Did Not Mean To Make Friends

The tavern is little more than a tiny little pub. Not one of the nicer places in Alexandria that has tons of customers, it's a little out of the way. Seated at the bar as close to the fire as one can get and still be at the bar, is a man in black-painted armor. His dark hair has been pushed back by his fingers many times, but it keeps falling into his face and he's given up at this point. Purple eyes occasionally roam the bar, but find nothing interesting and he returns to what is clearly not his first drink. He slams it back and roughly orders another that gets placed in front of him without a second glance. Clearly he's prepaid.

Sometimes, a day is long enough that even though the workday's half done, one needs a beer.

Holding a pad of rough cloth against her cheek, a veiled elf in Elune-emblazoned armor slips into the bar, putting off as much 'don't mind me I'm just here for a drink' energy as possible. Finding an empty space at the far end of the bar, she signals the tender for a mug, and quietly puts her silver on the bartop with a murmured word of thanks.

As the woman enters the bar, the man already sitting at the end gives her a once over then grunts. There's a deep frown on his face, and he takes a deep drink of his beer and eyes the harder drinks with an expression that is clearly desire. "Leave it alone Aragos." He mutters to himself.

The pad of cloth is pulled away and examined, revealing angry red clawmarks on her face, clearly healed just enough to only require mundane tending later. That they're not bleeding further seems to be enough to satisfy the elf, who puts it back in place, then takes a pull from her mug. Her head turns just enough to look further down the bar.

While the top half of her face is hidden in the shadows of her veil, sometimes a raised eyebrow can be felt as much as seen.

Aragos could have maybe ignored the woman, but the claw marks on her face have him sliding down the bar to where she is, his drink sloshing but none slipping over the lip. His purple eyes are narrow, and his expression is irritated. "You got something on your face." He says helpfully, motioning to his own face with his free hand.

"A lesson," the elf says mildly, taking another pull. "Tomorrow we shall see if I've learned it. If I have, I'll have no need to keep it. If not... another lesson."

Her voice is the sort of quiet calm that can travel under heated tempers and raised voices, and still make itself understood. "Can I help you, ser?"

"You'd leave yourself scarred?" Aragos asks surprised and blinking at the woman. "I guess I could heal them for you if you haven't the money to get them fixed yourself." His offer is gruffly made, and he drinks another mouthful of his beer with it and offers her a grin. "Wouldn't want a pretty thing like you to be covered in scars right?"

"I'd leave myself *reminded,*" the elf stresses, one corner of her mouth turning up. "It is, after all, important to ensure a large cat has been given enough herbs to be properly asleep, before you attempt to sew shut a wound. Tomorrow, I shall pay much closer attention to the dosage."

Her shoulders lift, and fall, in a lazy shrug. "Fortunately, I tend to be a quick study. I've few true scars to carry regrets. But," she says, lifting her mug in salute, "I appreciate that a good ser has taken such an interest in the wounded, he would interrupt his drinking to ensure the health of a stranger."

"Seems like a memory of getting the wound would do for the memory right?" Aragos suggests, but he seems to relax a little. "Here I was thinking that you'd done something foolish like going off to fight some monster and got yourself banged up." A thin smile here and a shrug at her complement, staring at his drink and taking another. "Nothing big. Drinking can wait a bit. It'll still be there."

"Yes... foolish," the elf replies, her tone as dry as the Sandsea. "Sky-Singer forfend, that violence *ever* be a part of the life of Her servants. ... ..... ...You *have* looked outside in the last, oh... fifty years, ser? Will we or nil we, danger comes to us all."

Shaking her head and chuckling under her breath, she takes another pull of her beer. "In any case. Might I ask the name, of such a ser of gentle heart?"

The tall, dark haired man blinks at the sudden shift in subject, mouth half-open to offer some biting retort in reply to her statements, but he swallows it with a drink and decides to answer her question. "Aragos. What's yours?" His eyes fall to the star-knives on her hips and he gives his head a little shake.

"Lillianath," comes the reply. "Lilli, when one is in a hurry. Which is often enough."

For a moment, the veiled elf settles into a comfortable silence. A few beats after Aragos' shake of the head, that feeling of a raised eyebrow comes again. "...Something vexes?"

Aragos eyes the woman. "Women ought not be fighting." He says firmly and without hesitation, finishing off his drink and pushing it forward for another refill. His eyes have just the faintest edge of buzz in them, which is possibly surprising given that he absolutely smells like a distillery. He leans into the bar. "You're gonna get yourself killed."

"*Men* ought not be fighting," Lilli replies smoothly. "Nor others. Yet I think it more likely that anyone who does *not* fight when it is needful, is more likely to get killed. In the work I am called to do, ignorance of violence would be an excellent way to see me extremely dead."

Tipping her mug forward to peer into its innards, she finishes it off, then slides the empty mug forward, another silver placed next to it.

Aragos grunts at her words. Watching the bartender take their cups and refill them. "Maybe you ought to find another line of work then. Something that doesn't leave you with marks all over your face. Where you don't have to fight." The paladin nods politely to the bartender when he comes back with the drinks and eyes the woman next to him.

"And why would I do that?" Lilli counters, glancing aside at her 'drinking partner'. "Are you so unmarried to your work, that you would lay down your blade and till a field if the mood struck? Knowing that the next day, your blade may be needed to drive back a necromancer's horde?"

Smiling at the bartender and bobbing her head in thanks as her mug is refilled, she takes a smaller sip, glancing askance at Aragos. "Or do you think *my* will is so weak, that I have no *desire* to answer my goddess' call?"

Aragos' eyes only darken at the questions, his face settled into a frown and he looks at her harshly, and it's clear he's about to say something unpleasant even before he opens his mouth. "I mean you'll die. Have you thought of that at all? What is your 'will' built of? Is it the assumption that your goddess will protect you - because the gods don't protect shit when it comes time for the gray halls to call their own. Or is it acknowledgement that you could fall if She decides to call you home?"

Now the hood moves fully, shadowed eyes turning to look at Aragos directly. "I have a *job to do,* Absolution. It is a dangerous job, and it will probably see me dead well before my life's thread spins out its length. But that makes my job no less valuable, and should I die before I surround myself with generations of family, then I will die *doing my job.*"

A hand comes up to touch the carved-ivory pendant hanging from her neck, then releases it to take another pull from her mug. "And what of you, ser? What is it that pours you from your stool, to fight the dead? Where is *your* will?"

"It's not the dead I seek to fight, the service I give to Vardama is of another sort." An explanation without really explaining. "So why then. Why risk your life in service? There must be a reason right?" Aragos isn't drinking anymore, just staring at his beer.

"My brother," Lilli says softly. And for a moment, that's all she says.

"During the course of his duties, he fell afoul of a pack of werewolves. He survived, but... Well. Werewolves," she says, flipping a hand. "I was still barely more than an acolyte, but I would *not* see him lose his soul. I fought the beast. I fought for the man he was. For moons and moons, I fought for him, then with him. And we won, ser. We *won.*"

Fingering the pendant again, she shakes her head, then leans on the bar and examines the cloth pad again, satisfied at the fact that it's simply a painful and ugly wound. "And it became my calling. What I could do for my brother, I could do for many."

Her head turns back, tipping up just enough to take the shadow from her eyes. "Should I cast it aside, then, and spend my days lounging by the reflection pools?"

"It'd be safer." Aragos offers archly and a bit gruffly, drinking another drink. "You could settle down. Have a family. Be safe. You trade all that to help poor suckers who got bit and screwed by luck? One sucker getting lucky doesn't make it worth spending your life on. Just sayin."

"It would be safer," Lilli allows. "But had I desired safety, I'd never have left my family's home. I'd likely be a jeweler by trade, rather than hobby. And my brother would have fallen to the Beast, and possibly killed us all."

Her shoulders rise, then fall, in a languid shrug. "But that is not what happened. With one life saved, a world of tales were rewritten. And they no longer end in 'And then she died, too, in blood and terror.'" Her lips curve into a smile. "How many more such tales might I alter, in the course of my years?"

Again Aragos grunts. "Your own? Isn't your life important too?" He finally looks at her, and there's something in his eyes that says that were he asked the same question the answer would be no. He looks away though, quickly before he can give away too much of himself and downs the rest of his tankard. He's going through the alcohol like its water. Drinking way too much. "Gah, this stuff is swill."

"Of course it is," Lilli says, faint amusement carrying through on her voice. "But how I choose to live my life is equally important. I do this because I *choose* to. And what I do, is give choice *back* to those who would have it stolen from them. Whether that places me in peril or no, I cannot think of a more worthy use for one elf's centuries."

Here Aragos snorts. "So you do think you'll live forever." He tilts his head back and looks at the ceiling a moment. Then he shakes his head and smiles a bit roughly. "Well you should still let this lowly paladin cure your ills. Take it as a different lesson: Random strangers will worry about you if you're not careful and you get wounded tending your duties."

"I think I'll live as long as I live," Lilli corrects. "It's simply fact; an elf who lives to old age, lives to a very old age indeed, by the standards of the rest of the world."

Finishing off her beer, she tilts her head in thought. "You do make a fair point, ser Aragos. If a friend wishes to tend my wounds, it would be impolite to refuse."

Aragos grumbles something about friends being a strong word, but he lays a gauntleted hand on her shoulder and closes his purple eyes. "Haec vulnera alligant et sana hoc malum." The words are an ancient prayer. So old that they resonate. Warmth pours from his hand and into her, healing her hurts and restoring her flesh to its natural state. Gruffly he pulls his hand away afterwards and doesn't comment on the healing.

"My thanks," Lilli says as the hand comes away, one finger coming up to trace the contours of the would that was there. "Perhaps next time we speak, I shall hear more stories than my own. I look forward to that day," she says with a bit of a smile. "And I would trade sage advice in kind; have a sandwich, before you leave, hm?"

Aragos grunts. "Whatever." He waves down the bartender though, ordering another drink... and a sandwich. The bartender gives him a look, but Aragos glares at him until he nods and wanders off and Aragos looks at the woman. "I take it that you're off your break then? I guess I'll see you around. Or not if Vardama decides she's looking for cute elvish ladies today."

"For the moment," Lilli sighs. "Always more work to be done, dangerous or no. Perhaps I'll learn there're no acolytes in poor odor with the Temple, sent to clean stables. *Someone* will have to, and it may be me. How fun," she says, dryness coming back to her voice. "But, yes. More likely than not, we'll cross paths again."

Aragos cracks a grin. "Well, don't mind me if I send some prayers to the Sky-singer that the worse you face in the coming months is the smell of manure." He lets out a gruff little laugh and nods to her. "May the Gray Lady not find you until the next time we meet."

"May the Bright Lady light your way home," Lilli says as she slides off her stool. Lifting a hand in farewell, she turns for the door, and what exciting adventures lay beyond.

-End