toplvl | The Unlovables

"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."

"Katakan. It's a kind of vampire." He says. "Looks kind of like a big bat but without wings. And claws that grow for the whole life of the beast. They're still more like an animal than higher vampires but they get more cunning as they age and they can disguise themselves as people. Some of them are obsessed with living and killing among humans and they like to accumulate trinkets and treasures. This one got the drop on me because they can't be detected by my medallion. Thing must have gotten a few pints out of me by the time I was done with it."

“How did you figure out what it was?” The question was instinctively stronger than her, curiosity piqued despite her small promise of sorts. She watched the mark, tracing it in her mind’s eye and tried to imagine an overgrown, wingless bat trying to feed off the man before being slashed to bits.

“I…” She frowned. Right. A promise there’d been - one tale for another. “I was hired to find a dragon. I don’t remember much about what happened, just that we found something and then there was plenty of fire. A… A man named Hadvar got me out of there injured but alive. Most others didn’t make it.”

Edited 2022-08-25 18:03 (UTC)

"Had a pretty good idea once it was attached to my neck." Eskel chuckles.

His eyes, glowing bright in the dark of the room, trace the scar and then up to her face as she tells her story.

"Probably wasn't a dragon." He points out, likely unhelpfully. "But if it was, the people who hired you were real fuckin' irresponsible sending you after it. I'm sorry you lost your friends to their carelessness."

"They weren't my friends. Not that it's supposed to make it any better but..." She offered the smallest shrug, tugging her shirt back into place. "It sort of does."

Right, what were they doing? Drinking. She peers into her tankard and sort of flips it sideways, noting that it is once again empty. Huh.

"Either way, I was irresponsible too and- oh, this though," she presses her hand to her cheek, tracing a scar far smaller than his own that runs across her lip, before waving her hand a little. "Knife fight. I was young and stupid and thought I had the world at my feet.

"I'd show you the rest, but that would be rather unladylike of me."

"Yeah, this one's from a knife too." He says, showing a faint white scar on his left forearm as he refills her mug. "Alderman convinced a group of thugs to jump me when I came to collect on my contract. Since you don't have to pay and dead man and you can justify it by there being one less mutant in the world." He shrugs.

He tries not to think about what other scars she might show him, or that she might have to take her clothes off to do it. Nope, going to drown any of those thoughts at the bottom of this mug of beer.

“Son of a bitch,” she huffs, leaning a little into her mug before taking a good sip of the drink. “Funny how they cry for help until it comes, then try to swindle their way out of their peomise. Some people’s word… It’s as good as hogwash.”

Her attention is back on him and there’s that smile of hers; a little more than tipsy this time. There’s that attentive gaze, too. She doesn’t say anything this time, though; she’s content just observing him, thinking.

"And they won't know the error of their ways until my brothers and I are dead and the nights suddenly get much colder and darker and bloodier without us." Sure the monster population is dropping too, but witchers will almost certainly go extinct before they do.

She's staring again and he blinks at her.

"You...wanna pick another scar?" He offers, slowly. Feeling like he needs to keep her occupied when he can see the wheels turning in her head like that.

Not to mention, many creatures might have the chance to procreate. Monster populations might grow at any rate and then there are whoresons out there hanging Cats and trying to stab Wolves in the back. The thought is infuriating, but thankfully she is a little too inebriated to go on a small, if fierce tirade.

“I was just wondering how much booze I can keep up with you on,” she admits. “If I could ask about one more, well…”

For the first time, she looks away; there’s that gut feeling again and this time the uncertainty is clear in her expresssion. “Your face.”

"You will be asleep under this table before I even start getting dizzy." He assures her. "My liver is specially designed to metabolize both alcohol and poisons, you'll make yourself real sick trying to keep up." He's in the middle of refilling his mug when she asks.

"Not that one." He says, very quietly. Not a low, threatening tone but one of shame.

There's a pang in her chest with the way he says it. It would be easier to process, she thinks, had it roused anger or defensiveness, but his response is heart-wrenching instead, as if there is something else lingering under the surface which does ail him in some way.

"I'm sorry," she speaks just as quietly, glancing into her mug as she does. The expression of uncertainty doesn't leave her and she finds it harder to look at him in the eye. "I've asked enough of you for one night. Please, feel free to stay. I'll play another song for you if you'd prefer."

"It's just not a good story." He says. "I can find you a better one." He sets down his mug and pulls his shirt off over his head, to bare the violent momentos of claws and teeth that run over the powerful muscles.

She's about to reach for his hand and assure him that it's fine, he doesn't owe her any stories or even an explanation, when he starts pulling his shirt off - which in retrospect makes it look, a little awkwardly, like she's helping him do so what with her arm going up along with his. She swallows dryly, withdrawing her hands close to her midsection as her eyes roam the expanse of taut skin that she can now see under the candlelight.

( Melitele help me. Her face must be turning as red as his jacket. )

"What happened to not wanting to seem ungentlemanly? Not- not that you do." She half-chuckles, half-scoffs at herself. "Just asking."

"Ungentlemanly would be taking off my pants." He says, matter-of-factly. In some ways, he's pretty sure that's the case: she can see well-muscled peasant men shirtless in any given wheat field this time of year. He doesn't look that different, having been born to sturdy hill-folk before all the training and changes that only added to the sheer power outlined in all those muscles.

He's mostly just glad to have distracted her. Hopefully both from her curiosity and the sting of his refusing to indulge it.

It only looks different, really, in the sense that they are both quite alone with drinks in hand and not out on the fields. Not that Brynn is complaining in any capacity, but he does leave her rather speechless for a moment too long. She even takes a swig of her drink followed by a deep, deep breath just to center herself.

Oh, he has distracted her alright. She's praying to every divine she can think of that her mind doesn't wander too much.

"Fair enough. Wasn't expecting you to be this bold is all." Bold? She ought to slap her own forehead for that. Instead, she tries to respectfully go through each mark, though with the poor lighting this makes it so she has to inch closer to do so, until she sets her eyes on a smaller one on his upper abdomen, a little to the side. It's quite nondescript compared to that nastier bite mark, she thinks. "This," she traces it with two fingers, pointing out which one. "Looks old. How'd you get it?"

He tenses slightly, and the hand holding his balled up shirt shifts to allow her to explore while still covering part of the opposite side. There's a scar there too, the less appalling companion of the one on his face. Thankfully, the one she picks provides ample distraction.

"I'm surprised it's still there." He says. "That is from a spill I took before my changes." He twists little to look at it, to remind himself. "We train using these big machines. I got hit with...the windmill, I think. Which has these big arms on it that turn around q center post. Supposed to teach you how to dodge. Anyway, one of the arms was busted and when it hit me it uh...skewered me, kinda. Even after the old man stitched me up, I swear I was still pulling splinters out of my belly for weeks.

The Unlovables

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