Private The Rearview

[Jhimara]

After another season spent roughing up the wheel tread with the feel of the road beneath her and the certainty of where it led, Jhimara found herself too proud to ask for directions. Some places offered them up without her asking, but this coastal town wasn’t one of them. Avenues ended in rotting wharves, dead-ended into the sea, or funnelled her down side streets that looped her into the same circle she’d now walked twice.

Finding a watering hole in a place like this should’ve been easier, but she was stubborn. And easily distracted.

On her first pass she caught her reflection in the square window of a chandler’s shop and was halted in her tracks. Through the teal pontil glass, her body warped into a vision she rarely ever saw, snake-hipped and effeminate. She lingered there a moment, even arching her back to better admire what months of saddle-work had carved into her arse. It sloped like a fine vase, the starchy wool of black riding hose tight to her skin. It felt good, and satisfying, to take it in, curve by curve.

The next circuit of the spiral brought her past the shop once more, and the vision in the glass had lost its charm, leaving only mockery and salt-scummed shadows. Behind it stood pillars of wax and wick, strange shapes truer to her own form, and the chandler’s questioning eyes, distorted and wary, met hers. And that felt bad -- cold and prickly, to have her shape be reflected back through the chandler’s judgment.

She thumbed her nose at him and moved on, determined to find an alehouse on her own -- or perhaps a more flattering version of herself in the eyes of someone else.

*​

Missing the telltale façade of a tavern wasn’t bad enough. Jhimara felt every bit the hog in a hole as she stomped up to the weathered, cottage-frame door that promised Welcome and pulled the handle instead of pushed. The whitest parts of her face reddened, though she would blame it on chill from the silver sea if anyone dared to ask. Not a drop of booze had touched her lips, and she was already wobbling like a newborn colt.

Inside, the place was particularly seedy despite the unremarkable exterior. The empty space seemed to squish in toward the singular stretch of jade bartop, as if the neighbouring walls were hungry for the room itself. Paint peeled and plaster yellowed; rafters drifted with cobwebs, and echoes of drunken tales clung to them for spiders to feed upon. It smelled like Mhearan whiskey, smoky and malty -- mulling spice and tobacco. Jhimara felt immediately at ease, and equally relieved to not see the shape of her face reflected in the salty, faded mercury of the mirror behind the bar.

She all but poured her body into an empty seat. Felt the weight of bodies occupying spaces near but not next to her. Held up two fingers to the tender when they came around to take her order, and served to them a greeting thick with Free State drawl.

“Evenin'. What's good n' strong tonight?”

@Petra Darthinian

 

[Petra Darthinian]

Petra hadn’t been this far south in the Free States for some time, not since this last mission had carried her along the coastal trade arteries and almost to the edge of the empire. Her window to return was short, but wide enough to allow a night or two’s respite in some long-forgotten tavern clinging to the shoreline. Those sea winds would serve her well when she took to the skies again after drowning her tired ruminations in drink. Her dragon, Norvyk, all too eager to ride the great currents that buffeted the cuestas guarding the Boiling Sea’s angry waters, his dwindling kind accustomed to the biting winds and mighty gales.

For now, though, she walked on her own two feet, the dragon left outside the town’s walls, unwilling to scare any of the population with such a beast landing amongst their midst. So she had found herself a quaint little tavern, where none of the stools matched, the food was half an insult to the word, and yet the beer was strong and the air easy with laughter, and no one seemed too bothered by an elf half-consumed in dark jade scales and sharper teeth.

The Dawnling had been halfway through her second cup, well-loved riding boots propped against the stool rung beside her, when a tall stranger came in all puff and stumble. Like a dry storm rolling down the wrong street, unspent energy crackling between the buildings.

She’d seen the type before, swagger that hadn’t yet decided if it wanted to strut or fight. Petra smirked into her drink, amber catching the low lamplight, and she let her gaze linger just a shade too long on the curve of black riding hose settling onto the stool nearby, watching side-long and appreciating the warm Free State accent and how it formed the shape of simple words.

Part of the joy of drinking at these kinds of establishments was that they were a copper coin-a-dozen. The same faces could be seen in every one of these communities, blending because they were all people who still had to go to work, still loved and fought their spouses, still wrangled their half-feral children. And Petra could always rely on there being locals nose deep into their neighbors' business, but with room between their insular rumors to welcome strangers into their fold and absorb the stories they dragged in from far-off roads.

She knew this because, in the simplest sense, Petra enjoyed people watching. A passive interest in the lives that flickered so briefly beside hers, especially compared to the scope of an elf’s long life. That was, of course, unless they weren't allowed the experience of a full one. The reminder wrenched a sigh from her lips, and she went back to studying the now-empty dregs of her cup. The sight abhorrent in the wake of her memories.

On the tail end of the stranger’s order, Petra raised her hand to flag the barkeep. “I’ll take one of what she ordered, Martel.” She pushed her empty tankard across the jade bartop, sliding it toward the rail-thin bartender with a nod, whose wiry frame seemed made to slip between the bottles crowding his shelves.

@Jhimara

 

[Jhimara]

She was traded a cup of something murky and resinous for her handful of regional coin, a transaction that felt provisional once the polished pewter kissed Jhima's bottom lip. The ale was strong, surely, but good was in question, a one-note impression that was so solidly singular that once it washed the salt from her tongue it was none different then seawater. Head tilted back, ale cocked back in cheek chamber, her free hand gripped the cool green of the bartop as though letting go of it would send her into freefall.

That, there, in the periphery, was the exact moment she caught the elf's stare. The way her own form rendered back at her, haloed in sunfire, Jhima felt herself being studied and sundered in a way that was all too familiar, yet unexpected. Seeing in the saffron gaze a reflection she'd crossed the town twice for. Like she had been a silver-studded and jade-scaled mirror here the whole time, waiting for her.

The woman's skin was like dusk, hair like spilled ink, ears as hooked and sharp as a hoof knife. Only her riding boots -- well loved, but too clean -- claimed the empty space between them. Jhima swirled the swill in her mouth and swallowed hard. Her eyes moved, and her hands did the small exchange of empty cup to counter, but her body was as still as can be. A serving of the same tar-coloured ale appeared in front of the other woman as though Martel had magicked it there. Jhima heard herself speaking before the thoughts could form and thusly her query was to the basest of curiosities.

"Hard day?"

 

[Petra Darthinian]

There was something about her hands, in the way her tendons flexed close to the surface of calloused sun-warmed pale skin— rippling with a sinuous competency that Petra tracked with keen curiosity as she followed an appreciative line to the dark ash of fringe brushing along the shadowed edge of a steep jaw, and then sinking to the slow roll of a deep swallow.

A blossoming curl of sardonic amusement filtered into her thoughts from Norvyk and with a quick inhale, Petra broke her spell and accepted the drink from Martel, her embarrassment buried with a long dreg from her cup, suddenly all too aware of the placement of her limbs and the dirt of travel marring her clothes.

The stranger's voice courted her gaze back to a dark pair of glittering eyes under heavy cut brows, Petra's own answer falling unbidden from vixen-sharp lips.

"More like a hard day of flight." Taking the invitation to sate curiosity— Petra adjusted in her seat, her body turning to the woman, one leg crossing the other, her elbow pinned to the counter and holding her drink about the rim, one taloned-finger tracing the edge. Inwardly, she made an effort to push away her own self-awareness of the picture she painted. Instead, finding solace in the familiarity of a playful game of chase.

"And you?" A languidly raised brow. "Your accent tells me you're from the Free States, am I correct in saying I'm lucky enough to find your tavern of refuge after a hard day's work?"

@Jhimara