Gorim
Ward
Swooping is bad
Posts: 48
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Post by Gorim on Jan 19, 2010 17:54:25 GMT -5
"Ector, are you picking at your wounds, you silly boy?" Alistair asked, wagging a finger. Gwen hid a smile behind her hand as Ector scowled.
"Oh, shut up," he snarled. Alistair laughed and turned back to Gwen.
"Your teacher's right, you know," he said sagely. "You'll never be a good Ranger the way you are. All cheerful and friendly. Best to be a curmudgeon like your superior." Gwen found it exceedingly hard to keep a straight face; no one was safe from Alistair's wit, not even Rangers, who generally had a very foreboding reputation.
"Ranger Will Treaty is friendly," Gwen said archly. "He's a great Ranger. So there."
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Muse
Apprentice Scribe
I'm not a man to cross. I'm a Ranger.
Posts: 113
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Post by Muse on Jan 19, 2010 18:52:37 GMT -5
Muse rolled his eyes. He wasn't intentionally a "curmudgeon," as Alistair put it. He wasn't quiet and foreboding just because he tried to be like some people. Were he talking aloud around the man, Muse would have "coughed" 'Halt" then, to poke fun at his fellow Ranger. The thing with Muse was that he was shy. In his own home with only a few other people he wasn't too shy, but in public, where most men saw him, he tended to be shy and so rather quiet.
"That he is," Muse said, referring to Will. "He also has a good friend who is a knight, another a Courier. On top of that, he trained harder during his apprenticeship, didn't talk back to his teacher, didn't have all his friends in Halt's cabin all at once just for dinner, thereby wasting more time, and he knew when to shut up."
He was just poking fun at Gwen and she would know that, but with the serious expression on his face, her friends wouldn't necessarily. Rye even added to the affect by barking once, as if in agreement with Muse's statements comparing Will to Gwen. Of course, everything was implied and he never said Gwen did any of those things, but the intent was clear.
"Now, since he's already here and we can hardly turn him away in this weather, why don't you get Alistair some food and stoke the fire while you're at it?" Having finished his meal by now, Muse put his bowl on the ground for Rye to lick, pushed his chair back a bit and put his boots up on the table, linking his hands behind his head. It was nice having an apprentice. Though he pretended to be annoyed with all her friends showing up, and though he was shy, he still enjoyed it. The small cabin got very lonely, no matter how much you liked to be alone, in the cold Norgate winters.
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Gorim
Ward
Swooping is bad
Posts: 48
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Post by Gorim on Jan 19, 2010 23:18:34 GMT -5
"Oo," Alistair said, wincing. "Harsh. Of course, we're not friends." Gwen raised her eyebrows sharply and stood with her hands on her hips, staring at Alistair.
"Then why are you here, eating my food?" She asked archly. Alistair smiled winningly.
"You see, you and Ector are Frenemies, and we're potential love interests." He said cheerfully. Gwen look crumpled into laughter and she turned around to get more food.
"I see," she giggled. "That's how it works, is it?"
"Yup. And I'll get the fire for you." As he moved for the fire, he glanced at Rye and smiled, holding his hand out towards the red husky. "Hey, girl," he said quietly.
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Muse
Apprentice Scribe
I'm not a man to cross. I'm a Ranger.
Posts: 113
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Post by Muse on Jan 20, 2010 16:42:47 GMT -5
Rye barked loudly at Alistair and Muse laughed. "Boy. I think he understands Araluen as fluently as we speak it, because he gets offended when he's called a girl." Now that that had been taken care of, though, Rye ducked his head to sniff Alistair's hand and then lick it once. He raised his eyes to meet the man's and barked once again, but a happier sound. His mouth hung open and he panted, wanting to be petted.
Muse grinned at Ector. "You've been quite. Most unlike you from what I've seen so far," he said jokingly. "Although perhaps now you've learned your lesson about Rangers?" He was, of course, referring to the joking threat Ector had made earlier in the night, and his response. He hadn't actually threatened him, but he had made it clear that no one was to threaten Gwen. Were they to attempt to touch her, they'd be transfixed to a nearby tree with an arrow in their arm in half a second.
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Gorim
Ward
Swooping is bad
Posts: 48
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Post by Gorim on Jan 21, 2010 13:17:35 GMT -5
"Ah, I was never good at guessing games," Alistair said dryly, scratching the dog behind the ears and giving it an apologetic look.
Ector chewed sullenly. "I was daydreaming about the day these two talk themselves into comas," he said. Alistair rolled his eyes.
"We love you too, Ector," he said. "Don't pay him any mind, Ranger. He's just in a bad mood because he's injured. You should have seen him when Gwen spat on him. Oh..." He smiled reminiscently as Gwen started giggling wildly and Ector scowled.
"We all agreed to never speak of that," he snarled. Alistair snickered.
"But if our host wants to hear it, we should tell him, right Gwen?"
"Only polite," Gwen agreed. Ector held his head in his hands, recognizing the revenge for the bitter words. Revenge from witty folk always came in the form of humiliation. How lovely.
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Muse
Apprentice Scribe
I'm not a man to cross. I'm a Ranger.
Posts: 113
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Post by Muse on Jan 21, 2010 18:49:35 GMT -5
Muse grinned at Ector. Poor guy. He stood up and got some more fresh bread from near the fire and handed it to the knight. "They can be rather cruel, can't they?" Muse remarked, nodding towards his apprentice and Alistair. "Good Rangers are not cruel. Not to their countrymen, at any rate. Perhaps I'll have to terminate her apprenticeship."
Of course he wouldn't really do that, but his voice, for the last sentence, had grown serious as if in threat. Gwen, having lived with him for about a year now, would probably know he was just trying to get her to be a bit more polite to her friend, but the look on her face when she first heard the words would be fun to see. Besides, neither of the knights would know he was joking, since there was a chance neither had ever seen his face before they had shown up at his cabin, let alone gotten used to his ways.
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Gorim
Ward
Swooping is bad
Posts: 48
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Post by Gorim on Jan 21, 2010 19:01:11 GMT -5
"Mu-use," Gwen whined, but Alistair and Ector both fell over themselves trying to talk him out of it. Neither were intelligible, yelling over themselves as they were, and Gwen did nothing to help them out of their predicament. She just watched in amused silence as the men insisted that she wasn't all that bad, and that she was a better ally than an enemy at your back; besides, it would be a real waste to train her for a year and then ditch because she picked on a couple of stupid knights like themselves.
Gwen hid a smile behind her hand as she put a plate of food before Alistair, who was still waving his arms wildly. As Alistair began protesting that Ector deserved the loogie that she'd spat on his arm so many years ago, she choked on a laugh and ran out of the room.
"See, Ranger! Look what you did!" Alistair said, exasperatedly. "You made her cry."
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Muse
Apprentice Scribe
I'm not a man to cross. I'm a Ranger.
Posts: 113
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Post by Muse on Jan 21, 2010 19:45:26 GMT -5
Muse only just managed to keep a straight face as the two men insisted Gwen was a nice girl and that he should keep her around, that it would be a waste of her training, and all those things. Well, now they stood up for her, eh? Even Ector, whom she had just been making fun of, too.
He almost missed Gwen sneak out of the room laughing, he was so entertained by the knights trying to convince him not to throw the girl out of his house. He let them go on for several minutes, before eventually he sighed, as if in reluctance. "Why doesn't one of you go talk to her, now?" That was all he said, and they could decide from there what to do, and if he was joking or being serious. One look at Gwen's face and they'd know, of course, unless she'd laughed so hard as to cry, and then composed her face. "Just be sure to knock before entering a lady's room," he added absentmindedly, moving over to sit cross-legged next to Rye and scratch the husky behind the ears.
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