Copper for your Poison {April 3010} {Elin and Celebros}
Dec 27, 2018 14:13:55 GMT -5
Post by Ceolmund on Dec 27, 2018 14:13:55 GMT -5
Willowy legged and on a mission, Elin’s boots squelched through puddles on the street. It was an evening in rainy spring, and the middle aged woman’s hair was plastered about her face. The sun would have just settled below the horizon if it had not been so grey outside, but the world had been hinging on darkness for hours due to the storm. “For the love of...” she hissed as her boot landed in a pile of horse excrement on the ranker side of town outside the tavern, and she paused to try and scrape of the sludge on an exposed rock.
The scraping was not doing enough for her liking and her already foul mood, and she clenched her fists and let out a shriek in the nearly empty street before she attempted to wash her boot in a muddy puddle, leaving the stocking inside damp and squishing against her toes uncomfortably, and the edges of her skirt wet and heavy. The woman groaned and shook out her skirt as water flew from the hem and more came down from above, and Elin huffed, her eyes lighting on the doorway of the tavern.
Elin squinted at the musty wood doorway and the firelight flickering from inside, and then her eyes caught on a glowing in the shadowy alley aside the door. A double beamed glowing and flickering which moved and then blinked at her. “Get back!” she shouted into the dark rain. “Creature of the Dimholt get back!” Her voice came as near screech, and the shadowy creature moved in the darkness and soon revealed itself. A black dog trotting forth which offered a wag of the tail and a pink tongue lolling from it’s maw. The shaggy creature approached and Elin wrinkled her nose, at the same moment it took to sniffing at her boot. “Filthy beast,” Elin grumbled anxiously. If it would have been anything but a black dog, she might have kicked it in the face to sneak about in the shadows like that, but Elin had long held superstitions and she did not want to cross the creature. Instead she turned back to the door and moved to crank it open.
Standing there in the entry to the tavern; it the warmth of fire and heat of bodies struck her face. The large room was rather full for the weather urging everyone indoors, and it smelled… wet… the smell of water evaporating from muddy leather boots and wool clothing. The smell of wet dogs and wet sheep mingled with the scent of simple stew coming from the kitchen and sweet mead in everyone’s mugs. Some heads turned her way as she entered and most went straight back to what they had been doing the moment she stepped in. Holding the door open a few seconds too long, the black mass of wet fur and tongue waggling pushed past her, near knocking Elin over, and she caught herself against the doorway as she watched the dog run into the room and grab a small loaf of bread which had rolled to the floor near the feet of a drunk man passed out.
“Get ye! Get ye out of here!” a tavern maid was coming at the door with a broom waving at the dog, and the creature skittered off at the warning with the fresh bread in mouth, and Elin hissed through her teeth. “Shut the Valar-forsaken door, woman!” The scullery shouted at her Elin.
Elin slammed the door as she was able to regain herself and scowled at the maid, but marched herself right to the front counter and threw down some coins that would get her by for awhile. A mug was set out and a pitcher of mead for her. Everyone knew Elin didn’t stop at one mug, and she’d been haunting the establishment for years. If her mug was full she was more likely to keep her mouth shut. A whore who was working nearby urged her customer to move to the other side of the bar as soon as Elin had settled into place, knowing the ruckus the woman would cause. Elin was quiet at first, thought the mutterings beneath her breath began to rise as she finished one mug, and then, another, and then she was onto the third.
It was when the tavern keep came near her that Elin groaned and grabbed his wrist to still him. Her breath now sweetened with the mead long desired on that cold walk over, but her words none sweetened.
“I need one of your men,” she whispered. “I have a job for them. I’ve got money to pay. I’ve got… I’ll give anything. Béma! Hildred’s whore of a daughter needs to be scraped off the earth. I won’t stand another month of that woman breathing...defiling my son… I need her dead, ” Elin hissed, though her words were carrying and the tavern keep shook his head, as Elin took another draught of her mead.
“Elin,” he said sharply, glancing around shifty eyed. Several of the King’s men were off duty nearby, though he wasn’t about to trifle with Eored men who were still armed with sword. “Nobody around here deals in that sort of business. I’ll have you know you can’t come looking for men to do those kind of jobs around here.”