Veronika just couldn't help but to scoff at Alexa's... ehem... style of soup-eating. Once again the other girl just had to remind her and everyone around of what a peasant she is. She would make a comment about table manner, if it wasn't for Alexa's last sentence. Them? Friends? That was new indeed. The older girl must have been a little too shaken up by the wolves and now got her facts and confused. But for this once Veronika was going to let it slide with no more than a subtle eye-roll.

In order to refrain from having to respond to the last rhetorical question, she just dug her nose deeper into the odd book. Unlike before, she now decided to actually focus on the characters and try to understand what she's reading. To her surprise the odd inscriptions that looked like child's scribbles began to make sense as soon as she concentrated on them. The worlds and meanings spiralled in front of her eyes, telling her how to open a portal to a different world, swirling and twirling in waves o information she never heard, but seemed to understand almost perfectly. Before she knew it, she was dashing from page to page. Sure, she was an avid and thus fast reader, but now she was flipping to a new page every couple of seconds.

---

The young noble became so captivated by the old tome that she didn't even notice the heavy knocking, followed by equally loud creaking as someone swung the large wooden door open. A red-haired head of a young and rather good looking man poked through, followed by his massive muscular body that seemed too well-built for the plain clothes he wore.

The moment his eyes wandered over to the two ladies, he gasped, just staring for a while. He began to exclaim one or two ‘oh’ and ‘um’-s before an older voice disturbed him.
“Eric! What by the Divines are you doing scooping around!?” Naturally, it was Jouane who returned with a couple of bottles of ale and a furrowed expression on his face.
“Aa-ah, I was just- You know, wanted to know if they were adventurers... Everyone in the inn is talking about them...” The younger man awkwardly said, obviously driven there by sheer curiosity.

Upon that Jouane gave him a look that clearly spelled out just how unlikely it was for the term adventurers to be applied to the two girls. The elder shook his head and mumbled to himself something about youngsters and adventurers, setting the bottles down with a loud clang. 

“It took some persuasion, but Rorik agreed to let you stay... for now. You’ll probably see him tomorrow, he... well, he’s still at the inn.” Jouane announced, not really hiding the underlying information of what his means of ‘persuasion’ mostly were. 
“Ah, I see you came to, child... Say... how do you feel?” He said, feeling Alexa’s forehead with his wrinkled hand. Eric nearly broke his neck while curiously expecting the brunette from behind Jouane’s back. He had never seen girls so... unusual, but also pretty at the same time. 

Veronika noticed little of her surroundings. The book created a small universe within her mind where she fled to, learning about the dimensions and weaving space over time to call upon minions to fight for you. It was like an escape from reality. And she needed that; she needed it more than anything else at the moment.