toplvl | The Unlovables

"... And the dragons are gone."

With one last hum and strum of the lyre, Brynn tilted her head in the direction of the table that the two sat at. This was no ordinary performance, but she was not famous or necessarily bent on pursuing a career like master Dandelion or the ever brilliant Callonetta. She had played him a song, in private, as promised over a drink long ago and now here they were.

"One for you," she pushed the large mug of beer in his direction, then another one in her own. "And one for me."

Despite the surplus of alcohol, Brynhild was quite sober. And quite bent on showing the Witcher how she did, sincerely, wish for this to be a moment of respite for him. He was no beast, that much she had decided without question.

"Did I or did I not keep my word? Now's your turn. Drink up. Tell me what ails you."

He's grateful that the troubarix's interest and attention remains a small and private thing. He's not sure how his brother has endured Dandelion for decades: not just the way Geralt's most intimate business gets bandied about from the grandest manor to the lowest gutter but also how utterly exhausting Eskel imagines it must be to hold the man's peculiar fascination for all this time. It made him wary of other bards, but this one had treated him kindly and more or less respected his desire not to draw attention to himself.

"You did keep your word." He echoes over the top of his beer. "A private audience, a pretty song, and a drink." He takes a long draft and swipes foam from his ragged upper lip. "Nothin' ails me, I'm just tired." He rumbles. "Been sleeping rough of late. Cities have been too much trouble." He shakes his head. "Last place I thought I might spend the night, I heard tell they'd hanged two Cats in the town square. Wasn't about to show my mug and wind up on the scaffolding myself. Turned around and slept in a muddy sunflower field." The Cat School witchers might have done some legitimate crime, they tended towards degeneracy and cruelty, but Eskel had a feeling they might well have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“No wonder you look like hell,” she was honest, at least - not ever as a jab at his physique, but rather at his overall disposition and how tired he did look. It was a wonder he’d stayed awake during her performance though to be fair Brynn wasn’t about to chastise him if he’d dozed off mid-way. Theirs weren’t easy lives, true, but hers was a walk in that same sunflower field in comparison. The mention of the hanged Cats alone was a grim reminder of how so many people (more and more, it felt like) feared the witchers enough to wish to get rid of them as opposed to the true beasts that lurked around each corner.

She sighed, taking a good swig of her drink. The lyre was set aside for the time being and she inched her seat closer, enough to tentatively reach over and brush some hair off of the man’s forehead.

“You can stay here tonight. Hell, you can stay here however long you need. I know the innkeep and she’s keen on privacy.” She offered a small, warm smile. To be fair, the place was a bit of a shithole but as long as she performed a couple of songs, it was a guaranteed night (or morning) of sleep. This was more or less a night off - her time was entirely his. “Might even find an odd job or two in the vicinity tomorrow.”

He shifts a little in his seat when she reaches to brush some of the silver-shot black strands off his forehead, not used to being touched by relative strangers. But her proximity and attentiveness definitely makes him feel aware of just how rough he's been keeping.

"I've got the coin for a room." He says, as if convincing himself. The place was a little run down, but not the worst, and down on their luck places knew that a mutant's coin was as good as a man's.

"Please," she offers another smile in return. Her hand reluctantly parts from his hair but for a brief moment its as if she wished to trace one of his scars; her eyes were fixed on it, at least, an air of curiosity about her. Here she was telling him tales of old when he could be telling her his own instead.

She shakes herself out of reverie and downs another swig. "I'm inviting you. Stay here. There's a bed and there's enough ale that I can sleep once you've rested and set about your business. Who knows,"

She tilts her head. "Perhaps I can sing you to sleep, witcher."

Good thing it's only candlelight in here, he can pretend he hasn't turned a shade closer to the color of the absurd crimson jacket flung over the back of his chair.

"You can't ask me to sleep in a bed you've paid for." He says, somewhat incredulously. "The room, maybe." He'd sleep on the floor if he had to, like a gentleman.

"I can damned well do whatever I want, can't I now?" She laughed - mirthful, though not particularly loud, but oh so sure of herself. Like hell she'd let the man who'd been sleeping out in the fields sleep on the floor of all places. She was no monster.

"Come on now. If it makes you feel better, I can sit beside you until you nod off. All I ask in return is you tell me a story of your own before we part ways."

She's very fond of deals, this bard.

"I'm pretty sure I warned you last time that my stories aren't as exciting as the ones you hear in Master Dandelion's ballads." He says, squinting thoughtfully into his mug. He's going to want more booze when this is done.

Last time, he had traded her a story of a basilisk that had swallowed a child. A child who was saved by Eskel turning up in just the knick of time to kill the beast and pull her from its crop so quickly she was still alive (if extraordinarily traumatized).

"Master Dandelion has the talent of making even the most mundane tale sound like an epic for decades to come. You know my interest isn't in telling these stories. I just want to hear them."

It's true. His stories are grim and quite forward, but she wants to hear them for his exploits, not necessarily to sing praises afterwards. Sure, they undoubtedly make their way into her artistry from time to time but she has always treated that more as a consequence of inspiration than a deliberate act.

"'Sides," she peers into her own mug, noting how remarkably empty it's becoming. Thankfully they've a couple of bottles left to go through for now. Her gaze turns to him before she speaks again and remains fixed, contemplative. Almost reverent. "I'd rather hear something different this time."

He's got a bottle in his bags piled up by the fire too, a bag of warm spiced whiskey he'd gotten collecting on a law of surprise from one of last season's client, a dwarf merchant he had escorted on the road from Mount Carbon to Vengerberg. The man had returned home to find that his brother had started a distillery and Eskel's claim had won him the first bottle presented to the merchant when the witcher ran across him in Vengerberg recently. It would be a good bottle to split with company. He had been intending to bring it home, but depending on his thirst this evening, they might crack it open.

"Sure." He says, rolling up his sleeves and offering her his scarred forearms. "Pick a scar."

She can't make promises. For all it's worth, Brynn could drink the night away and sleep for the whole day but it isn't in her nature to impose on him too much; not to mention the innkeeper might start to wonder what exactly her bard is making of the establishment. Not that it should matter.

She downs the rest of her beer in one swift swig, hammering the mug down with a sharp inhale and a couple of blinks of her eyes. Then, she pulls her chair closer to him and takes his offer - as any nose bard would - to trace the scars with her fingertips first, making her choice. Her eyes are fixed on the task... Until she looks up at him and briefly, only lightly, traces one of the scars running across his lip.

She wants to ask, but her gut feeling warns her that it might hit too close to home. Still she remains frozen in place for a moment too long before forcefully pulling her gaze and hands down again, swallowing dryly and tracing a smaller one on his right forearm. "This- this one."

If she'd been more attentive just now, she would have noticed that she picked the exact same one as she had the first time he'd let her have her pick. But right now, she clearly isn't.

The way he goes tense as a cornered animal when she lifts a hand to his face is telling, as is the immediate relief when she moves away in almost the same moment he starts to open his mouth to divert her attention literally anywhere else on his body.

He looks down at his arm when she makes her selection. He lets himself chuckle to try and break the tension.

"That was the basilisk." He says. "See how it's a burn, from the acid they spit?" He looks his arms over and then considers his options. "How about I tell you about one you can't see?" He offers.

The laugh is welcome as it eases a hefty chunk of tension from her shoulders. She exhales again, as if that would chase away the red tint spreading across her face.

"Right. The basilisk." She nods, giving it a proper look and making a face not unlike that of someone caught in the act. Her thumb gently rubs over the burn mark for a brief moment, considering her own marring her sides, before she lets go altogether.

(Thank goodness for the candlelight.)

"That depends." She tilts her head, tries to regain some of her composure and, ultimately, offers her signature smile. "Will you let me see it?"

"I think it would be ungentlemanly." He says, draining his mug and reaching for a refill. He wouldn't want to get drunk enough to forget to be a gentleman, but...maybe he will.

He stretches out one long leg and traces a crescent shaped arc along the inside of his thickly muscled thigh.

"This one is from the beginning of last season." He says. "Manticore got the drop on me just a couple of weeks after I set out from home. Almost severed my femoral artery. I was laid up for days and didn't even get paid for my trouble as the local alderman claimed he didn't know the beast was there so there was no bounty."

"I wouldn't mind if you were a little ungentlemanly," she retorts, waiting for him to refill to do the same. There's a bit of sass to her words, a bit of playfulness, but she tries not to go overboard; she knows damn well she's not entitled to his time.

She watches him stretch his leg and traces the same shape with her eyes, then with her fingertips on the rough surface of the table. It's hard to resist reaching over to follow his hand, but she manages just fine, enthralled with the tale.

"It's a wonder you can still walk." It's a wonder he's still alive.

She found herself drinking again.

"You have more of those? Ones I can't see and you'll mysteriously keep to yourself?"

"I do. I'm pretty covered in the things." He says. "I heal faster and better than a normal man but some wounds are too much and they don't heal right."

He tucks his leg back under the table and turns his attention back to his drink.

She, too, turns her attention back to her drink. With another generous gulp of it, this time downing half her mug in roughly one go, she stretches her left arm and rolls the sleeve up as far as it'll go, revealing part of a burn mark that seems to stretch all the way up to her shoulder.

"M'afraid I can't say mine heal any faster or any better than us normal folk, but this one recovered pretty well for what it's worth." And her attention is back on him. Because, of course it is. "But I like yours better - the stories behind them. They give you... Character. Charm. Folk like me finds that quite valiant."

He's surprised by the vulnerability she shows in exposing her own scars, especially something as intense as a burn, and especially as large as that. His gaze lingers on them a moment, not at all shocked or disgusted but just surprised observation. But instead of swapping stories, she's back to his.

"Nothing valiant about it. Just doing my job."

That's the thing though - she is so enthralled with Eskel's stories that her own seem to pale in comparison. That's why she hardly gives them any time and just sort of focuses on him instead.

"You keep people safe," she points out, sort of dangling her mug in his direction, a substitute for wiggling her finger at him. "Not sure how that works in a lot of people's heads, but I find that virtuous."

She offers a small smile - not yet tipsy, but a little less inhibited. "Forgive me, but this is the only time I can sing your praises. 'M not a genius like master Dandelion. And I'd rather you heard it yourself."

"Master Dandelion has had half a century to master the praises of witchers." Eskel points out. He's not sure how old the woman before him is and is too polite to speculate but he'd guess not anywhere near the deceptively youthful-looking forty-something of his brother's bard. "Not that I need anybody to sing my praises."

In fact, the only song Dandelion has composed about Eskel is one of sorrow and shame.

"But I suppose you bards can't help it. Romantics, all of you."

"Bard and huntress, thank you," she points out playfully, finding herself reaching for a refill of her tankard. The smile doesn't leave her face, especially not after his comment about Dandelion's age had prompted a chuckle from her. "But I suppose you're right. We're hopeless romantics, the lot of us. Always pining for our muses and that one little spark of something new."

Not that she puts too much work into it. Music generally comes second to her except when the witcher is around, apparently.

"I can't help it if you're just too damned compelling for your own good, witcher. This one is on you."

"See, bards say that. They buy me drinks, thinking I could be their White Wolf, only to discover that I actually do my job instead of getting mixed up with dragons and djinns and sorceresses."

Cursed princesses though, that he and his brother have in common. He drains his mug and refills it. He reminds himself not to get too drunk in a lady's company, lest she really begin to think less of him.

"My work is mostly a grind of blood and shit. Sometimes I stumble across something interesting, but most of the time it's no different than plowing a field, to me."

It would take a whole damned lot for her to think less of him. He has seen her genuine enthusiasm in simply listening to him before and how she has tiptoed around topics when she wasn't certain they wouldn't strike a nerve.

"To you, precisely. To me, it is a whole different world. I handle beasts you can kill with a bow, an arrow, or a well-placed trap. But it is someone like you who makes sure I can do that without being devoured by something larger and deadlier." For a brief moment it looks as if she's about to stand, but she ends up just sitting up straighter. Perhaps the alcohol is finally rearing its head.

"I don't talk to you in hopes of digging out a White Wolf of my own, or to hear about him at all. Master Dandelion's got all that figured out, doesn't he? Why, I just like to hear you. Your life. Your heart and soul." Her eyes are fixed on his, a look all too similar to the one she'd offered when asking to hear another one of his stories. "Is that such a terrible notion?"

"Don't you know? I don't have either. They burn the hearts and souls out of us when we come of age." His expression is a wry one, however.

He won't give her anything too intimate. She doesn't want to hear it anyway, nobody wants to hear how witchers are raised. But he can give her more stories of daring adventure if that's what she wants.

His medallion jingles as he shrugs out of his vest and then unlaces his shirt a little ways so he can expose the muscle between his shoulder and neck, a large ring of white scarring that's clearly some kind of bite mark.

"How about this one?"

"That's bullshit," she mumbles audibly enough, though she suspects his senses are keen enough that he would hear her regardless; how can someone be stripped of their heart and soul so mercilessly? She likes to think of it as the sort of tale that would frighten a child at night.

She is no child, nor is she frightened. She doesn't pity him, either, no - that feels too callous. But it would be a lie to say something deep down doesn't ache upon seeing him now in what is probably the most vulnerable he will allow himself to be.

She watches him silently, attentive to each of his movements until her eyes rest on the exposed skin. She hums quietly, conceding, then pushes her own shirt a little sideways around her shoulder to reveal the rest of the burn mark. It looks a little uglier around the joint and spreads down. There are a couple of cuts over it - or under; it's hard to tell which came first.

"Tell me yours, and I shall tell you mine."

The Unlovables

how to play:

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