimes had nights in...it suited me well enough for about three months. Everyone else just thought we were close friends." Gallus curled his lips for a moment, there was little ambiguity on where this was going. "Then, during the festivities of the solstice, I met this beautiful Altmer named Olivia. We got drinking and...sneaked off. There are plenty of spaces to do so, as I'm sure you are aware. It didn't end there, however. I quite liked Olivia and wanted to try something more. We ended up seeing each other for a while. The thing with myself and Sephy went on, but was tapering off, I was planning on stopping it."

At this point, Fendros sighed and rubbed his temple. Gallus was one of [i]those[/i] folks. Even Janius didn't play two relationships at the same time - as far as he knew, anyway.

Gallus continued apprehensively, "One day, I approached Sephy to try to break things up, and she...confessed her love for me, rather sincerely. She didn't know about Olivia and vice-versa, but her words were touching. Very touching, very...confusing to me. I didn't go through with the break up. I thought I might...try both for a while. I really am fond of them both." Gallus paused for a moment.

"Are you serious?" Janius said with an incredulous expression, "At what point did you think that would be appropriate?"

"Well, I was going to ask them eventually," Gallus shrugged as if there wasn't a problem.

"And you called me despicable. Let me guess, you're here because they found out?" Janius said almost accusingly, but with a smile at how ridiculous this was.

"No," Gallus' eyes twitched around the table, "I just...need time to think. I thought I might know what to do when I returned."

Uthri squinted her eyes and half smiled with satisfaction at getting Gallus to share his behaviour.

[hr]
"Yes. There is not as much skooma in Thorn," Sabine said bluntly.

When they reached the market, the array of sights and sounds on display was far more than they were expecting. Sabine looked about, amazed. It was as if an entire travelling circus had set up here. Indeed, that may have been the case. She was open-mouthed but silent to Peiter's question.

"Tzirret sees fire breather!" Tzirret was so excited that his already Khajiiti Cyrodilic had regressed a little further. He pointed out one of the mages who was almost exclusively using fire spells to create wondrous flowing shapes in an enchanting performance. As they approached, they found the reason for the mage's namesake; the Ohmes-raht mage was using not only his hands, but also his mouth to project fire to make the shapes. They resembled all sorts of things; dragons, trolls, daedric beasts, even undead creatures.