Private Tales Raising Hell

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
"Ah, some snacks would be good," Valthar replied plainly. Shifting did take some energy. It was something that became easier over time for his people. Most discovered their Svalen much younger than he had. They also hadn't had to call on it in times of desperate need as often.

Valthar dropped to one knee before the fire and placed just two chunks of wood over the kindling. The clack of flint rang out three times before a soft glow began.

He turned to face her as she returned, staying to mind the fire until it was going.

"I have a mental image of you now, trying to convince a real bear to let you take its measurements..." He didn't even know why that came to him now. Probably the rum.
 
Miriel was glad he didn't judge her for her appetite - elves normally didn't require as much food as humans, and could go long periods with fairly little. But, many of them weren't wielding a hammer and doing hard labour for 12 hours. That, and using her magic nearly every day, wore her energy down quickly. She piled a wooden slab with meats, cheeses and fruit and returned to the livingroom on quiet feet.

Miriel paused on the threshold and took the moment to just enjoy the view. It wasn't very often she invited men into her house on a one on one basis, she very much liked the opportunity to decide when to cut her nightly activities short. But as he was leaving soon it didn't seem much of a risk, and she enjoyed his company more than most men she tangled with. It wasn't as confusing and emotions weren't as at risk of being hurt. Funny how two completely different types of people could be so similar in this way.

Once the fire had started she made her footfall a touch louder and walked over to where he was stretched out by the fire on one of the sheepskin rugs. Placing the food down on the low coffee tables, so low it was clearly designed so that people could sit on the floor and eat comfortably, she popped a grape and some cheese in her mouth.

Which she nearly choked on as he shared his mental image.

"I think if I had had to wait another 100 years I might have chanced it," the smithy admitted. It had been a project she had wanted to do for a long time now, and it wasn't often a Nordenfiir just waltzed into a southern forge. "But I am glad I got to see your Svalen, it was very cute - all that fluff," she tried not to smile at her own gibe and busied herself with taking another sip of the rum. Of course the form had been nothing of the sort, it was imposing and she had been well aware he could have done her serious damage if he had chosen to.
 
"My very soul," he said in mock affront, "is cute and fluffy?"

He couldn't hold the expression for long. The fire was going now. Each crack and flare catching the lines of his face as he watched it. It could have been any fire. The hearth back in the largest hall of Faarin.

"What are those?" he asked as he stepped away and pointed at the grapes. He laid himself out on the rug beside the fire too. Valthar cast the grapes a suspicious look.
 
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Miriel was trying extremely hard not to laugh, but she wasn't succeeding as her shoulders shook. "Terrifyingly cute a fluffy," she corrected innocently and joined him on the floor. She liked her sofas, but the warm sheep skins and harder floor helped stretched out her spine after a day of leaning over the anvil all day.

"You've never had a grape?" Miriel stared at him like he had two heads, and before he could protest she popped one in his mouth as he went to reply. "It's what they make wine from. Do they not tell you up North to eat fruit every day? Keeps the scurvvy away," she was teasing again and she offered him some cheese. "Next you're going to tell me they don't have wine, aren't you?"
 
"We don't eat much fruit," he admitted. "Mostly meat. And I am sure the orcs i last crossed though 'there is a cure and fluffy bear' in their last moments."

Valthar frowned at himself. This didn't seem to be the time for bringing up death and battle. There was already rum, a fire, a rug laid out before it and he had spied the blanket by the chair. No point working against himself and the situation by bringing violence into the conversation, he mused to himself.

"It does tastes like wine...or wine tastes of grapes?" he said, voice slurring a little more as he chewed. "It's bitter!" he pronounced when he had finished chewing.

"I'll try another," he said with a micheivious grin. Because if she fed him another one he was going to steal her hand this time.
 
"And I'm sure that the last thought of the giant I killed was 'ah such a hippy tree hugging elf'," Miriel snorted a laugh at Valthar's comment. Violence was no bother to her, she enjoyed hearing the stories of other warriors - even if they didn't believe themselves to be like Valthar. However, the image of orcs thinking anything was cute and fluffy was an amusing concept.

"Wine definitely tastes like grapes if it is good wine," Miriel nodded wisely, but then couldn't hold her composure when he exclaimed it was bitter and snorted another laugh. "They are addictive," she warned. It was probably a better food to stuff your face with, but she was still ashamed with herself every time she finished a bunch on her own in an hour. "Here, try it with the cheese. They compliment each other," Miri delicately dressed a cube to his lips.

"What other things have you found so different about the south?"
 
Valthar watched her very carefully as he leaned in towards her offering. He brought up his free hand too and lightly clasped the back of her wrist before she could take her hand back. Valthar tried to gauge her reaction as he leaned forwards even further and lightly pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist. And then he let her go as if nothing had happened. She tasted of the soot of her forge, the slight tang of metal.

"Almost everything," he laughed. "The people are varied, yet seem to hold a universal obsession with collecting small discs of metal. People get...married. I like towns when I find them. So many more languages and sounds and smells than any settlement on the tundra."
 
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Miriel watched him with interest as he slowly leaned forward, expecting him to go for the cheese. When he had grabbed her hand she was half expecting a playful bite after calling him cute and fluffy, but she was pleasantly surprised instead. It was a far more gentle touch than she was expecting from him and it sent goosebumps up her arm in a pleasant way. She gave him a slow smile. This was definitely going to be a fun evening.

As she took a sip of her rum again and popped another grape into her mouth she listened to what he found so different between the south and the north. She had to laugh a little by the end. "Marriage was a really strange thing to wrap my head around when I first left the Wilds - the thought of spending your whole life with one person and then losing half of everything you owned if you changed your mind was..." she made a gesture of incomprehension.
 
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"They give up half of what they own?" Valthar replied, both eyebrows going up together. It was something he hadn't realised and was enough to distract him from his thoughts of escalation.

He enjoyed the sound of the fire. It reminded him of home. It was nice being down beside it on the rug, but he could feel the heat keenly against one side of his face now.

"Mmm it is better with cheese," he admitted. The grape was still a little bitter for his palette, but the two were complementary. "So if you married a man and he left you would have to give him half of..." he waved around the room, still struggling with the concept.
 
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Miriel uncrossed her legs now her back had relaxed a little and shifted so that she was laying on her stomach instead, propping herself up on her elbows. There was a satisfying click towards the base of her spine. She smiled as she watched him enjoy the new food - she enjoyed watching his expression as he thought through his opinions on it.

"If I married them in the human churches, yes," she sighed and took a longer swallow of rum. "There is no marriage in my culture, though I think it differs between different elves. Back where I'm from, the women choose who they want to have a kid with, and then that's it, so I never knew my father. I'm pretty sure I know which one he is but I could never be 100%, and my mother wanted my loyalty to be to the Clan not Blood," she shrugged. "What to bears do?" Miriel tilted her head,
 
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"That sounds surprisingly similar," he said, clearly surprised by this. "The Queen keeps her own harem and chooses which she might want to father a child. Oh, Nordenfiir women can only conceive in spring so for the rest of the year..."

Valthar managed to convey an awful lot with a simply shrug. His mood was tempered by both disgust at the human church laws and pleasant memories of cold winters indoors.

Valthar turned slightly side on the Miriel and stretched out his legs. Once again he curled his toes into the thick rug.
 
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Miriel raised both eyebrows in equal surprise - she had expected them to mate for life. Perhaps she just saw them as closer to human because of their shorter lives, and she reprimanded herself for it sharply. She shifted so that she was also on her side and played her fingers through the rug, thinking of how rough it was in comparison to his fur in his bear form.

"That... very similar indeed. It's quite hard for elves to get pregnant, their fertility rate is very low. The chances decrease the more women have sex too, though it seems to be if elves mate with humans this deterioration disappears." This was... nice. Learning about a whole new culture and sharing her own. She had been here for over 60 years and she realised that this was the first time someone had seemed genuinely interest in learning more about her people. She rolled onto her back so she was looking up at her plants and slowly, Miri smiled, another question forming.

"So we've established I worship the universe, but what about the Nordenfiir, do you worship snow? Is there a God for fisherman?"
 
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There were ways around such things, but he didn't give them much thought. Well a little thought. He was a visual creature. These were the most words he had strung together for a very long time. Even back in Faarin long hours on the water left him nothing but the ocean and the fish to talk to.

"There would be a lot of elves. Though now...there are not so many of your kind."

Valthar stopped there, not wanting to turn the conversation so sombre. When they had their great cultures the elves probably lived long and full lives. But in the dangerous world and so scattered he imagined many didn't see their second century.

"There is Eogorath, who freed us from slavery. Then there are the older gods. I used to carry a small wooden serpent. Gralduhr, god of oceans. We had many gods, but we are certainly not a zealous people. So yes the fishermen have a god, but it was a carved sliver of wood. Not a pile of snow. Thought I suppose if you shaped the pile of snow..."
 
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"You don't need to skirt the subject," Miriel glanced up at him from her position on the floor and offered him an encouraging smile. "The Elves grew arrogant. It is natures way that some races will rise and fall and then rise again, we're just in the dip is all," she was quite content with her peoples place in the world: most of them were. Perhaps they were more in tune with the universe like Valthar said than she thought. Besides, she was much more interested in the Gods of the Bears.

"It sounds like I place I might one day like to visit," she admitted. "I've heard some great things about the Smithy's up there, I know they wouldn't let me play with the Solasta - was it? - steel, but they have techniques which are quite unusual. I would love to watch."
 
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"I would love to pretend to be mysterious over the secret of solstal. Alas I lift nets out of water. There are very few smiths even across the whole of Eratejva who are allowed to know where it is made or how it is forged."

The fire faintly crackled. He felt more of a warmth from enjoying some genuine conversation than from its flame. It was pleasant enough that he almost felt he couldn't have deserved it after the trials of getting here.

He was not even half way home. Valthar was used to quiet hardship more than company. It was not to be turned away when it was there. Which reminded him that tomorrow involved facing a necromancer.

Valthar rolled onto his side, looking down at Miriel. The changing light seemed to make her tattoos move. He reached out and drew two fingers down from the markings to the smooth curve of her neck.

"I think I'm going to take you down here by the fire now," he admitted bluntly.
 
Laughter bubbled up in Miriel at the bluntness of the proposal but it was only her eyes and a crease of a smile that betrayed her amusement at his forwardness. The rum was warm in her veins and the fire was pleasant against her skin; it made the weariness from the day melt away. She leaned into his touch and then lifted her own hand to gently brush her knuckles over his cheek, and then her fingers through his hair.

"Then stop talking," she murmured and pulled him down gently but firmly into a kiss.
 
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Her laughter was a soft music. One that drove all thoughts of the tasks ahead from his mind. Drawn into an ardent kiss, any other words were lost anyway. Valthar shifted his body and planted a hand on the rug beside her waist.

She was warmth and passion when he had been craving ice and solitude. Yet it was exactly what he, what they, both yearned for right now.

He was drawn into the press of her body, the scent of her hair, the fierceness of her grip. She was a strong woman and a day at the forge had not tired her out. Perhaps the night would.
 
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Miri's sigh was one of pure happiness as he pressed against her. Not perhaps how she thought the evening was going to go, but much better than precious expectations. It had been a while. He smelt of the earth with a hint of wilderness and she drunk it in as their kiss deepened.

Thankful her position meant she didn't need to use her hands to support herself, she instead took her time exploring the vast expanse of his chest with the tops of her fingers. Finding the curve of his hip she slunk her hands under his shirt and explored the tendrils of muscle in greater detail she she very gently bit down on his lower lip and used the break to tug his shirt gently up and over his head, planting gently kisses along his chest and neck as the skin became available to her.
 
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The smell of meat was quick to rouse a nordenfiir. Even through a thumping hangover. He rolled over to find himself on soft furs, facing the fireplace. They hadn't even made it upstairs in the end.

He stretched out, joints popping. Several aches were far more welcome than the hangover that lurked behind his eyes. Valthar sat upright, grinning like a fool. He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Is that bacon?" he asked. A lot of decisions had gone against him in life. This didn't seem like it was going to be one of them.
 
Miriel woke up when the sun slowly peaked through the window. It took her a moment to remember why exactly she was downstairs on the floor surrounded by sheepskins and not in her nice comfortable bed, but, it was a pleasant memory. The fire had burnt down to embers but it was still giving off a slight heat, though clearly she had been using Valthar for her source of warmth last night. Miri found herself strew across him with her head resting on his chest and her leg possessively draped over him. At one point they must have grabbed the blanket to drape it over them.

Very slowly she eased herself up on her elbow and ran her eyes down the Nordenfiirs sleeping form with a twitch of her lips and then pressed a feather light kiss to the hollow of his throat. She had chores to do but she would leave him to sleep. Letting the blanket drop she rose and stretched like a lazy cat, gathered her clothes and quietly slipped her tunic on. She considered the rest but she wanted to stay cozy for a while longer, so she just tugged on her boots and slipped out into the backyard after putting on the kettle to boil. It was quite liberating going about her chores in just her shirt and it was early enough that nobody else was around aside from the other farmers tending to their own livestock, and she had seen them in a lot, lot worse. Once the horses were given their feed and their water topped up she slipped back into the house.

Still no movement from the sleeping bear as she kicked off her boots.

Miri was pretty sure there was a saying she had once heard about the only way to wake a sleeping bear was with meat. The kettle was now boiling so she poured herself a tea, adding in a special group of herbs, and got on with cooking. It was when the house smelt of bacon and sausages that she finally heard movement.

"And sausages," the elf replied with a low chuckle, glancing over her shoulder. Her braids had fallen out at some point during their evening activities and the loose waves softened her face. "I was afraid I was going to have to eat it all myself, you were so fast asleep. All cute and fluffy like." Laughing, she piled the last of the bacon and sausages onto a plate and set it on the table, where there was quite a spread already of fruits, eggs, fried bacon and sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, fresh bread and a steaming pot of fresh tea. "Help yourself," she sat down on one of the chairs, crossing her legs as she did so and began piling her own plate high.
 
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Valthar glanced around, reaquainting himself with his surroundings. He couldn't help but wonder what was on the next floor up. They had been far, far too distracted for him to satisfy that curiosity. He couldn't worry about that given that he was still being spoiled.

"Cute and fluffy," he mused, shaking his head. He reached behind his head to find that if not fluffy he was certainly scruffy. His own braids had been tugged out too and he was in need of a close shave.

Valthar recovered his pants from a crumpled pile and walked into the kitchen, still trying to finger comb his long hair. Standing up revealed a few more aches from sleeping on the floor, but they were lost in a deep-rooted satisfaction.

Valthar grinned as he sat at the table opposite the blacksmith. "Didn't mean to sleep in..." he offered, admiring the spread of food. His appetite was usually healthy enough but now he was ravenous.

"Thank you," he said, remembering himself before taking several thick pieces of bacon. The fruit was entirely ignored, but he did at least add some mushroom to his plate.

"Oh, necromancer," he mumbled, suddenly remembering that there was a job to be done today. The light through the shutters showed that he hadn't slept through the whole morning and his momentary panic passed.
 
Miriel watched him stretch out of the corner of her eye and then a bit more obviously as he approached the table. Never knew when she was going to get as nice a view as that, so why not appreciate it whilst it was around? Her lips kicked up at the corners as she smiled into her steaming cup of tea and blew on it to cool it down. The politeness was appreciated but such manners were a stark contrast to how both of them had been last night and she couldn't help that it tickled her slightly.

"You're more than welcome," Miri replied and began to make her way through her own pile of food. She had more than made up for his lack of attention to the fruit and it meant there was more meat for him as she only helped herself to two of each. "When do you need to meet up with your group?" she asked, glancing at the rising sun. It was still early, the cockerel had only crowed about half an hour before he had risen.
 
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He smiled at the elven smith as he ate. In that visage he saw the echoed of the previous night. His chest rose and fell and a murmur of appreciate escaped his throat. A night to remember.

"After midday at the Tythson Market Square," he explained. He paused in his rather determined attempt to clear the rest of the table to ask another question. There was nothing but humility on his face this time.

"If...they are paying ten gold each for a party then I assume this necromancer is a dangerous creature?"
 
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Having finished what was on her plate, Miriel shifted her position so that her leg was bent and she could rest her cup of tea on there. Her shirt pooled around her hips.

"Have you never heard of a Necromancer before?" Miriel's eyes softened at his question and her grim expression probably betrayed what she was thinking. The worst thing about fighting a person who could conjured the dead was that the worst your party got and the more that fell, the stronger the opponent was.
 
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Valthar made another noise of hunger, but for the sight of bare skin and not for the breakfast still remaining on the table. He could not, however, afford to lose the rest of the day. If she was concerned about a necromancer then he needed to be.

"I get the idea. They raise the dead." He frowned thoughtfully and scratched at his stubble.

"I suppose to say 'he is a necromancer' is to say 'he is a wizard'. Could be a really shit necromancer. Probably wouldn't pay gold for a shit necromancer. You ever cross one?"
 
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