A fledgling knight struggling with the truth crosses paths with a prodigal daughter homeward bound.
Syr Osytha & Xenovia
Early 349 EOD
Syr Osytha & Xenovia
Early 349 EOD
“Y’know, th’ quess-chyun — righ’? Th’ ques-*urp*-ssschyun I have, is, is: is this.
“Wha’ the fuck. Y’know?”
“Uhuh,” says Frank, non-committally. Frank says this because it seems like what the woman in front of him wants to hear, less so for actually being true. Frank, in fact, does not know.
He does not really know what this very drunk young woman has been slurring towards him from the bar this past half-hour. He does not know how long she’s actually been drinking; she came in already sloshed, most likely kicked out of another pub. He does not know how much longer she’s going to keep rambling on while he refills her tankard. But she pays well, and there aren’t that many other customers this late, so Frank doesn’t know if he should cut her off.
“Yeah,” she wavers, drawing unsteady figure-eights in stale beer on the countertop. “You get ’t, Fred. Old, budd-y.”
“It’s Fr—” The barman stops, and shrugs. “Actually, never mind. You were saying?”
The woman gawps at him, blankly, for a second. Young, yes… early twenties, perhaps? Dark, dark brown hair but for a white steak over the right. A slack-jawed tall face, unsteady grey-blue eyes; fairly prominent nose, the kind with a little kink in it high up. Frowns a lot.
“I wazz?” she wonders. “Righ’. I was sayin’. Um. Sumfin’.”
What was it—? Oh yes, ‘what the fuck’. What the fuck was Meri thinking all that time. What the fuck had she been thinking, not to realise until now. What the fuck does it even mean. And what the fuck is she doing here, in Crown’s Hold, trying to find…
“Ar—*hic*— ’scuse me. Arrrtorias. Tha’s him. ’Pparently, anyway. Do you know how many Artoriaseses…ses… there is in this city? More’n one. I’ll tell you that.” The sot glances down into her mug and, softly, burps. “Perrobibbly should’ve axed mum for ’is las’ name. Whoops. Ahaha…”
She blinks, dully, and realises another disconcerting truth. “’M empty.” Clumsy hands shove the tankard forward, then rummage around in a money pouch under her padded black coat. “Cap me off, Fra— er, sorry, ormost called yew ‘Frank’ there. Cap me off please, Fred, my gewd man.”
One of Frank’s uncertainties finally picks a direction in which to swing, as he listens to pennies thump down into the sawdust.
“Look, miss, maybe you should slow down on the—”
“‘Miss’?” her head snaps up, harshly if also a bit wobbly, brow furrowed deeper than Frank has yet seen it. “‘Miss’? I’m no miss, missusterr. Here, lookit— lookit this, whydontcha…”
Those hands cease their fumbling for funds and instead slip inside the breast of her gambeson. Frank stares, slightly horrified, as she rummages away in there, a look of intense focus on her rosined face.
“Almos-st… there it ’s,” she gloats, pulling forth a small, glimmering object. “Set your eyes on—” a faint ping as the thing clatters to the bar, “—whoopsie daisy, haha. Here, look.”
Frank picks up the tiny piece of jewellery. It’s a pin. Quite an intricately made one at that; a thick, bulbous head comprising dense cluster of inward-curling ray florets, around a dappled center of disk florets.
“It’s very nice?” he hazards, offering it back. “What flower is that?”
“’S a chrysanthemumum,” she gloats, palming the ornament. But not putting it away. “Means I'm a knight. So tha’s, um, wossname, Syr Osytha to you. An’ don’ you forget it, ’cos, um, ’cos…?”
She looks desperately at Frank. Woman hasn’t so much lost her train of thought, as forgotten which station it left from entirely. They hold their locked gazes for a few confused seconds. Then, Frank lets out a pitying sigh, and takes her mug.
“The rye beer, was it?” he relents.
“Um.” Osytha is staring down, now, at that twinkling chrysanthemum. Frown all gone, and yet, hardly appears any less troubled for it. “Yes. Thank, er, than’you…”
