Location: Khaggon, The Dead Nightingale
Time: Evening
Status: Closed @zym-the-ardent
The Dead Nightingale wasn’t the sort of place Mareona came to often. It was expensive for one thing, and a little too fancy for her taste, but it had been a hard day and when she’d dragged herself back to her little cramped room, the quiet she usually welcomed had felt overwhelming. There was too much room to breathe, to think, to remember. So she shed her armor, wrapped herself up in soft dark layers and ventured out into the night in search of something to distract her from…well, everything.
The Nightingale was certainly distracting. It was humming with activity, groups and couples talked and laughed, the sound of it the surge of a comfortable tide. The light was dim, colors shifting and dancing in cut glass patterns across the lush furnishings. The drink menu had nearly sent her running her at first, there had been so many choices, none of them familiar, that she might have still be agonizing over it had one of the bartenders not taken pity on her. The water genasi pulled the parchment gently out of her hands and said,
“It can be a lot, maybe I can help.” He’d asked her several questions that seemed to have no barring on her taste in drinks whatsoever, all the while pouring different colored liquors from bottles she didn’t recognize over an elaborate contraption of glass filled with ice that chilled and filtered the drink before it ran into the delicate glass cup. She watched, fascinated as he crushed three mint leaves between his blue-green fingers, dropped them in the drink, and then handed it to her. She had reached for her coin purse but he’d raised his hands, iridescent scales shimmered along his forearms.
“Try it first.” He’d said with a wink, “If you like it you can buy the next one.”
She had liked it. Very much. It was light and not overly sweet, and tasted like the first lungful of cold air on a clear winter day. It also made her head buzz gently, warmth creeping down to her fingers and toes. Across the bar a young woman laughed, the elf she was with looked slightly disgruntled until she leaned in and kissed him soundly on the cheek. Beyond them a group made up of mostly halflings was toasting to something enthusiastically, the clink of their glasses chiming along with the music that seemed to be coming from everywhere and no where at once. The genasi came back over, looked at her empty cup and raised one eyebrow.
Smiling at his self-satisfied expression when she ordered a second drink, Mare settled into a corner of the bar, happy to let the sounds of the room rush over her like cool water.