What a strange month it had been.
Dust paused for a moment to cock her head, listening above as Haelga chortled and their latest guest snickered in turn. Though ‘guest’ didn’t feel like quite the right word. So, what fit? Patient? Friend?
A snicker of her own, idly stirring the cauldron with a heavy cast-iron rod as she thought back on what had led them all here in the first place. An idle conversation with a handsome stranger, leading to an oddball little friendship. An invitation to her home for a visit, should he ever head towards Ivarstead.
A dead dragon, a shattered arm and a broken leg, turning him from a visitor to a more permanent resident as he healed from the abso-fucking-lutely mad heroism that had saved so many in her little village. Rumours floated about even now, twisting the already unbelievable truth - that he’d straddled the beast and burned its eyes out - into even wilder tales.
Of course, the villagers knew only the stories. She knew him better, as he had come to know her. He came to recognize her from nearly two hundred years prior, and they’d shared mutual pain over that terrible time now called the Red Year. An easy friendship based on mutual old age and wicked senses of humour, shared years and shared scars evolved and grew intimate in these past weeks as he healed. Even he and Haelga got on well - and who would have thought, both so set in their ways, from such different worlds?
All because of a little flirtation with a stranger. Life was funny that way, sometimes.
There, that had simmered long enough. She hauled the cauldron into the dip in the floor to cool and made her way upstairs, still half-smirking to herself at the memory.
“Alright, I’ve been over a steaming cauldron all afternoon and I don’t care how cold it is, I need some fresh air. Who wants to join me?”
“I promised Vilkur I’d pop by and check on his boys. Was just about t’head out.” Haelga shook her head, then eyed their welcome guest. “Bet he’d keep you company, though.”