[h3]Two Flirts and a Fjolte...[/h3]

[i]Woodhearth, Greenshade[/i]

It hadn’t seemed to have taken long for the festival to get underway. No sooner had Fjolte and Gwilym arrived, they had found their way to a prime drinking spot. In the Nord’s glass was a strange beverage he’d never had before. Something served lukewarm, slightly sour, and thick. It was rather delicious, actually. 

The man had found himself to a quiet spot, on the outside of the action. Even sitting, his towering frame still towered - a long shadow spread before him. Fjolte was peaceful sitting, drink in one hand, pipe in the other. Amongst the Bosmer people, he stuck out for looking so… Well, so [i]Godsdamned Nord[/i]. Broad shouldered, strong jawed, and with a mane of windswept golden hair, tossed over one shoulder and adorned with various beads and hoops - partially dreadlocked and partially smooth. It suited him though, so many textures and shades throughout it and there wasn’t a hair that looked out of place on his head. 

There was a peaceful glaze that blanketed the otherwise sharpness of his bright blue eyes, and there was no tension held in his body either. Fjolte gazed out before him, at the swirling shapes and colour — people moving so gracefully like silk caught in a breeze, dancing around each other to the music. Was that Gwilym? He thought, squinting to find the details of a particular figure, sandwiched between two giggling women. It could have been, he couldn’t tell. He drank from his glass, savouring the taste as the space in front of him began to glitter. 

Fjolte smiled at it, and then, a gentle laugh. 

From across the shimmering mass of dancing, colorful revelers, a Dunmer woman with a mane as bright as his, light silver instead of radiant gold, had been watching him for a while. The sight of a Nord as, well, [i]godsdamned Nord[/i] as this one, brought back unpleasant memories of Windhelm, but the more she looked at him, the more intriguing he became. He had caught her eye while she’d been sat people-watching for a moment, and then kept it there over the past few minutes. There was an air of nonchalance about him that softened his size and his features, as if he had nothing left to prove to anyone. That was what had bothered her the most. That incessant need to [i]prove[/i] themselves to their friends, by competing to see who could make the Dunmer girl cry the most. But he looked different.

She got up from her seat, drink in hand, her loose satin robe, black as night, trailing behind her in the air and across the grass as she made her way to him. The garment did not cling to her body, but occasionally fell a certain way with her movements to silhouette her curves, just for a moment. The mass of people moved around her like a river around a rock, and where the current of excitement threatened to be too strong, she waited patiently for the people to pass -- but she never took her eyes off him. 

Emerging from the crowd, Ina stepped up to Fjolte and gazed down at him, one hand on her hips and a half-smile around her lips. “Far from home, are we?” she asked, her husky voice low in tone, but sharp enough to cut through the noise from the festivities with clarity. 

Of course such a shimmer had caught his attention. Not that Fjolte directly watched, of course, more so that he let her appear in his peripheral vision, acutely aware that she was heading for him. It was like another sense, intuitive and natural. With an easy smile, he cast a sidelong glance that directly met her own curious gaze. “Closer to home than ever before, in fact,” he replied. The Nord allowed that to sit in the air for just a moment before he shrugged a shoulder, breaking the eye contact to look at the vibrant green grass below him. “But… Yes. Far from home in the obvious respects.” 

Fjolte brought the glass to his lips and took a small sip, inhaling the scent of the rich amber liquid too. “You must be too,” he said, his voice gentle. 

“Furthest I’ve ever been,” Ina affirmed and sat down next to Fjolte, leaning back in the chair and draping an arm across the railing. She swirled the contents of her glass -- a clear, bright, yellowish drink that she had been told was jungle-grape wine -- and looked sideways at the man. “Do you like it here? It’s not too warm for you, is it? Or do you need some Skyrim snow to cool your junk with?” 

She chuckled at her own joke. If this man was anything like the Nords she remembered from back home, he’d appreciate the banter. “I’ll conjure it, but then the next drink is on you.”

“No warmer than Elsweyr, and not nearly as scorching as Hammerfell…” Fjolte answered with a slight smile, observing the Dunmer as she took her seat, his eyes rested on her for a moment as he took note of her features appreciatively. 

With a laugh, he shrugged once again and lifted a leg and began to shake it slightly. His linen pants were cut just past the knee and so the hem flapped about with his movements, “so long as I keep letting the air in, the boys and I will be fine— but thank you for the offer,” He said with a wink and another laugh. 

“Wanted to see the festival,” Fjolte said with a nod. “Anything else really… the weather… the insects that my companion is not so accustomed to…Well, those things are just small things to me.” He then held out his glass towards her, in anticipation for her to raise her own. “Fjolte, by the way — and you are…?”

“Call me Ina,” she said and clinked her own glass against his. “Nice to meet you, Fjolte.” Her hunch had been right, and the ice had been broken. And he hadn’t eyed her with distrust merely for being a Dunmer. She decided that she liked him.

His words indicated that he was vastly more well-traveled than the average Nord, and more curious about the world around him to boot. “You sound like you’ve been all over,” she observed and turned her head to look at him properly, resting her cheek on her fist, slowly sipping on the wine. “You’ll have to tell me some stories later. I bet a big man like you gets in all sorts of trouble,” she smirked, dragging out the last few words in a mischievous drawl. It was clear that the jungle-grape wine wasn’t Ina’s first drink of the night. 

“Who’s your companion?” she asked. 

Not wishing to engage too deeply, the Nord simply smiled and nodded. “Only so far as I’ve been able to walk, Ina,” he sighed happily, leaning back into his chair comfortably. “As for my friend, his name is Gwilym,” Fjolte answered with a smirk. “Not sure if he got lost on the way to refill his glass…[i]he[/i] gets into all sorts of trouble” he laughed. 

“Are you travelling alone?” He asked, tilting his head in her direction — his own drink bringing about a familiar happy tingle inside. 

“No, a friend brought me here,” Ina said and cast a cursory glance around the dance floor. Venwen wasn’t in the neighbourhood. “Though I don’t know where she is. I wanted to explore on my own for a bit.” The Dunmer shrugged and downed the rest of her drink. “I’ll find her later,” she said and burped quietly into her fist. 

“My, my…” a curious voice drifted over from the hubbub of the growing party around them. The soft crunch of expensive boots in grass accompanied it, and there stood a man dressed like a noble who’d gotten so lost somewhere between the trip from his bed to the banquet hall. Out of place, almost. 

His face made it seem like he wasn’t busy hating this place just a short time ago. A content smile and a tasteful haze in his eyes was behind an outstretched hand as he bowed to Ina in the manner he was taught to greet fine ladies of the court long ago. “You grace me with your presence, my lady,” he purred, “My apologies for my simple friend here, I hope his Nordic mannerisms did not offend you.” 

He smirked and winked at Fjolte, a good-mannered ribbing between the two. “Gwilym, your excellence.” He introduced himself.

“My [i]excellence?”[/i] Ina repeated after him and scoffed, though she was more amused than annoyed. She remembered Gwilym’s foppish demeanor from the Breton students at the Synod’s dances and galas, their pomp and ceremony always a great source of amusement for the poverty-born Dunmer. Though it were only three generations ago that the name of Aryon stood for something entirely different in Morrowind, Ina herself had decidedly [i]not[/i] been raised in the manners of the elvish aristocracy.

She took his hand and shook it firmly. “Inanna Aryon. At ease, soldier. I am no excellence. Call me Ina.” The alchemist withdrew her hand and let her gaze wander freely up and down the nobleman’s appearance. “I thought mountain-man over here looked like he was far from home, but you must be positively bewildered out here. Did you manage to put your britches on all by yourself this morning, or have you brought an entourage?” she teased, looking up at him with a coy smile. 

“Mountain man? Goat herder?” Fjolte scoffed with amusement. “What are you both trying to say to me today?” He raised a brow cooly before drawing from his pipe again, letting the herbal concoction soothe and settle what was angry inside. It had been a long and especially tiring walk, after all. He knew there was something stronger in his worn breast pocket too, but that was for later. “The pair of you look dressed for a far different occasion, at least [i]I’m[/i] blending in…” he chuckled. 

Gwilym laughed at the jests thrown at him and his person from Ina. Though deep down, a reaction like that stung, he would never let it show. It was custom to show no pain in the fencing tournaments though you might be bleeding from a hundred cuts, you show no pain. He smiled at Ina, “Please, [i]Ina[/i], I may look a useless noble boy, but I assure you I am not. Having got a little money, maybe, but my friend here keeps me frugal.” He smiled genuinely to Fjolte, and back to Ina, “I’m already well accustomed to ballrooms and barrooms alike. My rough and tumble rapscallion friend is making me into a rakish young gentleman borne of the wildlands.”

He chuckled, “So, yes, I guess that does mean I can dress myself very handily now.” He nodded at Fjolte, “Even if I have to settle for this Nord as my entourage. Being honest, you’re about as welcome a sight in all this dazzling confusion as Fjolte was when we rescued each other from that pack of bandits on that Anequina road. What brings you here?”

“Alright then, Gwilym, borne of the wildlands it is,” Ina said, satisfied with his defense of his character, and that the young man’s pride was not too great for him to play the game of wits. She gestured for him to sit and join them. He was looking like good company after all. Then she turned her head to look back at Fjolte and narrowed her kohl-framed eyes at him, keen crimson accusing him playfully. “What occasion does it look like I [i]am[/i] dressed for, hm?” she asked. 

“Well Gwilym here is dressed for an occasion I’d never so much as see an invite to,” Fjolte said with a laugh. “But you? Perhaps a party I wouldn’t mind attending.” His brow raised and he ran a hand under his beard and sighed. “Something indoors, only slightly modest in size and then probably filled with…” he paused to eye her, narrowing his eyes as if he was trying to peer at a secret, to figure her out. “Artists, perhaps. Artisans… craftsmen...” Satisfied with his observation, he went back to his glass with another of his smirks and obscured himself half with it. “Am I close?” He asked quietly, flashing her a quick glance. 

Ina nodded, impressed with his deductions, and smiled appreciatively. “You have a keen eye for people, Fjolte. Close -- I’m a mage, educated at the Synod in Cyrodiil, but I specialize in alchemy. You could call that a craft, of sorts.” Her gaze lingered on him for a moment, and her eyes sparkled when he cast her a quick glance over the rim of his glass. 

Weighing her own empty glass in her hands, she looked between the two men. “Now, before we continue, which one of you boys is going to fetch me a new drink?”

Gwilym offered out his hand for her glass, “It would be my pleasure,” he said, “I need a new one too, as it were.”

As Ina placed her glass in the palm of his hand, he took it almost dutifully, eyeing the two and then quirking a mischievous brow. Young as he was, he liked to think he knew when there was fucking afoot. Maybe. Fucking afoot for him, anyways, and it was clear that Ina had been snagged by the contemplative barbarian, the noble savage, Fjolte. “You two just conversate in my absence.” He spoke through his smirk, “I’ll only be a little.”

With that, he turned on his fine Colovian leather boot’s heel and walked off with a pep in his step. It was about time that Fjolte had gotten something out of their travels. Even if it stung him to see someone so enamored with another man. It had been quite some time since Gwilym had seen someone with eyes like that for another, and he’d left them some time ago for this nonsense. For the first time in a long time, it dawned on Gwilym.

Godsdamnit, he was lonely, even amongst all these things to get lost in- wine, women, all of it. He sighed, shaking his head and stiffening himself to keep his composure while he waited for the barkeep...drink merchant… ale man… mer... whatever the hells they called them here to notice him. Lamely, he raised his hand only to be ignored once more for another patron, and he tried to make it seem like a stretch instead, fake yawn and all. “These uneducated savages can’t recognize a patron in need, half-brained imbeciles, all of them.” He rolled his eyes, “Must be the Thalmor racism to ignore a man like me…”

He resigned himself to sitting on his lonesome, back to the raucous crowds, and sighing as he clinked his and Ina’s glasses together. “A right party, I say.” He managed something of a smile as he eyed a passing elf girl, slender body moving with ease to wherever she went, and already his mind was onto something new...

“Breath of fresh air, that one,” Fjolte said with a sigh, watching as Gwilym wandered away and off into the crowd. As much as they joked with each other, and had built a camaraderie upon those jokes, there was a genuine appreciation there. The Nord certainly felt it, when he thought of Gwilym, he saw himself in a way — young and with something to prove, perhaps something bubbling under the surface just slowly. He meant it when he called his new friend ‘Brother’. “Mouth on him from time to time but he means well,” he smiled, finishing his drink. 

“I like having him around,” Fjolte added with a genuine nod. Raising his empty glass into the air as if in toast to him. 

Ina sensed deflection in the way Fjolte ignored her looks and sang his friend’s praises in his absence. She didn’t mind -- the Dunmer woman didn’t need to be everyone’s type, or perhaps there was something in the Nord’s life that meant he wasn’t interested. That was a feeling she understood all too well. So the alchemist looked at where Gwilym had disappeared into the crowd instead. “Tell me about him,” she said. “What’s a man like him doing all the way out here?”

Maybe once. Maybe before, he wouldn’t have deflected. He would have taken the opportunity presented for what it was, the fact he didn’t want to, the fact that he [i]couldn’t[/i] made him feel lonely too. The itch was there, but the will to scratch it… Fjolte turned back to face Ina, as if shaking that feeling away to instead enjoy her company peacefully. “Those are his stories, not mine,” he said with an almost playful smile.

“But it’s as he said. We met each other on the Anequina road. Not too terrible a day — of course, I was about to be mugged for what… Little I have —“ as if to demonstrate, Fjolte reached into one of the pockets of his pants and pinched at it, pulling free only a thumbnail size of fluff that just escaped into the wind anyway. “Gwilym could have just walked on by, but I think he liked the trouble — or it liked him. The rest, is… recent history.” A deep laugh rumbled in his chest and his eyes sparkled as he recalled the fond memory. “But anyway, Synods… Mages… Snowballs…?” 

Ina chastised him with a tut. “Not so fast, young man. I’ve already told you where I was educated. If you’re not going to tell me about Gwilym, then at least tell me something about yourself first,” she said and sat up a little straighter in her chair, pulling up her legs to rest them on the seat with her. “You must be from Skyrim, that much is obvious. Where exactly?”

“What would make you say that?” Fjolte asked with a humorous grin, stretching in the chair to make himself more comfortable, his elbow finding the wicker arm of it so that he could tuck his hand under his chin. “But… Fair enough. My family and I are from Rorikstead, but I lived for some time in Ivarstead,” he answered honestly. “And where are you from, Inanna Aryon?” He shot back before she had time to ask anything else, there was something amusing to him about denying her another question. 

“I trust neither of you were gossiping about me.” Gwilym smirked as he stepped up to the pair, two full drinks in hand.

“Why? Was I not to share the salacious stories?” Fjolte remarked jokingly. 

It had been a bit of a wait for Gwilym to get his drinks, but it was not unfruitful. The sights here were to die for, in Gwilym’s opinion, but not the same ones Fjolte busied his eyes with. Surely, there were peaks and valleys, barely covered by these tribals. If he had been fretting the lack of comforts of civilization before, he was now howling the praises of simpler means of living. His arm outstretched towards Ina with her drink, “For you.” He smiled.

“Thank you,” Ina said and returned his smile with her own. “I did ask Fjolte about you, but your friend saw fit to keep your secrets for you.” The Dunmer made a show of pouting into her glass and took a sip. 

The Nord had said that it had been Inanna’s turn to answer a question, but Gwilym’s return was a convenient excuse to turn her back to him -- in a manner of speaking -- and deny him [i]his[/i] question instead, and she focused her attention on the Breton. “So I guess you’ll have to tell me yourself, Gwilym,” she proposed, and a sparkle of mischief gleamed in her eyes again. “What’s a man like you doing in a place like this?”

If he was to sit any longer, he’d become one with the chair, Fjolte thought as he watched Gwilym and Ina spark up their conversation again. The man had also only brought two drinks back which left as natural a segue as any for the Nord to start to make tracks. As they got reacquainted, he pushed himself free from the chair with a groan, standing to his full and impressive height. “I suppose I’ll be getting my own drink then,” he said with a raised brow, looking directly at Gwilym knowingly. 

Fjolte knew he was a flirt, best to leave him to it perhaps. “Ina,” he continued, beginning to feel a lightness throughout his body. “A pleasure to meet you, I might see you around during our stay,” he said with a warm smile in a drawling tone. “And I’ll see you later,” he chuckled at Gwilym, again with a knowing, boyish sparkle in his eyes. Then, he was off — slowly and calmly through the crowds, meandering to his next destination, whatever that would be. 

Gwilym shared Fjolte’s smile until the Nord walked off into the crowd in search of his next pleasure. As for Gwilym, he turned the smile on Ina, “Oh, it’s a long story of grief and excitement. Great mirths and melancholies. As for why I’m here, or anywhere I am at this point, it’s because I’m in search of something, you see,” Gwilym chuckled, swirling his drink in his glass- whatever liquid this was, he wasn’t sure- and sipped at it before smiling at Ina again with a wink, “When I find out what it is, you’ll be the first to know.”

Ina was no stranger to melancholies and she quickly empathised with the glimpses of Gwilym’s story that she could read between the lines. “I’ll drink to that,” the Dunmer said with a knowing look and took a big sip. Now that she knew, it was easier to see the layers in the blue deep of Gwilym’s eyes -- layers that no wink could hide, no matter how charming. She’d seen that look many times before. More often than not, it was those with a past they were trying to forget that Ina shared a fire with at night. “That makes two of us,” she said and laughed, more to herself than anything else. 

She looked around the festival and the reaching tendrils of the jungle canopy that encroached over the village overhead. Not even in Cyrodiil were the woods this thick. Slowly spinning her glass in her hands, she glanced back down at Gwilym, a small smile on her face and her eyes narrowed inquisitively. “Do you think you’ll find it here?”

Gwilym pursed his lips and shrugged, taking another sip and warming up to the conversation he and Ina were having, “I ask myself the same thing everywhere I go.” Gwilym said, nodding slightly, “I might. I might not. Sometimes, I think I’ll just have this feeling the moment I see it, you know?”

The charming glint in his eyes, the look that spoke of nothing but carnal pleasures and good conversation just like every other vapid young man with a prick waned a bit. For only a moment as he held Ina’s gaze, his eyes reverted to the way they were when not even Fjolte was looking, answering the question for her, “I think you do.” And then the glint was back just as soon as his glass left his lips again, a smile replacing it, “I hardly think parties are good places to wax philosophical. Even if I don’t find what I’m looking for here, I know I’ll find [i]something.[/i]”

She caught the hint and moved to a lighter topic. “Then you’ve never been to a philosophers’ party,” Ina quipped and smirked into her drink at the memory, gaze fixed at a point over Gwilym’s shoulder. The Synod maintained friendly relations with several other institutes of academic learning in the Imperial City and she had been to her fair share of student parties of other disciplines. “It’s like a pigsty. Bunch of grown men yelling and throwing wine in each other’s faces. But they swear by it.” She shrugged and feigned innocence. “Who am I to question those who are so wise in the ways of science?”

“Marching to the beat of their own drums.” Gwilym chuckled, “Sadly none of them settled on what song they were playing.”

Gwilym remembered sitting in on his father’s meetings. Boring topics such as the state of the city walls, the latest rumors about raids from the Reach, how the Orcs were doing this time of year and what trouble they were planning if they were in a group larger than two. He never quite got it, so to speak. “I’m wondering what scholarly pursuits a woman such as yourself could be looking for in a place like this.” He remarked, casting a sidelong glance at Ina, “Or is this solely for pleasure?”

Ina let her head rest in the palm of her hand again and looked at Gwilym sideways. “Pleasure?” she repeated slowly, as if she was tasting the word, her lips slightly open. Then she laughed and stretched out her legs, revealing that she was barefoot and making herself extra comfortable in her chair. “A little bit of both. I’m an alchemist and Valenwood is home to many exotic and… [i]powerful[/i] ingredients,” she explained, “that are hard to come by elsewhere. Tree saps and insect husks with potent healing properties, and other things too, for more sinister purposes. Things that would make your tongue sizzle by merely tasting them.” 

She shook her glass and looked down at the sloshing liquid inside, raising her head up momentarily to down the last of her drink before dropping back down on her hand again, her silver curls bouncing with the movement. “But nothing that a [i]real[/i] scholar would consider anything like the equal of [i]their[/i] noble pursuits,” she said. “So don’t let them hear you say that.”

Gwilym’s eyes followed every movement Ina made as she spoke, eyes drinking her all in with almost as much fervor as she downed her drink. She wasn’t as scanty as some of the locals, but he found that with every inch of Ina covered it made him more interested in what lay beneath... To speak of Gwilym’s scholarly pursuits he had in mind. He was a man, after all, and a young one at that. Even the tone and tempo at which she talked simply forced him to listen. He nodded slowly at first, as he took the reins of his mind back from whatever controlled it but a meandering moment ago, “And so I shan’t.” He chuckled, “But if you’ll take my opinion, I do find that quite interesting, if only because my ignorance of the fascinating subject.”

“My studies were not so book-oriented, most of the time.” He patted his belt, where his steels would be if he hadn’t checked them with the town guardsmen, “A simple fencer, I am. Wandering duelist, from time to time.”

Gwilym chuckled, downing his own drink in much the same fashion as Ina, “Only if there’s money in it, of course. I didn’t buy this coat with honor.”

He looked to Ina with a small smile, “If you ever need someone to go into the jungle with, I’d be more than happy to.” He said, “Protecting a lady? That’s honorable, isn’t it?”

Ina laughed at that. “Ah, yes, the knight in shining armor saving the damsel in distress. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? I’d heard you Bretons are fond of stories like that.” Life in Morrowind was difficult enough that the Dunmer had long ago stopped coddling their women, and Ina had grown up around the shield-maidens of the Nords to boot. It had never occurred to her that she needed a man’s protection, and she could take care of herself with fire and flame.

But that was an amusing secret to keep. “That said, I suppose it is honorable. Alright, Gwilym, you can protect me,” Ina said with a smile after a moment’s pause. “I was going into the jungle tomorrow to gather ingredients so I can use the help. Thanks.”

“Sounds like it’s settled then.” Gwilym smirked as he regarded all of Ina with a sidelong glance.

And with that, the Dunmer got to her feet and shot Gwilym a final, flirtatious smile. “I’ll see you around, my knight,” she said and blew him a kiss, the barefoot alchemist laughing softly to herself as she disappeared in the crowd once more.