Spellsword

A Woodland Beam

My cheeks stung slightly, and the taste of salt on the air had well and truly found it's way onto my tongue, yet the small interior hall was like a gentle, almost motionless embrace in comparison to the deck.

I found my footing still somewhat uneven, as I heard Teldryn unclip a lantern hanging on a hook, and with a small incantation he lit it. The ship tilted, and with it, the lantern swayed, it's gentle yellowish light filling the hall that, despite the day light hour, was darkened in it's seclusion. Now that I was out of the irritation of the wind and over my initial distaste of being back on the ship that almost carried Teldryn away from me  - I felt a pang of guilt that I had not shown interest in what he had been doing down here for the last day or so. For since our return, I will admit, much of my time was spent in the water rooms and with my books. 
Teldryn on the other hand, had taken to strolling down here, back and forth, fiddling around with goodness knows what.

 I looked around, not too familiar with the space but still in wont of admiring my friends work. "You've.... swept up in here. Really makes a difference from that old.... pirate look."

Teldryn shook his head with a wry smile, "Nice try, but this is not the surprise."

"Oh, so it's to be a surprise now? I would say it being here at all was quite the shock... in particular as it tried to steal you away..."

Along this small hall, which at it's end had a port hole, there was a door on either side. All seemed simple in design, yet these doors were slightly more elegantly crafted than what I had seen of the lower decks where we had been imprisoned only days before. It was clear that these perhaps had the 'captain' of the ship more in mind. Each was set with a small, round window of  greenish rippled glass that reminded me of the tumbling ocean. They were not so clear to look through, which could only mean they were for decorative, perhaps even authorative expression.

Lifting the lantern, Teldryn gestured to the door on our right - and glancing at me with a flicker of gold across his red eyes - he reached for the latch. "Behold..." he said, in what had to be the most awkward and yet endearing tone I had ever heard him use, even when laced in that dry morrowind accent of his.

Whatever I may have thought he was up to, it was not the sight that met my eyes as his lantern light fell in to the near-lit room. 

 Across the floor, a softened splash of colour - a faded green rug with worn gold embellishments was set across the wooden planks, and atop it, a familiar looking wooden chair with a rune carved into the back, pushed in at a small, simple table. Both seemed to have perhaps been borrowed from the college.

Acknowledging this, I returned my eye to Teldryn with a curl of my lip, but he only urged I step further in. The room was not a large one, it was not a grand style of a ship, but there was a warmth to it, a homeliness.

As I stepped over to the desk, I noticed it was tied to a beam near the corner with a piece of rope, and that the high window along the far wall leant a natural light to it, and - should that light be night, there was an oil lamp on a hook on the wall. An iron hook that had a suspiciously fresh looking crack at it's side, which suggested the wood was old and weathered and had recently been broken into. He had thought so carefully ahead.

Eyeing the crack in the wood, it was clear that this was the handy work of someone who had perhaps more experience with ash and stone than of wood and water. Someone who was standing behind me, giving me time to take in all that he had doing down here. It was simplicity, it was progress and yet it was one of the kindest gestures any had made to me since...

"The cot over there was the only one on the ship that hadn't been either crushed or burned.... or perhaps lost to the waves," Teldryn began to think aloud, breaking into my thoughts. He held his lantern closer to the desk as I ran my finger atop the parchment he had placed there, eyeing the ink pot at it's side that scraped slightly left as the ship moved. "I dragged it in here from what is now my room across the hall... thought you ought to have a good bed to sleep in. Can't have the savage trying to heave a tree up here, can I now?"