@ancientofaeons
It’s an odd pair that walks into Xiro’s shop, the minor noble from Whiterun and his housecarl.
Thane Piter is short and thin Breton dressed in mage’s robes. His stride has an air of power, though he carries it like an animal would carry a stolen ham. There’s a beady curiosity in his sharp, eager gaze as he inspects the shop. He carries that curiosity in his whole body; less like someone who never learned restraint, and more like someone who regularly decides intentionally that it doesn’t suit his purposes.
Housecarl Lydia is a tall, strong Nord wearing armor and carrying an axe. She isn’t trying to walk like anything, though it’s not hard to guess that she could really hurt someone in a pinch. There’s a constant baseline of worry in her expression, an ongoing spiritual constipation that was supposed to be competence at the ready. A single short glance around the room tells her all that she is truly interested in about her surroundings, and she soon turns to watching Piter. He reaches out to lightly touch a bundle of herbs hanging from the ceiling, and she frowns.
Piter is well aware of what he must be, in Lydia’s eyes. An oddity. A liability. A terrible boss. Certainly no gleaming or flattering image. Yet in the months he’s known her, he’s been completely surprised to find a genuine fondness for her. He has a kind of incomplete, halfhearted commitment to looking out for her future. After all, he had a terrible boss before he became one. He thinks that to live and thrive in this world as the small, creeping thing that he is, he must be ready at a moment’s notice to betray anyone but himself. And how confusing to his intentions, to meet someone who reminds him of himself! He reaches out to lightly touch a bundle of herbs hanging from the ceiling, and he looks back at Lydia with automatic curiosity. Does she see him doing this? Does she disapprove without knowing how to comment? Yes, and yes; he smiles at her and takes his hand away from the herbs. He would, and will, do such a thing again.
Now his attention turns to the shopkeeper. The man is tall, easily taller than either Piter or Lydia. There’s a solidness about his presence here. A solidness Piter doesn’t have when he expects every good thing to eventually be knocked from his hands, and a solidness Lydia doesn’t have when she relies on Piter for an identity as a dutiful housecarl. And, more than solidness, there’s a kind of lurking, almost sinister... I bet he could take apart a chicken with his hands, Piter thinks. He finds the man intimidating... which somehow filters through his temperament as encouragement to strike up cheeky and playfully antagonistic conversation, immediately.
“Deathbell?” Piter observes, gesturing back to the dried herbs he was just curious about. His tone is all silk and insincerity, but with a friendliness that’s undeniable. “I have never heard it said of Falkreath that there is a troubling lack of graves.”
Lydia’s face is a mask as her gaze moves from Piter to the shopkeeper. Here we go again...
