================================== Bree Time ==================================
Real time: Mon Jul 19 08:24:12 2004
Bree time: Late Night 3:12 AM on Sunday of Autumn - September 18,1432
Moon Phase: New Moon
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Breelands Weather
The late night autumn air is cool but pleasant around you. The night sky is cloud-filled and gloomy.

Common Room
This large and rectangular room serves the purpose of Common Room for the Prancing Pony. Red curtains drape down from large windows that look out to the west and the Great East Road, which runs outside the Inn. There are long tables with bench seats for the patrons in the center of the room. Nestled into the wall is a large fireplace, with several bundles of wood piled next to it.

Large bunches of glossy leaves cunningly woven into fat swags of bronze and red and yellow-gold festoon the walls; their undulating rhythm is punctuated by bright berries on branches, lending a festive air to the usually stolid Common Room. Overhead, lamps hang down from roof beams, but their light is dim, and half veiled in smoke. The chief source of light comes instead from a logfire crackling in the hearth. Despite the light sources there are still shadows to be found, and these fill the corners of the room.

Darkness has fallen, a gloomy cloud-ridden black that smothers the stars and moon and fills the small town of Bree with shadows. Inside the Pony, though, it is still cheerfully bright - even though lamps have been turned down and candles shorten. The fire snaps on its bed of coals, and the few folks left nurse final mugs of ale.

In a corner, away from anyone else, a lad sits and stares glumly into the depths of his cup. His face bares the remains of an enormous bruise, and mostly-healed scratches mar forehead and chin.


A sneeze.

That is Malorie's introduction as she enters the common room and stops a moment to find an empty spot. That's easy enough at this time of evening, and after she sheds her cloak, the young woman drags her knapsack after her as she makes way for a place near the warming hearth.
She looks as though she's just returned from travelling--and one might notice there is a more confident air about the lass these days, a switch from the more defensive way that once shadowed her movements.
Drawing nigh to the corner where Toby sits, Malorie offers him a glance--but a glance only--before sitting at the table next to his and waiting for one of the servers to come by.


Toby looks up sharply, then subsides into beer-contemplation once again. There is not much remaining in the depths of his mug, and after a moment, he up-ends it into his mouth and then pounds the stein on the wooden table. "'Nother," he says somewhat loudly.

The waiter is already skirting tables on his way towards Malorie and he gives the boy a glance. "Had enough, haven't you?" he says. Toby glowers at him. "No," he says flatly. "Gimme another. I.. I c'n pay."


The huff of a short laugh might be heard of Malorie. Assuredly, the doubtful glance which follows to Toby is hard to miss. "You might be able to pay," she states blandly, the raise of a brow following, "but can you walk a straight line back home afterwards?"

Clearly the young woman has no high opinion of those she assumes intoxicated.


Toby turns an owl-like stare towards Malorie. "Don't know. Don't care. Not going home." He pauses to reflect, shoving his empty mug towards the waiter, then decides to explain. "Only going here." He waves an uncertain hand towards the wall in the direction of the stables. His mug refilled, he buries his face in it and swallows deeply, before adding in a surprisingly steady voice, "'M not drunk."


A smile comes to Malorie's face. Is she faintly amused by Toby's answer? The scritch of chair legs upon the wooden floor follows as she turns to better face the lad. "You'll find it boring. And the chairs aren't that comfortable here. And there are rats in the straw in the stables, no matter how often Bob rakes it. And it stinks." Another grin, and a soft laugh follows. She lifts her chin a little; the green gaze is telling.
"You see, I used to do the same....when I first came to Bree." And then, suddenly, she queries, "How old you, anyway?"


"I know," Toby says stiffly. "Been working there coupla months." A strange expression crosses his face, a combination of remembered resentment and confusion. "You slept in the stables?" he asks her, slightly bewildered, then adds, "16. Why?" His voice turns belligerant, daring her to say it is too young.


"Aye'n you can ask Bob about that. He'll remember me well enough," Malorie assures, grinning once again while deflecting the other's belligerence following with a stouter stare.
"I was seventeen, and just come from Archet." The stare softens...a very little. "But why not go home then, at least if you have one to go to?" Is she studying the bruise and cuts upon the lad's face as she says it?


Toby stares (glares) at her for a long minute, then takes another drink. "No. Tired of being yelled at an' besides.. can't go home, m'dad said it." Whether he wants to or not remains locked behind iron walls in his eyes.


Toby's glare is rebuffed with a simple shrug, and Malorie turns away for a moment to take a sip of ale from the mug just-delivered to her table. "So find another home, then," she says matter-of-factly as she looks back to Toby. "The Common House isn't so bad, and better than the rank of hay you'll get from sleeping in the stables. Just don't eat the stew after it's been in the kettle for two days."
Another grin.


The boy's head shakes back and forth. No. "Don't mind the stables," he says quietly. His brown eyes stare into the mug of ale as if he can read some unknown future there. Then, abruptly, he asks her, "You know about rangers?"


At the mention of 'rangers,' Malorie's green-eyed gaze narrows. "Anyone who comes here at all knows about them." Her voice hints of mockery--a contrast to the suspicion in her eyes. "They come and they go. They ask questions and offer to buy you a meal for your tales." She shrugs. "What about them?"


The mockery is heard, the suspicion goes unnoticed. And Toby bristles in response. "I know that!" he snaps. For a moment, the touchiness of an uncertain teenager, added to some sullen anger all his own, gets the upper-hand. But a desperate bewilderment tames the boy's voice. "I meant," he says, "/What/ do you know about them."


The young woman seems to size up the lad before her a moment before responding. Once more she eyes the bruises and cuts upon his face. "Why do you want to know?" she asks--perhaps suggesting that she knows more than she's inclined to reveal?
"They're a strange folk, and they see more of the world than most of us have...." She pauses abruptly. Has she already said too much? "I don't rightly trust them, but they've done some good for Bree in the past, despite their nosiness."


Toby's head is bowed, brown curly hair falling over his forehead and hiding some of the scrapes. He runs a finger through a pool of liquid on the table, drawing circle after circle after circle, and shrugs one thin shoulder. "Heard things," he says at last. "You don't trust them?" One arm, his left, has been held close to his side all this time; it seems he is favoring it a little in not using it.


"Do you trust anyone being nosy around you?" Malorie retorts, if quietly. She takes a look around the common room, as if 'one of them' might be lurking nearby. "I don't trust my brothers, or the man I called my father for nineteen years, either," she adds sharply, though a bitter smile follows. "But then, my father never tried to save me from harm's way....leastwise, not that I can remember. And my brothers gave me bruises and cuts just like the ones you're wearing there." She shrugs.
"But no ranger's ever done that to me, and in fact it was that one called Strider that chased the wolves from Bree several years back and saved Manfred, me and some others."
She drags the mug from the table and cups it in both hands. "I'd count on him to do that again, maybe...but there's really only one person I'll ever truly trust."
By the way she speaks, there's no denying she means that.


Toby listens, his head still bowed, finger still incessently drawing swift-drying circles in the scarred wood of the table. The fire crackles, snapping once and throwing off a largish spark. But then his head jerks up. "Strider?" he asks. His eyes are ale-fogged and hurt, but there is no denying their intensity.


"Aye, Strider," Malorie confirms. "I was guarding the west gate at sunset. Never seen a wolf as large as that before. Unnatural, it was. Strider hit it first with two shots of a bow, then ran after it drawing his sword." She shrugs. "He didn't have to do it. No one asked him to." Her gaze narrows. "But what's all this interest in Strider all-of-a-sudden? Or rangers? I've just returned to Bree, myself, and don't know all the latest ...'gossip.'" She voices the last word with a certain amount of venom.


"He's fast," Toby agrees, with a sort of reluctant admiration. "Don't know why..." He breaks off and returns to contemplation of his drink, then drains it again - head tilted back until the last drop slides from the glazed clay to his lips. He sets the cup down and drags the back of his hand across his mouth. "There's been... things going on," he says at last. "Some.. some say t'were them, the rangers, who been doing it. And it weren't my dad," he adds fiercely, belatedly. His gaze flickers up to Malorie's face and then drops again.


Malorie laughs a little--maybe to dispell the sudden solemnity which has fallen upon their conversation. Doubtless, however, she's been drawn into it--which is, of itself, something unusual. "Blame it on my fa--" She clears her throat. "Blame it on Mallin Foxglove or my brothers," she adds with a scowl slowly coaxed to a smile. "They could use a bit of scandal in their small little lives." Curiosity spurs the next. "What's going on around here, then? It's no surprise people are blaming the rangers. They're the easiest to blame, aren't they? Coming and going as they do." She takes another sip of ale, but regards Toby quietly in wait for his answer.


"He didn't," Toby insists, with the single-mindedness of one whose mental functions are ever so slightly impaired. "Hit me," he adds, glowering at Malorie as if she has accused his father of infanticide. Brown eyes peer into his empty mug, contemplate the non-existance of any drink, and Toby knocks it against the table again. "'Nother drink," he calls. "I'm getting drunk," he tells the woman near him, confidentially. "Oh. They kilt off them birds, all around the healer's house. Like they dropped from the sky. And.." A scowl knits his eyebrows together as he says slowly, almost unwillingly, "Sneaked off with some girl-kid."


"So...who hit you then?" Malorie wonders casually, though the next thing Toby says is far more interesting, and thus, gains more questions before Toby is likely to answer. "The rangers killed off some birds? Why would they do something useless like that?" She grins. "Unless the birds were also attacking the Breeguard at the gate?" She chuckles. "I'd like to have seen that." The next mention of the girl, however, gets no such levity in answer, and Malorie suddenly looks a little more serious. "Nonsense," she says curtly to the suggestion. "I can't see any of them doing that."


"Stri... ain't none of your business." Toby gulps down half of his newly-brought drink at once. "I dunno, why'd anybody do it? They was all laying around the healer's dead as st-shtones. No mark on 'em anywheres." He shrugs again, both shoulders this time, and a wince of pain stabs across his face. "He said he didn't," he mumbles, almost to himself. "But..." louder, to Malorie, "Ev'rbody was saying so. That they stole her away out of her bed like. Her mum was screeching and carrying on fit to wake the dead."


Malorie's expression sours, and she sets the half-full mug down upon the table. "If it's none of my business, then why are you asking me questions in the first place?" The young woman stands, lifting the mug for one last, long drink. Setting it in the center of Toby's table, she declares, "You're stone drunk already, and if you believe everything you're told without seeing it for yourself, then you're more the fool than you look. Take some advice, and don't trust anyone....or what they say, until you've proved it for yourself." An odd grin finds way to her lips. "And tell Bob that Malorie sends her regards." Hefting up her knapsack from the floor, the young woman turns to leave.


"You asked me," Toby mutters. "I din't ask you, you asked me. Who hit you, you said. An' I said, ain't none of yer business. Still awake, ain't I?" he shouts after her. "Then I ain't drunk enough." He tips Malorie's mug sideways to see what might be in it, then lifts his own to finish it off. He /is/ drunk; his wavering hand going astray and ale spilling down his front. "Didn't do it," he mumbles to himself. "Said they did though... don't b'lieve it 'less you s-shee it..." His head sags, is jerked up, and then droops to rest on the tabletop.


The first few footfalls of the former Breeguard are stayed as Malorie stops to look over her shoulder. "Who asked about rangers--" She starts to ask, but seeing that the lad is all but senseless now, mocks a huff of a laugh and then continues her steady gait out of the Common Room.