[center][h3]Skarsat[/h3][/center]

It had not taken long for Skarsat to start enjoying the overly abundant plethora of food The Faded Lantern had to offer, although it seemed rather obvious to the Tork man that this offer was much more a special one than what any everyday guest could hope for. How much all of this would have cost if ordered by ordinary people without an assignment as critical as theirs ? Or rather: How much this Lord Vargas secretly subtracted from their reward for all of this ? Skarsat had a hard time imagining that their employer would [i]not[/i] have calculated all of this very thoroughly, from what was on the table to the very rooms they had slept in this night.

On the other hand... [i]if[/i] he had been nothing more than an ordinary guest this morning, Skarsat might have had it easier to just try and talk his money back out of the innkeeper's pockets, claiming that the overall atmosphere was... unpreferable and inappropriate. Or at least so it felt for him the moment Solange started her verbal siege. A piece of egg was still hanging out of a corner of his mouth as the hulking Tork raised his head, just looking at the woman -- with surprise at first, but quickly with rather obvious unhappyness that could hardly be explained by some residual morning groggyness.

Darling ? Reservation in helping himself ? Skarsat's thoughts could be summarized as follows: 'Erm... what?'. There were no such words in a Tork tribe, and right now he could just hope that there never would, even if his current judgement probably did those kind words great unjustice because it was Solange and her special way of expressing them that bothered him right now.

Since Tork tribes had come into existence they had found many phenomenons on, above and below their heated sands that they had found hard or impossible to explain, so many desert myths had formed over the ages. At some point one had found out that large grooves in the dunes were caused by nothing else than rocks being pushed around by violent gusts of wind, but that discovery had been too late to prevent the creation of a particularly nasty myth: the one of the great snails. Not great because people had liked them, but because they had been said to have been so abormously large that people had feared them.

Just like your ordinary snail, those creatures had allegedly been omnivores that had satisfied their large appetite by use of a radula. Not only had it been claimed that they had been able to cause disaster for a tribe by eating away all of the fruits a much needed oasis had to offer, but they had even been given the ability to attack any unwary wanderer directly. In your sleep they'd come at you at their shameful pace, slide aover your body, suffocate you with their weight while grinding away your skin at the same time.

Solange's words just seemed to do the same thing. That woman was a very good big snail impersonator. Unfortunately deploying any of the countermeasures a tribe would have had to offer against such a hypothetical threat would have caused big trouble for himself. So there was no other choice but to stand fast and bear all of it.

"Have you ever tried bare silence ? Maybe that's the best or second best thing you can give ?" No smile and no grin either. Skarsat's words were pretty dry, but even that already was the result of filtering out the negative emotions he currently had. "And handing me that plate over there certainly is the other thing, right ?" Now he tried to put up a slight smile, but whether it would have success and not come across as a pretty forced thing was to be questioned. He did not want to start an argument with Solange or anyone else right on the first morning, but he felt no need to hide his true feelings all too excessively either.

"A big man needs big food. That large plate, please." and he pointed to a pretty big one filled to the brim with bread, cheese and bacon.