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dnd_drow

Dataset card Data Studio Files
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"This... tavern... serves all this food but does not bother to feed their own workers?" He asked, his eyes scanning the tables stacked with bowls and plates with the patrons’ suppers. He did not bother to hide the distaste in his voice.
"I- I- can’t afford the food, saer," she stuttered lamely, "my family needs the money."
The hand gripping her wrist disappeared, and with an impossibly deftness, she felt coins being pressed into her palm. Confused, she looked curiously at him before attempting another apology.
"I’m sorry sae-"
"Two bowls of stew then. And a loaf of bread. Please."
The piercing stare that had been dissecting her moments ago dropped back to the table. The elf’s posture relaxed, and he resumed his mindless flipping of the ring.
Gone was the grace and agility of the girl’s dance through the patrons of the tavern. The panic rising in her throat caused her to beeline to the front, desperate to escape the embarrassment she felt in the piercing gaze of that beautiful man.
Strange, she thought, that his eyes were a deep scarlet. Usually a color only seen in drow.
In her haste, she did not notice the arm reaching out to snatch her. She did not have time to react when it hooked around her waist and yanked her into the lap of its owner.
The stench of the girl’s workplace was one not easily avoided, but the hot moist breath of the lecherous man managed to overpower all else. The fermented malodor of ale and rotted teeth nearly made the girl gag as she struggled against the man’s hold, trying to escape the pain of his fingers digging dangerously high on her ribcage.
She didn’t hear the disgusting things being muttered her ear, or the sniggering of his friend across the table, but it didn’t stop the visceral fear from bubbling up in her throat.
She threw herself against his grip like a rabbit caught in a snare, barely managing to wrench herself away and slip away from his grasp. The hand traveling up her leg did not have time to slip underneath her skirts this time.
In her haste and following panic, she also didn’t notice that the gaze of those deep red eyes had followed her across the room, not failing to notice this unfortunate interaction.
If she did, she would have noticed the fury that it had invoked in this mysterious stranger, even though this situation was becoming commonplace for her. The seething wrath that broke against his handsome face would somehow have had her regretting her botched pickpocketing attempt even more.
As it was, she was unaware that she has dug into the pockets of someone much more dangerous then the men she so carefully avoided.
Two steaming bowls of stew, with a loaf balanced in between them, were set back down on the table with care a few moments later.
The girl took a step back, clasping her hands behind herself to hide their shaking. A feeling of awkwardness settled over her, as she was unsure of what to do next.
The elven man glanced up at her, a small look of annoyance darting across his face.
"Well don’t just stand there and stare," he snipped dully,
"I.. I’m working, saer. The boss will get mad-"
"Let him, then. I will handle it."
The stool across from the elf, marred and worn from too many years of use, was kicked out from under the table, and he motioned to it.
"I must insist. Sit."
She lowered herself onto it reluctantly, staring into the bowl that was pushed before her. It was hard to tell if it was to avoid eye contact with this beautiful stranger, or because the wafting smell of barley and carrots was drawing her in.
A worn spoon was slipped into her hand, breaking her concentration. She made a cursory glance behind herself, and seeing that the barkeep was busy with hauling another keg in, began wolfing down the hot stew.
It didn’t matter that the thin tomato soup was watery, or that the potato chunks burned the roof of her mouth as she chewed on them. This was the first decent meal she had had in weeks, and in the moment seemed like the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. She kept her head raised and her movements stiff, trying to hide the fact that she was eating. If sitting on the job was a punishable offense, eating a customer’s food felt like it would earn her a thorough beating.
For a few minutes the only sound shared between the two were the scraping of the spoon against the dented tin bowl and the clack of her teeth as she chewed. The elf studied her silently the whole time with softness in his eyes.
"How old are you, sweetling?" he asked her once she had downed half the bowl, breaking the silence.
With a (humiliatingly) loud gulp, the girl answered,
"I turned fifteen at the start of winter, saer."
The elf scoffed with a surprising harshness, and the girl’s gaze flew up to meet his face. His exquisite alabaster face was now twisted with a sneer.
"Barely more than a pup. Those men," the word was spat, "ought to be ashamed of themselves."
She did not need to look back to know that his venomous glare was trained on the man and his friend.
"Do the men around this... fine establishment... usually find it hard to keep their greasy little hands to themselves?"
The girl paused, and suddenly found the bottom of the almost empty bowl to be quite fascinating. To be caught with her hand in the pocket of this beautiful stranger was mortifying enough. To have him witness a man pull her into his lap, trying to slide a hand up his skirt, then ask about it over the charity of a hot meal was so much worse.
She would feel less vulnerable if she were sitting naked before him. In this moment, she felt like an ant burning under a magnifying lens, her hot and miserable shame laid bare for this man to examine.
As much as his pity burned, though, there was genuine concern in his voice. He was treating her with a tenderness that  caught her completely off guard.
Something in her wanted to be honest with this peculiar man. She had never been seated across from someone so beautiful, or been shown such concern from a complete stranger. What little life she had lived had been cruel and hard, and she had grown accustomed to an unforgiving world.
For gods’ sakes, he had caught her with a hand in his pocket and had reacted with compassion, not the anger that she deserved.
It had become second nature to feel like a whipped dog, cowering in the corner. Could the girl blame herself for reaching out to the first kind hand extended her way?
She was just about to open her mouth to stumble out an answer to his question when a loud,
startled her from her train of thought. With a flinch and an instinctive duck of the head, she spun around to see the furious reddened face of the barkeep, standing next to the newly opened keg, and thirty pairs of eyes trained on her.
The room had fell completely silent.
"I don’t pay you to sit around and chat, girl! Get your arse over here and get back to work!" the owner of the bar barked, slamming his hand against the top of the keg for emphasis. The silence was replaced with the murmurs of the patrons, enraptured by the spectacle of her scolding.
Public displays of aggression were top entertainment for this backwoods village, especially for those who were down a few ales.
If the girl wanted to wither and die before, feeling dissected by the gaze of the stranger behind her, she now wished that the gods would strike her down on the spot, leaving nothing more than a blackened heap of soot.
Beginning to rise meekly to her feet, now unable to hide the shaking in her hands and knees, a cold hand gently pressed on the forearm that she had braced against the table. She paused an inch above her stool, trembling.
"Oh, darling barkeep, you wouldn’t deprive a poor lonely elf of some company with his meal, would you?"
The voice of the elf had gone up an octave, now with the performative affectation of the upperclass. There was also a slight slur to his words that she hadn’t picked up on moments before.
"I am not used to dining alone, you know, and promise to give this sweet girl back to you in a moments’ time. To fetch me another bottle of wine, of course." The words were dripping with a drunken honey, accompanied with an alluring grin and a subtle sway in the man’s posture.
Another pregnant pause, the audience waiting for the owner’s reaction. The girl’s heart hammered in her ears, face going numb in anticipation of the man’s ire.
Luckily, the promise of more money spent seemed to stamp out her boss’s anger, at least for the moment. An annoyed grumble about the dwindling wine supply was the only response given as the man turned to resume filling flagons.
The din of the room slowly returned as the patrons shared their disappointment of not getting a better show, before they quickly got their focus back to finding the bottoms of their cups.
The stiff pat of the elf’s cool hand before being retracted was what brought the serving girl back to the present moment. She turned back to the table to find the second bowl of stew being pushed toward her benefactor switched their respective bowls.
"As I was saying, my dear, do these men bother you often? And does your employer ever speak up when they do, or does he find the sight of you sitting to be a greater offense?"
Gone was the slur in his words, as was the performative accent. But the words were now ladened with disdain.
"Saer, I can’t eat your food too." She began to protest, before the bowl was scooted toward her again in emphasis.
"You can, and you will. Answering my questions will be thanks enough."
Guilt and temptation were warring inside of her as the steaming contents of the bowl drew her in once more. Her manners screamed at her to insist he eat the meal he had paid for, but gods, she was hungry.
She had been so hungry.
The desire to continue her meal was her only encouragement to answer quickly.
"I’m used to it, saer, and usually it’s not so bad. It didn’t take long to get used to it."
She motioned behind herself with her spoon before digging into a carrot and adding,
"The two over there are the worst of them, though. The others are just drunk and having a bit of fun."
The nonchalance in which she described the treatment was as convincing to the man as it was to her. She refused to reveal how it made her feel, even to herself.
She tried her best to avoid the sinking feeling in her stomach that she felt when she thought about it too deeply. Under the facade of indifference there lay too many brewing emotions that she never wanted to explore.
If the girl were to look up from her continued shoveling of stew into her mouth, at the eyes she was so desperately avoiding, she would see a leveling glare being trained on the two men. She would have notice just how monstrous this handsome visage had become.
The soothing tone of his voice belied the fury contained in his face.
"Putting your filthy mitts on someone of any age is disgusting. But to do it to someone as young as you, well it’s especially foul."
The pale hand returned to her resting forearm, and she did notice the slight awkwardness in which he gave her a comforting touch.
"I am sorry you have to deal with such things at all, darling."
The slight awkwardness in his touch had traveled to his words, too.
When the girl responded, her words were spoken to the hand on her arm.
"Thank you, saer, that’s very kind. You have been very kind."
With a heavy sigh, the hand was retracted as the man leaned back against the wall behind him.
"A trait that I have had to relearn over the years. And often unwillingly." He mused as he shifted into his more relaxed seating position,
"Being surrounded by people better than yourself has an irritating way of rubbing off on you. Too often I let my guard down and find myself caring." His words were impishly infused with a tone of disgust, and he returned his gaze to the girl once more.
"Now then, why are you so hungry when you are running around with these bowls of - well I hate to call it stew, seems far too optimistic. Whatever it is, that you’re eating?"
It was becoming easier to pause between bites, now that the painful emptiness of her stomach had subsided.
"It’s - it’s too many coins for me to spend right now, and besides we would usually have bread at home," at the mention of it, she remembered the forgotten loaf sitting between them and began tearing off a hunk, "Gotta spend all my extra coin on medicine for - for my brother, though. This winter was a hard one."
Her last sentence was an echo of her mother’s words, constantly muttered in their house. She heard the phrase while she watched her mother gently caress her little brother’s feverish brow, while she rummaged her hand around the bottom of the near-empty coin purse kept atop a high shelf, while she stared at the dwindled supply of canned goods from last autumn’s harvest. What little they had was spent on teas and tinctures to sooth her young brother’s wracking cough, barely scraping up enough to buy oats for a thin gruel that they could share.
When her mother had began refusing her portion to put more food on her and her brother’s plate, the girl told her that she was given a meal at her job, insisting that her mother eat.
And that was true, most of the time, if you counted the leftovers that the girl scraped from other people’s bowls.
"It’s a damn shame, how they treat you. Feeding a girl your size wouldn’t put him out of business, with how these buffoons are spending their coin." The elf lamented, idly swirling his goblet of wine.
The girl noticed that the turquoise ring that he had been toying with had now joined the identical one on his left hand, too small to slip past his second knuckle.
The heavily adorned finger tapped on the base of the tin chalice as he asked,
"Your brother. I take it that he’s ill?"
The girl nodded, finding the courage within herself to look up at the elf’s face and then immediately regretting it, finding herself quite dazed by his alluring features. All she could manage was a quick glance before nodding and swallowing her mouthful of food.
"Yes saer, he is. Caught something while it was real cold and hasn’t been able to shake it. It’s been like this for a while now."
"Are there no healers in your village? Even without them, there are plenty of potions that could probably cure him in an instant, I’m sure."
"We’ve been seeing the apothecary, talking to the medicine man there. It helps some, but only for a little while. Stronger stuff costs too much coin, would probably have to go out of town." She replied with a sorry shake of her head.
"Hm. Sounds like a quack." He sniffed, then continued, "There’s a druid’s grove a day’s walk from here. Why not take him there? Their healer doesn’t charge for her services. At least that was the case when I saw her last."
The girl let out a sigh before replying.
"My brother’s in no state to make the journey. He can’t walk far, and we can’t carry him, me and my mum..."
Feeling like she had revealed too much, she busied herself with finishing the rest of her bowl.
The elf, watched her, obviously displeased, as she finished the remainder of her - once their - meal.
"Yes, you humans are quite... fragile."
The uneasiness she felt from receiving pity emboldened her to begin asking her own questions, an attempt to draw attention from herself. She did not notice how his thumb began to trace the aquamarine gem of the smaller ring sitting high on his finger.
"And what about you then? Why did you come to our village? You look like you would fit in better at Waukeen’s Rest."
Her line of questioning came out with a little too much force, toeing the edge of rudeness while addressing someone so high above her station. The man across from her seemed be somewhat amused by it though, her slight attitude earning a humorless chuff from him.