Three is a Crowd

Story Synopsis:
After helping two Lycans escape from an Elvish compound, a bard is accompanying them on their journey, on which one hopes to overcome the animal she thinks she is, and the other hopes to convince her that there's enough room in her human heart for him.

Main Characters:
Astrior Huntre - Human female, illusionist; Lycan since age 8.
Micah Bronlin - Human male, mercenary; Lycan since an accident several months ago.
Eiris Edinborough - Elven female, bard; daughter of a Sun Elf and a White Elf.

For more information, see The Big List.

Eiris sits cross-legged on the bench-chair on the far side of the table from Astrior and Micah, a great tankard up as she works to finish the last of its contents in this one go - her favorite past-time, if you asked either of her companions, was to drink herself into a stupor. But it's only just morning now, and neither of them were expecting her to have quite so volatile a reaction to their last question.

A thin line of suds escapes the corner of her mouth and dribbles down her chin before a a quick hand comes up to wipe the mess away, all without breaking form. Astrior stares across the table with her mouth slightly agape, and her eyes wander once more from the elf to the map stretched out on the table between them. But the writing on it makes little to no sense, given both her relative illiteracy, and the fact that the characters written are of a foreign tongue, so she diverts her attention back up to Eiris.

The tankard finally empties with a final slurp, and it crashes down to the table in Eiris' hand as she smacks her lips and exhales loudly, wiping her mouth on her sleeve in an undignified way. "AHH!" She pulls the tankard off of the map, so as not to stain the fine parchment it's drawn out on, and looks at it for a moment before returning her attention to her companions. "...where were we?"

"We-"

"RIGHT!" Eiris doesn't wait for Astrior to get more than one word in edgewise, holding a hand up to stop her. "You wanted to know about the mountains." She draws a circle on the map with her finger, indicating their area of interest. "Well, since we can't go through the bog and sand-traps, I guess we'll have to take this route... over them. We can't go under them, that is suicide for sure. But this way is... not much better." She sighs, glancing back at her tankard.

Astrior makes a hard expression at her. If it's enough to drive her to drink this early in the morning... well, that's not necessarily indicative of trouble, with this one, but it's more of an indicator than NOT driving her drink. "WHAT is so bad about these mountains?"

"Oh, just their inhabitants. Goblins and such. And further up, trolls. And further up than that, stories of giants. And probably Rocs. But we can't verify that, because I don't know anyone personally who's ever tried to climb over these mountains and made it to the other side in one piece."

Astrior sighs, sitting back in her chair. "Well, the stories have to come from somewhere..."

"Exactly." Eiris points at her. Astrior finds that highly annoying - her new favorite past-time, besides getting plastered, seems to be pointing at people. The pointing continues. "They DO have to come from somewhere. From travelers who've tried to go up one side, and who come back down the SAME side, because they couldn't get over the top."

"Well, then why don't we go around them?"

Eiris shakes her head. "That's no good. On one end of the range is the bog, and on the other is a kingdom I'm not willing to set foot in, and if you've got a brain in your head, you won't either. There's necromancers up north, and you don't mess with those lands. Nobody does. Nobody has in a long time, and that's for the best, mark my words."

Astrior sighs and looks over at Micah, crossing her arms. "Well, what do you think?"

Micah's hand goes subconsciously to his no longer bizarrely cut hair as he scratches his head. With all the time the three of them have spent together, he knows by now that pissing off Astrior is a bad idea and so he's usually inclined to agree with her. He also knows that encouraging Eiris' shenanigans while fun, usually lead to trouble for all of them. But he's wired for adventure, so deep down the idea of running headlong into trouble in spite of logic seems like a really appealing idea.

As he thinks this over, he chuckles slightly at himself, knowing this will only lead to trouble. He swings his arms out wide in a gesture of questioning,. "Hey, what have we got to be afraid of? We're tough! So there's a bunch of stories about this dangerous mountain. So people say they don't make it over the top. So they're wimps! We can handle this!" He smiles his boyish smile. "Right girls?"

Without allowing time for a reply he enthusiastically slams his hand on the table. "We can handle this. We'll celebrate now. Let's get a round."

Astrior's mouth hangs slightly agape once again as she watches Micah disappear from her side to go procure them a round over, in her opinion, a premature celebration. For all the time she's spent with him, what goes on in that head of his remains a puzzle and a mystery to her.

Eiris, on the other hand, seems to share his enthusiasm, banging her own tankard down on the table again. "Here here!" Astrior glances over to look at the exuberant elf, and narrows her eyes slightly. "Weren't you just the one who was telling us how bad this idea was? That was a quick change of tune."

Eiris shrugs, pulling the map over to her and rolling it up as she speaks. "Well, we're gonna have to do one or the other... or not go at all. And that's maybe an option for the two of you... but not for me. I've got places to be."

Astrior grumbles slightly, sinking into her seat and glancing across the room towards the windows that give a short view of the porch and street outside. Not much to look at, and even less so today. Of course they'd decide to take off on the one morning that everything's wet outside. That's their luck.

She's jostled from her thoughts by Micah's return as he slides onto the bench beside her, and she takes her drink with a dour expression. Eiris raises hers over her head. "To adventure and success!"

Micah sits with a thump and grins boyishly at Eiris' response. "That's the spirit, Eiris!" He takes a swig of his drink and turns his exuberance on Astrior. His smile fades ever so slightly as he sees he's pissed her off again. "Hey..don't make that face, Astrior. Stories are just stories! Stories never hurt anyone! The only people scared of stories are five! It's ok!" His smile returns and he gives Astrior a pat on the back. He then turns to Eiris again. "So, when are we leaving?"

Astrior ignores his well-meaning words, sighing into her drink and looking down at the foam. Some stories should be listened to, she thinks. We nightmares should know that best. She rubs at one of her bracers, recalling a time that twilight had been the bane of her existence, the terrible pain of transformation not yet dull in her mind after a few short months of freedom from its clutches. But Micah only had to endure that for a short time... something she's thankful for, but at the same time, he still carries with him that teenaged paradigm of immortality. Probably a little more accurate now, but even so...

Eiris holds up a finger while she attempts to chug her new drink, but fails halfway through, and she has to pause to cough suds out of her lungs. "We- huugh-gugh! We'll leave... after we've finished this." She glances over at Astrior. "And, maybe once we've eaten. No point in traveling on an empty stomach." Her gaze returns to Micah. "But we're pretty much all packed up, I'll just take our stuff down to the animals while you two settle up down here."

Micah glances over at Astrior as she rubs her bracer. He wonders if she's thinking about that because of something he said and he sighs. He nods at Eiris. "Ok, eating something is probably a good idea." He looks confusedly at Eiris, "What are we settling?"

"The bill, Micah," Astrior murmurs. She sips at her drink, but she's not really in the mood to get as plastered as the other two seem to enjoy.

Eiris laughs. "I can earn my own keep wherever I go, or at least a place to sleep, but the two of you are cost-y." It's not a word, but it sounds close enough to being a word just now that she's inclined to use it without a second thought. Untethered by a drink quickly enough, she leaves the tankard on the table and slides through the room to order up the other two some chow, before disappearing up to their rooms to make ready for travel.

When their food arrives, Astrior pushes her mostly-full tankard over to Micah. "Here, you finish this." She starts in on her eggs instead.

Micah's brow furrows at the word "costy". He doesn't know words as well as some things, but he's pretty sure Eiris just made that one up. He shrugs it off and finds himself facing Astrior's drink too. "Ok..." He doesn't question it. Since he's roughly the size of a grown oak tree, he can certainly handle his drink and half of hers. He digs into his own breakfast and when he's done, goes to settle their bill.

Astrior, roughly the size of a large river weed, doesn't need much more than the half tankard she's had to be slightly off-center, and that's done her right. She lingers at the table as Micah goes to settle them up, and finally drags herself away from the bench to find Eiris and assist her in any way she can.

She finds her already out front, but instead of a horse and ass-drawn cart, she finds her standing with three horses. Glancing around to verify that the drink hasn't done her completely wrong, she looks at Eiris again. "Um... what's this?"

Eiris beams over at her as if there's nothing wrong in the world, though she's getting dripped on rather steadily by the poorly kept porch roof. "This is us! Ready to go?"

"No, I mean, where's the cart?"

"What cart?"

"Our cart, the cart we've been using, the cart with the ass who has some particular love of jumping over every small hole in the road and upsetting the right front wheel, that cart."

"Oh, right. Well, we're not going to need it where we're going, so I sold it a couple of days ago and got these instead."

Micah joins the girls outside and stares at the horses. Unaware of the exchange between Eiris and Astrior he too asks, "What's this?" After he's been filled in, he just shakes his head. "Are you nuts? I can't ride this!" He looks at the horse like it might help him but the horse just looks back at him and steps from one side to the other. He pats its neck, it's a nice animal, he just doesn't know what to do with it.

Eiris scoffs. "Oh, don't be such a baby. You'll be fine. If the saddle's too uncomfortable, then you can take it off and ride on the blanket, but you're either riding or you're walking, we've got no time for that cart once we get more than a day's ride from here, and it would only slow us down to that point anyway."

Astrior glances over at Micah. He grew up on a farm, but that doesn't mean he knows how to ride any better than she does. And she can hardly tell one end of the animal from the other. "Um, Eiris..."

"No time for chit-chat! Get up on these animals and let's get out of here!" She comes around and bends down, taking Astrior's foot and lifting her with superhuman strength up the side of the horse, causing Astrior to have to correct herself by swinging her leg up over the saddle, or to topple over. She opts not to topple, but her perch atop the horse leaves her feeling slightly sick. There's no scent of wolf left on her, so the animal doesn't balk, but she still feels uncomfortable astride such a large beast. "Okay... nice horse... we can do this... uh."

"That's the spirit. Up you go!" She grabs Micah's foot and does the same to him.

Micah is surprised to find himself hoisted onto the horse. He doesn't even know how to hold on. They had horses on his farm, but they were for working, not riding. He grabs the horse around its neck, since that's the only place he can see to grab. "Sorry horse..nothing personal, I just have no idea what I'm doing." The horse snorts at him. He tries not to hold onto it so hard. "Ok..I think we're ok..."

He talks to the horse like he would to the horse's on the farm, hoping it will move when he makes sounds at it. He's pleased to see that the horse does move. "Alright, ladies. Let's get out of here." He doesn't look at either of them, afraid that if he looks away from horse he'll fall or something. "I hope you're with me, because I'm going!"

Eiris takes the lead since she actually knows how to ride. Micah and Astrior follow her out of the town. Micah's rather glad to be traveling again, although he will miss being able to bathe.

Astrior watches Eiris to figure out how she's supposed to be controlling this beast, but for the most part they seem fairly content to follow one another, which is just fine with her while Eiris is keeping them on the road. She figures out how to use the reins almost on accident when she turns around to look back at the city with them in her hand, and the horse starts turning back too. But for the most part, it's a pretty lax learning curve.

Eiris is good and buzzed, so she's having a grand old time leading their caravan along the muddy road as it drizzles all around them, and by the time it stops raining perhaps an hour later, Astrior is thoroughly sober again. Which does nothing to improve her outlook on their journey. But she keeps her thoughts to herself, since they've made up their collective mind about this, and simply follows along silently atop her mount.

Micah doesn't try to turn around still, quite sure that if he moves something will go horribly wrong. He lets the horse follow Eiris and her horse since the horse seems to have a better idea of what its doing than Micah does. He doesn't seem to mind the rain much, but that might be partly because of the buzz he's still got. He just keeps on riding, completely unaware that Astrior is upset again.

Astrior is less upset than she is resigned to life at the moment, with the realization that it moves on ahead regardless of how one struggles to cage it once they've found a comfortable patch to sit in for a while. And that's always when it gets prickly again. She's never enjoyed such long bouts of comfort and civility, not since before she was eight, and so it's more distressing to have to leave that behind to move along the road again now. It was easy to give up the few creature comforts she had when she was on the run all the time, but now that suffering isn't a daily part of her routine, she's finding that the thought of settling in one place with a comfortable bed and four walls seems more and more attractive to her.

But that's not what Micah wants, and she knows it. He's not nearly ready to settle down in one place, he craves adventure. Which is fine for him, she supposes, he'd never had it forced upon him. You can eat your favorite food every day, but if you're put in a room and that's the only thing you're given for days or weeks at a time, it becomes less appetizing quickly. But he hasn't been locked in like that, so it's still fresh to him, every day. She rather admires his spunk, if nothing else... and truthfully, there are plenty of other things about him that she can admire, and does, though usually not while she's being watched.

Micah decides riding the horse really isn't that bad, he's getting used to it. He looks around at tree after tree after tree and wonders if anything lives out here but animals. He listens for whatever he can hear but only hears birds. He gives up listening and whistles along with the birds.

While he's whistling, another sound creeps below it. It's hard to hear over Micah but Eiris has a chance of hearing it anyway. Someone is with them, but on foot. They might pass right by without ever noticing.

Eiris is past noticing much more than the top of her horse's head at the moment, even though her buzz has worn down. She's jonesing for another pint, and that's the thing at the forefront of her mind. True to her word, she hadn't packed any bottles for the road, and now she's wishing she would have snuck one into her pack. Just a little one, even. Something. Anything. Maybe a middlin' sized one, to share. Or not to share. Ugh.

As it is, Astrior is the one who picks up on the footfalls in the leaves, her horse lagging slightly behind the others as she has no will to kick the animal to speed it up. When she hears something a little bit off, she slows her horse down further, and the animal simply stops to accommodate her. There's a distinct difference between the noise of the horses tromping along and the brush of the leaves that indicate someone on foot. Not sure where it is, however, she calls ahead. "Micah!"

The footsteps Astrior has caught on to stop when they are noticed. The person has stilled, if Astrior listens carefully she'll notice they actually backed up a few steps.

Micah's Whistling stops and he reluctantly turns to face Astrior, trying to stay on the horse at the same time. His horse turns with him and he stops it. "Ok, stay..." He looks unsure as to whether or not the horse will listen, but it does. He looks expectantly at Astrior. "What's up? You have to pee or something?"

Astrior can see as she looks forward at Micah that he's not coming to her aid - his horse issues are preventing him from doing much more than looking over his shoulder. So she puts her fingers to her lips, pats her own horse on the neck, and dismounts as carefully as she can... which takes a few moments. But once she has her feet on the ground, she's able to slip into invisibility and listen without distraction. She moves off in the direction that the sound of footsteps had come from, and though she can't do anything about the waving grass and crunching leaves, she's as quiet as she can be as she moves off through the trees to see what's following them. Eiris has stopped too, and she looks back at Micah with a silent question written on her face, unsure what Astrior is up to.

Micah shrugs at Eiris and makes a frustrated face. "This horse..." He grumbles, still not quite on the same page with the horse.

The quiet steps completely stilled by the time Astrior is off her horse, though the newcomer did notice her become invisible and is wondering about what kind of magic she can do. Once she's invisible, Astrior has a chance to look for the source of the sound.

She finds she's close to the business end of a longbow. The man wielding it is of a much slighter build than Micah and closer to Eiris' height. His tan ,stern peers out from beneath a hood as he regards Astrior's horse, not sure where she got to when since she disappeared. Deep green eyes glint as he glances about for a sign of her. "No tricks, show yourself."

Astrior notes the notched arrow on the bow and regards the man silently for a few moments, summing him up visually. His hood prevents her from discerning whether or not he's an elf, but his build and the fact that he's romping through these woods with a bow and arrow and no other visible weapon or companion makes her figure that he probably is. She stands perfectly still for a matter of seconds, and chooses the easiest method of disarming him - she draws one of the daggers from her belt, and slashes the bow's taut string. The contact renders her visible, but as she's the one holding a viable weapon now, she's not concerned. The short man now finds himself at the business end of a short blade, the tables having turned.

Micah struggles to dismount his horse, worried about the new-comer he can only partially see. Like Astrior, the fact that the guy is sleight and running about in the woods causes him to think that the man is an elf.

The man in the hood's eyebrows raise and his eyes go wide as his bow's string is cut. His mouth gapes ever so slightly as he finds the redhead suddenly there and with a knife pointing at him.

He slowly lowers his now non-threatening bow, raising his hands up to show they are now empty. He straightens up and faces Astrior again, unarmed. "I'm sorry...you startled me and I didn't know if you were a threat." He regards her knife. "Clearly, you felt the same about me."

He pulls his hood back, revealing a sharp-featured face. Their assumptions appear to be correct about his race, although the tops of his ears are covered by his pulled-back hair and it's still not a definite. He hesitantly extends his hand to Astrior. "I'm Malachite. I was just doing some hunting."

Astrior's hackles are up, so to speak, and she isn't inclined to trust an elf on his own in the woods who moments ago had an arrow notched and pointed at her. But looking him over, his explination seems to match up with his appearance. There's nothing on his person that arouses suspicion. She takes a step back and slowly replaces her knife on her belt. Her first knee-jerk reaction wanted to be to ask him what he was hunting, but she realizes that there's no way anyone could possibly know that she and her mate traveling companion are lycans, so she doesn't need to ask out of self-preservation. Instead she simply nods, without taking his hand. "We're just passing though the area, and I only thought for our party's safety. I appoligize for unstringing your bow... I don't have anything to replace it with."

Eiris sees Micah trying clumsily to dismount, and peers back through the trees, though at this angle, she can't see anything. But she can see that something is causing him distress, and it's probably his girlfriend's disappearance. She hops off her horse with ease and passes the struggling boy by to go have a look-see about the commotion, but slows as she hears the newcomer's voice, not presenting herself just yet. This appears to be a friendly encounter... ish... but she'll wait to be sure.

Malachite frowns, "I already apologized for threatening you, but I was startled. And now that you've broken my bow, the least you can do is shake my hand." He keeps his hand held out expectantly.

Micah finally manages to get off the horse and hurries back to Astrior and the man who appeared out of nowhere. Being tied up with horse struggles, he missed the introduction but he sees the man's hand and shakes it. "Hi. I guess you're no threat, huh?" He smiles, "I'm Micah."

The elf smiles in return. "Well met. My name is Malachite. It's encouraging to know your whole party isn't like this one." He gestures toward Astrior. Micah looks confusedly from Astrior to the elf and back to her.