The bandits, or rogues, or whatever they were, turned out quite pleasant once they had stopped doing the whole bound captives thing, and Barrawen, the elven leader, seemed quite the dashing figure. Green suited him, which was good because he did wear an awful lot of it. Luthiriensis thought it may have something to do with camouflage within the forest beyond the moist caverns of the Ravishing Rut, but she thought it had more to do with the fact that he had little dress sense.
Poking the food around the bevelled stone used as a plate, Luthiriensis had other things on her mind than Barrawen and his extremely tight, literally leaving nothing to the imagination, green hose. Not even the thought of the food appearing to be a platter of animals not long dead and threatened with cooking turned her thoughts away from the one thing that had occupied her since their release.
"Do you know everyone along this journey?" She leaned in toward Pinto, the dragon, not eating, gazing about her with undisguised glee. "If you know all these people and ... Ugnth, why did you choose myself and Mott to aid you?"
"Oh, that's easy. Watch." Pinto flicked out her tail, over the campfire, and tapped Barrawen on the shoulder. "Hey, Bazza! Gammer Goodhiding is going to sacrifice the King's heir. Want to help me stop her?"
"Gammer Goodhiding?" Barrawen made a noticeable shiver, shaking his head with vigour, his pointy green hat with its green feather almost falling from his head. Every other member of Barrawen's band shuddered in much the same, terrified, fashion. "I'm not getting on her bad side! Ho, ho! No. Besides, it doesn't sound like her. Best to leave her alone, lest she turn the evil eye upon us all. Not that she is evil, of course, but she holds grudges like a hungry man clings to a nub of bread."
He gave a slow, knowing nod, as though that explained everything, before turning back to his friends. Mott, in particular, had appeared to take a shine to the charming bandit leader, leaning his bearded chin upon his hands, eyes wide, as Barrawen recounted the tale of the day he had fought a puppy and won. A dire wolf puppy, but a puppy nonetheless.
"She took mine." Eyes flickered, all around the campfire, to fall upon one man who wore a large hat that fell about his ears. He could hardly see. "I can believe it. Just because I happened to lie ... ahem ... mention that I was the long-lost son of a king from a kingdom over yonder way. You see, there was this girl and ... never mind. Anyway, she took mine and I've never been the same."
"She took your child?" Luthiriensis clasped both hands to her mouth, tears beading in her eyes. "Are there no end to her atrocities?"
"Child? What are you talking about?" The man, reluctantly, grabbed ahold of his hat, sweeping it to the side in a flourish. "She took my hair! My hair! I loved my hair. It was luxurious."
The man was, indeed, mostly bald, with little tufts poking out at odd angles and, Luthiriensis had to admit, if the rest of his hair looked anything like the tufts, the man could have felt great pride in his locks. As it was, he looked like a turkey that had refused to die and, as the cook plucked its feathers from its still living body, had managed to escape with a modicum of dignity, but not before it had lost the ability to cover itself. In fact, with the dangling jowls, the man made a good impression of a half-plucked turkey.
"Not hair! Heir!" Barrawen shook his head as he stood, resting one foot, rakishly, upon the log, pointing his nethers toward Mott. Curiously, Mott did not look away in disgust, or modesty. Barrawen frowned. "At least, I think that's what you meant? Right, Pinto?"
"Oh, yes." Pinto laughed as her clawed finger flicked at one of the man's tufts of hair. "What would an evil witch want with hair? Not that she is, actually, evil, of course. Nasty? Oh, yes. Vicious? Absolutely! Prone to spanking people that annoy her just because certain people happen to like the apples the Beldames grow in their orchard and refuse to share even one if you don't have coin and, well, look at me, where am I going to put coins? In my mouth?"
"You do have a bag." Luthiriensis pointed to the little backpack attached under Pinto's fluttering little wings. "It's right there."
"That ..." Pinto looked embarrassed, turning the bag away from Luthiriensis. "Is for my art and writing supplies. I'm going to an artist and an author when I grow up. Mummy says I'll never amount to anything, but I'll show her! The world's first dragon artist ... and author!"
Pinto appeared a bit miffed, pouting, but only for a short while. Little appeared to break the dragon's ebullient sense of wonder and discovery. She found everything fascinating and beautiful. Never far from a laugh, or a toothy, dragon grin that would have most people running in a direction that would carry them far from a mouth that looked, on the whole, more than a bit bitey. Luthiriensis could imagine that sort of thing could dampen even Pinto's enthusiasm, but, apparently, it rarely did.
"Well, there was Anfalgoron, the Dastardly Dragon of Dungarr." The man with the tufts of hair spoke again. He really should consider stopping that. "Bit of a polymath, really. They said he painted the 'Virgin of Samhaldemide', sculpted the 'Colossus of Gibberditch', wrote thirteen sonnets and a piano concerto in one morning. Then, in the afternoon, he settled down for a bit of light reading and got slaughtered by a wandering prince with a magical sword that wanted to make a name for himself. Sad loss, really."
The campfire had fallen silent as the man related the sad tale of Anfalgoron. Not because he told a good tale, but because no-one had asked him for his opinion in the first place. And he tended to drone on, in a nasally voice that made everyone greatly aware of the fact that he had a face that simply begged to get punched. Someone punched him, but Luthiriensis thought that just a coincidental flinging of a fist.
Luthiriensis tried to gather the thoughts she had allowed to drift away, before the tuft-haired man had sent the conversation into some kind of verbal death spiral. She resolved never to invite him to any of her parties. Although, as she thought about it, she could always use a party killer for those thrown by her rivals. A scheme began to form but collapsed when Luthiriensis remembered she had started to ask questions.
"Pinto ... Yes, dear. I'm sure that, in a few thousand years you will have progressed to a competence marginally less than an atrocity." Luthiriensis had no idea what the scratches were on the piece of paper that Pinto showed her, but the dragon seemed excited about it. "Pinto, dearest, why did you ask Mott and I to help you? You have so many friends, and there were so many people back in the city. Why us?"
"Because you are pretty and Mott looked lonely." Pinto looked across to Mott as the dwarf clapped his hands in glee as Barrawen played some kind of stringed instrument badly. "I think he's the loneliest man I've ever seen."
Luthiriensis hadn't really thought about it. Mott came across as a grumpy, aggrieved, stompy, angry and luxuriously bearded dwarf. Which, she had to admit, pretty much described every dwarf in existence. Especially the women. Now she thought about it, though, Pinto had seen something that only now occurred to her. Not about how pretty Luthiriensis was. She knew all-too-well that she had an etherial beauty unsurpassed even among other elves. This was common knowledge.
Mott did look lonely, though. So very, very lonely. An air of despair hung about him like a particularly determined swarm of flies. An ancient ennui that seemed to pour from every ... pore, much like his musky sweat that even overpowered the alluvial smells emanating from their hosts. The kind of smells used by farmers to ward away predators. The kind of smells that even the most potent of skunks would clutch at their noses, lose their lunch and declare that they'll never get that stink out of their fur.
Now Luthiriensis found herself in a bit of a quandary. She couldn't admit to ever liking the dwarf or, gods forbid, managing to actually care about him or anything, but she did have an overbearing empathy that she couldn't simply click her fingers and stop her caring. She'd tried. It didn't work. Normally, her empathy came with a healthy balance of narcissism and self-interest or, more accurately, overpowered her empathy. However, the longer she stayed away from polite society and their expectations, that empathy tended to come back with a vengeance.
Of course, 'polite society' was rarely anything but polite. Luthiriensis had become an expert in travelling in those circles, especially after her travels, where she had steeped herself in many cultures, many traditions and even more ways of verbally stabbing people in the back. Occasionally literally so. Sometimes, the pen was, indeed, mightier than the sword. Especially when inserted into the jugular with the right amount or pressure and motivation.
Polite society tended to muffle the natural instincts of beings to care about others. Or, as Luthiriensis' customs and traditions tutor had intimated, polite society tended to throttle good intentions, wrap a bag around its head and toss it into the most tumultuous river. Weighted with rocks, just to be certain. And stabbed several times to let out the air. And the blood. What that all came down to was that Luthiriensis, though empathic, had little practice at actually doing the caring part. She tried to catch Mott's attention.
"There, there." She mouthed in silence. Mott scowled before turning his gaze back to Barrawen as he launched into a bawdy rendition of 'The maid's old dress', and Luthiriensis felt certain the maid would want to burn that dress afterwards.
So, there she had it. Pinto had dragged her into this nightmare journey through the, admittedly very true, nature of her intense beauty, and Mott because he looked lonely. As far as methods of choosing companions to march, headlong, into almost certain death went, this one seemed marginally less helpful than a fire bucket with a hole in the bottom. Or less helpful than a man that complained that his back was acting up, again, and could you do all the heavy lifting while he tried, his very best, to give encouragement. From that pub over there.
"So, says the maid, you feel need to dress, in mine, I confess, I'll never wear it again!" Barrawen strummed the out-of-tune strings and lifted the instrument above his head in triumph. "And that gentlemen and ladies, is how you sing that! Please, adore me if you must."
Barrawen bowed with a flourish, doffing his green, pointed hat and sweeping it downward, the feather tracing along the ground, touching Mott's nose and sweeping back the other way. He certainly liked to put on a show. He handed the instrument, without looking, to one of his lackeys and wrapped an arm around the shoulders of Mott, leaning in to kiss the starstruck dwarf. And Mott reciprocated.
Luthiriensis hadn't expected that. Not that Mott exchanged kisses with a man, after all, in elven society, people tended to practice their affections with pretty much anybody, as long as they were elves. It was the act of an elf kissing a dwarf that ruffled Luthiriensis' feathers. That, and that she had wanted to find out whether Barrawen did, in fact, smuggle some kind of monstrous cylindrical object within his tight green hose, or whether it was all ... natural, herself. It had been a while.
"Well. I suppose I should at least try to sleep tonight." She rose to her feet, gracefully and not-at-all put out that Mott was getting some and she wasn't, and smoothed down her ruined suede riding trousers. "Which bed of moss is mine?"
"Over there. Next to me." Pinto uncoiled her long, scaly body, and began to follow Luthiriensis. "Can I braid your hair?"
"No!" If Pinto had similar skills at braiding hair as she did at drawing, or writing, or pretty much anything, then Luthiriensis wanted her nowhere near her lustrous, snow-white hair. "I mean, not tonight. One day. Perhaps. Maybe. Or not. I'd just like to try and get at least a little sleep. Just once. Is that so difficult?"
"Probably." Pinto wasn't helping.