Continued from x @vengefulfinale
Chester tenses under her gloved hands and she’s quick to remove them, but this doesn’t stop Missandei from taking the stool next to him, sitting angled toward him. His head hangs heavy over a drink, and even with the heavy tobacco smoke can’t cover the smell of salt water and brine that clogs her nose, lingers on them like a second skin.
“All this leather and steel and blood… for what?”
“...that wasn’t your fault, Chester,” she says at length, as the Barkeep fills her a cup after she passes him another coin. It was a newer recruit, had been in the Hamlet a couple months, though not as long as she and Chester. A houndmaster.
“Missive was rotten luck from the start,” she says, untying her bandanna and passing it over her face to wipe off the sweat and sea-salt before shoving it in her pocket. She’d have to wash it later. “Too many monsters and traps, not enough respite. Night ambush is what did us in I think...”
She doesn’t think her rambling is helping him. She leans back in her stool, and she can see the large hound-dog sitting under her stool glance up at her briefly with large, dark eyes before laying his heavy head back down and resuming his watch of the door, like he was waiting for his master to come in any moment.
Missandei has just finished helping with the burial, and her boots are caked in mud.
“For redemption,” she murmurs, quoting what others have told her of their reasons for coming to the Hamlet. “For penance. Some grand ideas of making the world a better place. Some not so grand ideas of just finding a place to be accepted. Looking for something to do, something to fight for.”