"I'm gonna," is automatic, good-humored contrariness running ahead of her before she's come up with the justification. That comes several seconds later. "He'll approve. He doesn't like competition."
The couch she's on, set a ways back from the fireplace, is one of the least comfortable couches she's ever sat on. A combination of form over function—animal bones replacing wood wherever possible, minimal cushioning covered in leather that'd gone stiff and flakey with age and neglect before Riftwatch moved in, antlers protruding from the back that she's only narrowly avoided catching her hair on—and age. It creaks whenever she moves a muscle, so her rearrangement of the pelt to better cocoon herself causes a small cacophony. But it hasn't fallen apart yet.
Settling again, she watches Astrid's back. She can't relate to being happier in the cold and snow at all. But she's not unhappy. She has a steaming tankard keeping her hands warm; she left one for Astrid near the fire, to keep it hot.
"It's your turn," might not be true. Maybe she's trying to cheat her way into hearing an extra story.
Astrid’s fully lost track of whose turn it is — between the stops-and-starts to go fetch more firewood, locate the blankets, refill the wine — and so it’s mostly down to whoever feels like talking and who feels like listening. She picks up a poker and jabs at the fire to rearrange the logs while she considers, the flames crackling, before she grabs the tankard and returns to Xio’s side, wriggling onto the horrifically creaky couch, wrapped up under her own sealskin pelt.
She hasn’t experienced that many hauntings personally, so most of the stories have been things her mother saw while scouting, or some older more mythical tales from her uncle’s near-encyclopedic recall of them. This time, it’s one of the latter:
“Alright, so this is more folklore, not I know someone whose second cousin this happened to once, but.” Fingers wrapped around the tankard, she takes a contented sip, and begins:
“Once, long ago, after a particularly beautiful winter day in Haring, a group of men are up late celebrating noisily into the night. They hear a knocking at the door, and when a man goes out to see who it is, optimistically saying, ‘It is undoubtedly good news’ — he immediately goes mad and dies.
“The same thing happens to another four of the men from the rowdy crew, who are tempted one by one into the night: they answer the door and are driven mad, or carried off by illness, or simply vanish into a snowstorm. The others in their crew went to bed early, and so they weren’t awake to hear the knock and answer the door. Once the winter solstice is over, all of those dead return in force, with the rowdy men and some other dead locals coming back as revenants. They’re scratching at the door. They slaughter some of the chickens. They’re a fucking menace, is my point.
“The captain of the crew, Thorgils, decides to ask for advice. He goes out by himself at dawn, sets out some offerings — some meat, some mead, all in a circle — and he waits to commune with the spirits. The spirit of the local lake,”
this is the part where Riftwatch’s Chantry boys always give her slightly queasy looks, so she hesitates a little before ploughing on,
“possesses him, and talks through him with his voice, and says: You must find their resting place. They are over the next ridge. The survivors go out and find all their dead. They hack them up, cut them into pieces, which means their bodies aren’t able to rise up and come back and terrorise them. And the spirits of their dead are pleased, and the pieces are carried home by the Lady of the Skies, and the village sees peace.
“Anyway, that’s the way I always heard it,” she concludes, the traditional signoff to show you’re done; this is how they’d have told it in the hold, talking around the fire, eyes bright in the darkness.
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The couch she's on, set a ways back from the fireplace, is one of the least comfortable couches she's ever sat on. A combination of form over function—animal bones replacing wood wherever possible, minimal cushioning covered in leather that'd gone stiff and flakey with age and neglect before Riftwatch moved in, antlers protruding from the back that she's only narrowly avoided catching her hair on—and age. It creaks whenever she moves a muscle, so her rearrangement of the pelt to better cocoon herself causes a small cacophony. But it hasn't fallen apart yet.
Settling again, she watches Astrid's back. She can't relate to being happier in the cold and snow at all. But she's not unhappy. She has a steaming tankard keeping her hands warm; she left one for Astrid near the fire, to keep it hot.
"It's your turn," might not be true. Maybe she's trying to cheat her way into hearing an extra story.
no subject
She hasn’t experienced that many hauntings personally, so most of the stories have been things her mother saw while scouting, or some older more mythical tales from her uncle’s near-encyclopedic recall of them. This time, it’s one of the latter:
“Alright, so this is more folklore, not I know someone whose second cousin this happened to once, but.” Fingers wrapped around the tankard, she takes a contented sip, and begins:
“Once, long ago, after a particularly beautiful winter day in Haring, a group of men are up late celebrating noisily into the night. They hear a knocking at the door, and when a man goes out to see who it is, optimistically saying, ‘It is undoubtedly good news’ — he immediately goes mad and dies.
“The same thing happens to another four of the men from the rowdy crew, who are tempted one by one into the night: they answer the door and are driven mad, or carried off by illness, or simply vanish into a snowstorm. The others in their crew went to bed early, and so they weren’t awake to hear the knock and answer the door. Once the winter solstice is over, all of those dead return in force, with the rowdy men and some other dead locals coming back as revenants. They’re scratching at the door. They slaughter some of the chickens. They’re a fucking menace, is my point.
“The captain of the crew, Thorgils, decides to ask for advice. He goes out by himself at dawn, sets out some offerings — some meat, some mead, all in a circle — and he waits to commune with the spirits. The spirit of the local lake,”
this is the part where Riftwatch’s Chantry boys always give her slightly queasy looks, so she hesitates a little before ploughing on,
“possesses him, and talks through him with his voice, and says: You must find their resting place. They are over the next ridge. The survivors go out and find all their dead. They hack them up, cut them into pieces, which means their bodies aren’t able to rise up and come back and terrorise them. And the spirits of their dead are pleased, and the pieces are carried home by the Lady of the Skies, and the village sees peace.
“Anyway, that’s the way I always heard it,” she concludes, the traditional signoff to show you’re done; this is how they’d have told it in the hold, talking around the fire, eyes bright in the darkness.