"I really hope you won't regret this night, elf..." Peregrine muttered darkly, looking over his shoulder at the retreating Leodhais as he and Gilderoy walked towards the fire where the rest of the pack was gathered.
"What do you mean?" Gilderoy whispered, looking around too, torn between his urge to run after his friend, risking to offend the pack, and to keep a polite reserve and distance from the werewolves as Peregrine had advised.
"Unlike your friend, the pack is well versed in the politics of Silmarea," Peregrine said on a sigh, his words making Gilderoy look up at him in confusion.
"What do politics have to do with this?" he asked, his eyebrows drawing together in a pensive frown even as he waved his hand in the direction of the three girls who had already disappeared into one of the cottages lining the clearing.
"Later, dwarf," Peregrine said before he turned to the man who stood up from his place by the fire to shake hands with them.
"Your horses have already been attended to. Welcome, Peregrine. It's a pleasure to see you again. And you are not alone this time..." the man mused. "The news about King Alaric sending his adored elf on a quest for his lost heir have preceded you, of course. We just didn't realise that you, who always travelled alone, were involved, too."
The man motioned for them to sit at his side upon one of the tree trunks the pack used as benches, and following his example, the dragon shifter and the dwarf accepted plates filled with food from a woman who appeared next to them the moment they sat down.
Gilderoy inhaled deeply the inviting aroma rising from the cuts of what must have been a roast deer piled upon his plate-- he hadn't realised how hungry he was until this very moment-- while he cast a curious look in Peregrine's direction. The pack seemed to know his companion well; the dragon's plate, looking just as inviting as his, did not contain any meat.
Peregrine smiled at the werewolf. "Alaric asked me to guide his friends into The World Beyond The Stones and back, Wilbur, and knowing how very few of us here in Silmarea know the other world sufficiently to venture upon such a quest, I could not refuse."
The man nodded thoughtfully even as he filled two cups with wine and passed them to his guests, then continued asking questions throughout the meal, most of which Peregrine deflected with spotless diplomacy.
Gilderoy's eyes kept skipping between the cheerful members of the pack enjoying their evening meal and drink while talking over each other, and the cottage where Leodhais had vanished, in the hope of seeing him walking out again to join them by the fire, but his ears were trained on Peregrine and Wilbur's conversation, which revolved around the problems of the country and the werewolf territory in particular after the dragon shifter refused to talk about the king's private affairs. This would have been a more valuable lesson for Leodhais, Gilderoy thought, than whatever he was indulging in right now. The dwarf was beginning to wonder whether his friend, loyal, loving, and generous, but also light-hearted and trivial, unused to any kind of responsibility, would make a suitable king. Even Wilbur here, who was only an alpha of one of the many werewolf packs, seemed to be much more serious...
His eyes were just starting to close after the satisfying meal, his muscles, tense and aching after the days spent on horseback beginning to melt by the fire, the heat radiating from the dancing flames sending pleasant shivers through his whole body, when Wilbur's words addressed to his companion stirred him back to full consciousness.
"I know that you like sleeping outside by the fire, Peregrine, but you are not alone this time. Your friend might appreciate a bed."
Peregrine looked at Gilderoy. The humble and unassuming dwarf had been shivering with cold and fatigue the whole day, but he would never ask for a bed unless Peregrine offered it to him. "Thank you, Wilbur. If you can spare us two beds, we'll accept," he said, turning back to the werewolf.
"I can spare you an entire hut," Wilbur said, pointing somewhere beyond the fire, across the clearing, to the last building in the first row of huts. "Aryana has already prepared it for you."
Peregrine stood up and bowed politely; Gilderoy, scrumbling to his feet, following his example.
"I'm honoured, Wilbur, and I hope to thank Aryana personally. I was just going to ask you about her, I haven't seen her among your women."
Wilbur stood up, too. Although the werewolves were formidable in their wolf forms, they weren't very tall while human, Gilderoy thought, observing the smiling man whose head barely reached Peregrine's shoulder. "You know my younger daughter, she's still just as shy as she used to be, nothing like her older sister. But I'm sure she'll find an occasion to talk to you, she always does." Wilbur reached up and patted Peregrine on his shoulder in an almost fatherly fashion, the action and its implied meaning not escaping Gilderoy, making his eyebrows rise in an unspoken question.
"Later, dwarf," Peregrine whispered yet again when he caught his surprised look, before they proceeded to take their leave from the members of the pack whom they would not see before their departure in the morning.
Then the two companions walked alone across the clearing, leaving the pack behind by the fire, the sound of their voices diminishing as fast as the light of the flames as they approached their hut while Gilderoy attempted to school his thoughts around all the new information and impressions he had gathered, and decide what to ask first. There were so many things he wanted to know...
Peregrine opened the wooden door of the last hut in the long row of almost identical buildings which sat in the eaves of the encroaching forest not far from a stream or a river, judging by the lively noise of rushing water reaching them from somewhere beyond the trees which finally replaced the remnants of the werewolves' voices following them from the fire, revealing a decent-sized, candle-lit room that contained their luggage set at the feet of two beds lining the opposite walls, and a table holding a candelabrum, a basin and an ewer placed under a small, shuttered window, standing between them.
"There's so much I need to know, I have so many questions..." Gilderoy muttered, obeying Peregrine's gesture and preceding him into the room, walking towards the bed by which foot he recognised his bags and sitting down heavily.
"And I'll reply to some of them when I'll return. I don't suppose you fancy a swim in the river? It runs just behind this hut..."
"Oh no, no tha...thank you," Gilderoy stammered, shivering. The night wasn't warm, the water would be freezing. "I'll wash here," he nodded towards the basin and the ewer set upon the table.
"Very well, dwarf. I'll see you shortly," Peregrine agreed, shedding most of his clothes upon the wooden floor, grabbing the armful of clean garments he had set upon his bed in the meantime and exiting into the night, the long shafts of moonlight seeping into the white fabric of his undershirt making his tall and strong body look delicate and ethereal.
The dragon shifter was the most intriguing person he had ever met, Gilderoy decided, making his way towards the table the moment the door closed, finding both the basin and the ewer empty. He would have to follow Peregrine to the river after all, he realised, even as his thoughts were scattered by a low, almost shy knocking on the door.
He rushed to open it, and for a moment, he was certain that Auriel stood on the doorstep before him and a worry that something might have happened to Leodhais bloomed in his mind. But then he started to notice the differences only half erased by the wan moonlight-- this girl's hair was a little darker and curlier, her stunning face not quite as perfect, but, in his eyes, more beautiful for the tiny imperfections, her demeanor lacked the self-confidence of the other girl and she was much shorter too, she stood in the doorway, shy and silent, less than a head taller than Gilderoy.
"I... I'm so sorry. I brought you and Sir Peregrine some water... "
"You must be Aryana," Gilderoy muttered, opening the door wide for her to enter.
She nodded and smiled at him before she walked across the small room and emptied the wooded bucket she was carrying into the recipients set on the table.
Unsure of what he was supposed to do-- he had never been alone with a woman in a room-- Gilderoy left the door ajar and walked back to his bed where he let himself drop, sitting up and looking at the girl, deep in thought. Aryana was Auriel's younger sister, and they were both Wilbur's daughters... And there was something between her and Peregrine which Wilbur knew about and approved of...
The girl's voice stirred him from his reverie. "I have never seen... anyone like you before. Are you a dwarf? Sir Peregrine always travels alone..."
Realising that she was still standing by the table he motioned for her to sit on the opposite bed before he replied. "Yes, I'm a dwarf, and I know well that we are not famed as adventurers. We just like to stick to our land, like your people," he smiled at the beautiful girl, her features gilded by the moving candlelight, her blush making her fair skin look like copper in the golden light. Gilderoy had never seen a girl this pretty at Alaric's court; he couldn't really blame Leodhais, who loved women, for succumbing tonight... "I'm accompanying my friend on a quest," he added finally.
"Oh, the elf," the girl said, her words followed by a smile that made her face glow, and Gilderoy's breath catch. "We get quite a few of those, travelling through our territory towards the standing stones of Goon Brenn. They are an adventurous folk, almost like the dragons," she said, making Gilderoy chuckle. In his opinion, Leodhais was the exception confirming the rule; he was anything but adventurous.
But Gilderoy didn't want to talk about Leodhais now; he wanted to talk about this girl and Peregrine... He was still wondering how to turn the conversation without making his curiosity too obvious when the door which he had left ajar opened wider, allowing the dragon shifter inside.