Private The Ballad of the Blighted Shore

The fire crackled behind the bard, who stopped pacing. Morning light spilled through the doorway in pale gold bands, catching dust motes drifting lazily through the air. The smell of coffee drifted from the pot hanging above the hearth. Salt hung beneath it. Smoke above it.

At first, it seems the bard might laugh. There is even the beginning of a smile. She looked at Willard. Looked at him for a long moment. "Oh." The words arrives quietly. "Oh, I see. Venla's family," she said, pleasantly, the way one says pleasant things before she says unpleasant ones, "are lovely people, I am quite sure. Salt of the earth. Brine of the coast." A small, sweet smile.

"But with the greatest respect your boots have ever been paid, the letter you are currently, I assume, carrying in some pocket close to your person, was not written by Venla's family. It was written by me. Lady Lark! Of the Lanes. Who was there. Who saw it. Who counted the stars in its hide!" She gestured to herself.

The bardess turns away from the knights then, taking several steps across the hut. The old floorboards creak beneath her well-oiled boots. "I have, it seems, made an error. Not about the creature." She begins gathering her belongings. Not hurriedly. Methodically. The lute first. Always the lute first. "About you. About The Knights of Anathaeum" She shrugs.

It was Caelia's voice that caught her mid-motion. The bard didn't turn around. "You," she said, "are doing the thing where you're the reasonable one, aren't you? The one who smooths it over." A small, almost rueful huff of breath.

"And I believe you, Syr Caelia... truly, I do, that you came all this way to help. That's not in question." Her eyes flicked, briefly, to the others. "But an apology offered on someone else's behalf, by the person who didn't say the rude thing, doesn't actually un-say the rude thing." The bard laid the lute in it's case, she closed it and locked it. She gathered her cloak from the back of the chair with the brisk efficiency of someone who had decided something.

"I confess I had rather hoped that the Order of Dusk and Dawn... this grand and storied institution, pillars of protection, bulwark against the forces of corruption, etcetera, etcetera... might have mustered some of their former chivalry by now..." Anira sighed, deeply, the sigh of a woman grieving something she hadn't quite expected to lose. "But I suppose it's not strange, is it, that an order becomes a shadow of itself when it treats the woman who filed the report.. questioning what she did and did not see." She tilted her head. "Truly. A noble tradition. Bravely upheld."

She slung her bag over one shoulder, a leather satchel containing maps, journals, spare strings, ink, and a lot of half finished songs.

She had written a very good letter.
She always wrote very good letters.

People said things. That was what they did. They said things, we'll be there, we came all this way, we are here to help, I'll meet you there... and then the airship left and the knights laughed at your unicorn.

All right, she thought. All right.
People said so many things.

"Knights. Sworn defenders of the Wyld, I release you. You are free. Go, be well, save an otter." A bright smile, the type that meant absolutely nothing. "Your aid is, with the warmest possible regards, no longer wanted."

Sabinian's brows plummeted low over his eyes, darkening his entire expression that had been generous towards the bard moments before. The elf leaned back, crossing his arms, frowning at her and then to each of the young Knights in turn as they danced around the bard with words of appeasement, like tiptoeing around a Bighorn Unicorn with apples and carrots and sugar cubes.

Shaking his head, Sabinian sighed. He waved a hand in front of his face as if clearing out smoke. He was too tired to deal with the ego of a narcissist, too jaded to feel ashamed or enraged by the twisting of words, reminding him of a technique used by the most spoiled of petty barons when they tried to expand their borders. He was too old to deal with a bard that had only called on them because they were dealing with writer's block.

"You can dismiss us and go find those cazadores you seem fond of." Sabinian pushed himself off the workbench, looking over his shoulder to wipe away the wood dust on his robe. "Any blighted creature does not deserve to suffer, unicorn, walrus... or otter." A sardonic twist of a smile towards Anira. "We all took an oath to protect and preserve the balance which the Blight threatens. Let the bard leave, Syr Willard, so the sooner may she find the bodyguards she seeks." He did not hold a rank higher than Syr Willard, a mere elf that preferred pens over swords. No one had to listen him, it would not be a surprise if he were ignored.

"A Cazadore would slay the Blighted beast, but we would have been called regardless to finish cleaning up the mess. The Blight spreads faster than Kudzu." A click of his tongue at the thought of how Anira wouldn't have cared to alert anyone if her path to the Isle was safe. He thought about how she didn't care if the unicorn was in pain. The previous nervousness was eased to bed by a sense of duty. Dismissed or not, there would still be the Blight and it would only grow if not handled properly.

Caelia gave the Lady Lark a strained smile, for she was right in that her own apologies on behalf of those who spoke doubt would not be enough to appease.

Her stern stare returned to them all as the lady knight leaned against an old arm chair and absentmindedly began to drum her fingers against it's cushioned cloth. Her other hand rested at her hips, fingers just shy of the rose carved pommel to her own sword. It was quite the battle to remain here, conversing, after they had taken up time to travel up to this point and still not see to action of why they had come here.

Clearing her throat, Caelia spoke in the brief moment of silence after Sabinian's bit of logic. "The choice is your own to make, Lady Lark, but I will offer up my sword in your name to ensure this Blighted creature is no longer a threat. We are here now, and by duty we will see to this Blight and act swiftly lest it spreads towards this coast line..."

Caelia shrugged. "Fetch whomever you wish, but we are here to at your call, my Lady."

"If." She said the word like she was choking on it. If I have caused offense. Not I have caused offense. Not I was wrong. Just... if. He just acknowledged the possibility that she might be the sort of woman who gets offended over nothing. The kind of sorry boys gave, all loophole and no spine, delivered by someone who'd never once had to mean a sorry before. She half expected him to follow it up by insisting this is not big a deal.

"That's not an apology, sweetheart." There was a difference between being sorry and wanting the sorry part to be over.
She caught Sabinian's shift out of the corner of her eye. The brows dropping, the arms crossing, the whole performance of weary disappointment, shifted ever so fast in someone who'd been leaning toward her like a sunflower a few minutes prior.

She was too vain, frankly, too vain to deal with the ego of a borderline elf, watching him run hot and cold faster than bathwater. First the mild disgust when they greeted, then charmed, then scorned, then sermonizing. There was only room for one wildly fluctuating ego in this hut, and she'd been here first! She was too proud to let these knight make her smaller than she was. She had slept this fish stinking hut, and written possibly the finest piece of reportage of her career, only to be workshopped by committee into Old One-Tooth - The Walrus.

"Any blighted creature does not deserve to suffer, unicorn, walrus... or otter."

Sabinian's mouth curled into that sardonic little twist of a smile. She didn't have it in her to sneer back. Sneering took a kind of contempt she just didn't carry for any of them. She didn't dislike any of them, not the way they seemed to be working very hard to dislike her. They'd offended her, soundly and repeatedly, before she'd even finished her coffee, but offense wasn't the same as contempt. Contempt required looking down at someone. Anira had never once, in this entire ridiculous morning, looked down on these knights. She thought them to be slow to listen, and entirely too fond of the sound of their own certainty.

"Oh, don't do that," she said to Sabinian, rolling her eyes and weaving her hand like his sardonic smile was a insistent fly. "Sneering. It doesn't suit you half as well as you think it does. Smug wants a sharper jaw. Try the wounded dignity again, it was working better for you."

"Never seen or heard of a Walrus with such markings."

Anira plucked the letter from Hector without breaking stride, sharp and quick as a magpie spotting something shiny on the road. Then Sabinian went with his oath to keep the balance.

"Yes I am eager to get past the cursed nightmare-i-corn, and yes I'd rather like to keep all my limbs! You should know, the lot of you, that you're costing yourselves something rather magnificent!" They did not seem to care what it does for a knight's reputation to have like bard her witness their deeds firsthand... A bard is literally the difference between 'he did a brave thing once... probably' and an living legend. People remembered the legends. Nobody remembered the incident report. All the while Hector sipped his coffee.

"Picture it. A ballad about the blighted thing on the shore, knights with steel drawn, wading into surf and starlight to face something half-mad with corruption." She let her eyes travel over the elf, slow, assessing. "And you've got the face for it, annoyingly. Cheekbones like that, grim in the moonlight, shouting something noble right before the charge... I could've done wonders with you."

A wicked little pause.

"Shame about the personality." The bard stuck her tongue out, quick as a kitten caught stealing a lick of milk. So with her chin high, she turned to the door. Lute case swinging against her hip.

If you leave now, you won't be able to say "I told you so!"

"Damn you, Syr Willard." She muttered "That's good. That's an actual good point. You're right.." By leaving she would be thinking about it the entire walk to the Cazadores, wondering how it would end, and that was going to bother her for long. A story half-told was blasphemy.

Caelia hadn't argued with her at all. Just offered her sword. Plainly. Like it was never actually in question. All the choice is yours, but here is my sword. The bard shook her head, almost rueful. "She slaughtered my pride. I had a whole exit planned." She set her satchel down. "Alright. Fine. Fine." A long-suffering sigh, entirely theatrical. The bard dropped into the nearest chair with the boneless relief of someone who had been ready to walk a great distance and was suddenly, gratefully, not going to have to.

"You've ridden hard to get here and whatever's nesting in those caves has waited this long without corrupting the whole coastline... it can wait one more night while you all get some sleep."

Any appetite that the elf had soon vanished. Did he hear the words right? Making fun of his jaw, comparing him to the beauty standards that were trendy and popular now? Elves were supposed to be beautiful enough to rival gods, to rival all of nature's wonders. There was some truth to it, a tired Sabinian looked far less tired than a tired Syr Willard, a sick Sabinian looked far less sick than a sick Syr Castor, of course, of course. Why did humans always forget that elves belonged to a time before them, with them and after them?

His frown was not indicative of wounded pride but rather thoughtful consideration. As the only elf among humans he had been teased for his ears, his inability to grow a beard, his softer features that were far from the masculine ideal. His mother had told him before that those who felt confident in insulting how someone looked or presented themselves did so not because they thought they were beautiful, but because their heart was a nursery of hate.

'A face cannot commit grave evils but words can.'

Six hundred year old wisdom that still rang true today. He was quite lucky that he had the mother that he did, quite glad that he got to be with her for the rest of her life, watch his brothers and sisters have children, to watch them become adults themselves and have children, watch those good kids become old and happy, too. He thought his mother's wisdom surely must have kept traversing down her ever growing family tree.

"What a ugly little heart you have," Sabinian said to the bard, "I pity you most deeply. At least the unicorn can blame it on the blight, you have nothing to blame but yourself." He didn't need to say that he needed to go on a walk, that he had to walk off the disgust the same flavor as bitter bile on his tongue. His feet would carry him far, boots kicking foam, as if he were in search of the Blight itself, leaving his fellow Knights behind. Sabinian would only stop to watch seabirds catch seabreeze after seabreeze, their great wingspans casting shadows over tumbling waves and sand.

When they swooped down into the waves in search of breakfast did his stomach finally growl. An obdurate elf, Sabinian knew he would not join the others until he saw the group head out for him to trail behind. He would turn back, his trail of footprints eaten up by the waves and choose to spend the rest of the time with the horses and far, far away from the bard.