His fingers danced deftly up and down the taut, thin, sinewy strings of his hand carved and lustrous mandolin. The melodious sounds drifted, quiet, but not lost throughout the inn. As he gazed up, he grinned, bearing witness to the drunken patrons about him. Some commoners sat with each other, clothed in ragged, patched tunics and trousers, giving away the last of their meager savings for a few droughts of the dirty, cheap ale. Their only goal was to forget what they were, but their woes intercepted them as they found nothing but farm life to speak of with their old friends. Some of those who had reached that desparate point sat, staring deep into a mug of an unknown number, discolored froth licking the edges, spelling out some great philosophy that would never be remembered in the morning.
Still, at this crossroad town there were not only the peasantry of the kingdom, heretofore of little significance to the traveling bard. Boisterous soldiers sat at tables, groping at serving wenches, who either mock swooned like professional prostitutes or shot back dignified glasses that, were the soldiers at home in the city walls, would have been met with the stocks. They guzzled down drinks until the drinks came back up to make room for more, much to the dismay of the busy innkeeper. The minstrel pondered the predicament of the innkeeper for a moment. His was an job both of dignity and humility. Strangers tromped through his abode, day in, day out, and he worked hard to keep it clean; yet as the innkeeper, this small realm was his own, and but on a few occasions, his say was the final. He had the potential to make good money, and certainly did, seeing as he had watered down the ale heavily as the night dragged on. The Bard's chuckle was missed under the din of the evening, as he would not sing until the patrons had drunk themselves to depression, at which point a lively sing-a-long tune from their early days would liven their spirits and open their purses to the prospect of another round.
Song after song, lyric after lyric, the night continued as any normal bar night would. As usual, the minstrel reminded himself to practice harder, to maintain his callouses, as they were certainly being put to the test. Were he to gaze down about his stool, certainly there he would find piles of skin dust, perhaps bone dust he thought to himself, half smiled and shook his head ruefully. A single man's near silent entry tore the bard away from his reverie with the nigh imperceptible-yet to the bard's half elven ears easily detectable, closing of the thick oaken door-came in from the rain, droplets dribbling down around the treated and craggy leather armor. A secretive hood, certainly of no use in deterring the rain, for clumps of damp hair peeked out from under the shadows. The man glanced this way, and that, until he stopped, trod over and sat, having found a table at a dark recess of the inn, where it was likely he'd be overlooked for some time, perhaps never needing to purchase a mug of the sewage. A single eyebrow was raised by the perceptive bard, but his string of notes was uninterrupted as he instinctively fingered the rhythms, having made no other motion but this rhetorical inquiry.
Some mere minutes later, he began an old drinking song, which immediately perked the ears of the commoners, who took great pride in their knowledge of the lyrics, as opposed to the soldiers, who blabbered foolishly along in a juvenile attempt to not be shown up, even in the recital of an outlying farmer's tune. At this time, another figure, much like the first but for a slightly stockier build and barely drier clothing entered also the inn, from the stormy, angry, muddy, and needless to say, intemperate weather outside. His was not so stealthy an entry, his panting and wearily heavy boot-falls could be picked up easily, despite his distance from the bard's position. Smirking knowingly at the irony of this blunder, the bard quickly caught himself before he made a distractedly late reentry into the chorus. When their spirits had been sufficiently brightened, the minstrel took a much needed break, to slouch in his stool, and lean on the edge of his instrument. Looking about, he observed the faces of each patron, all but two watching him closely-clearly suspecting something of him. To these he issues an unspoken challenge, strolling over to sit at the table of one of the shady fellows. He'd chosen the more slender, taller, more aware of the two, who sat at the right edge of the tavern. Pulling up a chair, the minstrel leaned with a sigh against the back of it, thankful for the support as the bones and muscles on either side of his spine screamed from the labour of maintaining the posture for his performance.
