Her fingers were thick from yellow calluses and her knuckles stained with coal and ink. She accepted back the charcoal, tapped its edge against her lip, and then made a definitive mark, a challenging move,
bones encroaching upon
stones with the deliberate tease of a stalking beast.
X|_|_
_|X|_
_|O|_
"I suppose your streak is about to end,
Messa," the girl said, taking up the ordered ale before rubbing a fingertip on the inside scoop of her ear, and then thrusting the edge of that digit down into the foam -- an ineffective trick to softening the head on the ale, meant to rid the amber from its foam. She sipped, then thrust the mug at him as if she were presenting a challenge.
"I am prideful when I must be. Scarcely a soul alive could say he or she was better with a needle than I; I even saved a Councilman's
life." The words were so easy to say, erupting out of her with unusual confidence, but she'd not enough ale to yet be bloated with mead-strength. "I could -- could clobber most men in a contest of muscles. One does not survive in Jernoah by mere subsistence. There is -- is a saying:
One will inevitably be cut by the sand, until he learns to cut back. I -- I may not have pretty teeth, or good milk-breasts, but I've hard knuckles. A willingness to scrap."
She did not smile behind her mug of ale or its glass-bottomed base -- no, she set it down with a
clap against the bar, and grinned fully at him only after.
The girl felt intoxicated already, lighter on her feet, her eyes occasionally tilting toward his hair, his hands, and lingering perhaps for longer than even she might have thought proper.
"What is it you do," she asked, mounting an elbow on the bar and resting her chin within her hand. Interest was written on her face as if scrawled there by the charcoal itself; she was enamored of him, emboldened by him, and instead of taking her seat, she was near -- closer than she should have been, than any girl should have
allowed herself to be. With her broader motions, the dusky skirts whipped across the tips of his boots. "Are
you a man of words? A
confidence man?"
The charcoal was offered.
"Are you any different than others, ser? Or are you too, as you say,
very stupid and
willing to be used," before she smacked her lips at the drink's bitter aftertaste. "Ale tastes better when someone else pays for it. And it is your turn,
Messa--"
A tilt of her head, asking his name. Engaged. Profoundly intrigued.