My Band of Idiots

Ramock's Love Life

Felicity was taking the day off taking care of Mr. Monkey which meant the Three-o of us were day drinking, Caspian was feverishly writing in the corner or off flirting with buff Ceildrik the terrible merchant but complexly intelligent Minotaur blacksmith. I liked him, now if she could marry him and he could become our dear old papa, maybe then we would really be rolling in the money. Especially if this adventuring thing didn't work out.
It was getting towards noon when a note slipped in front of me, and a roguish figure slide away.
"Hey, hey, I think you dropped this" I say to him, trying to catch the guy.
But he is already gone.
"What you get?" Felicity says poking into see what I have, I start waving the paper around.
"Probably a love letter, I'm always getting these from people, they can't get enough of me, I get it I'm irresistible but I have standards you know"
"So who is it from?" She says trying to grab it from me.
"Its my letter" I say
"What's is say"
"I don't know I haven't read it"
"Ramock can you read"
"Of corse I can read"
"Well read it and tell me what it says" Felicity says
"You read it if you want to know so badly" I tell her and thrust it at her face.
Peering over her shoulder now the note opens.

Come find me, we have business - Nico

"Who is Nico"
"Ugh, just like this guy who is totally in love with me, I told him to stop sending me love letters like gods I get it your into me, but like I can't be tied down like that, you know how it is Felicity I'm not really a one guy kind of guy"
"Yeah you gotta see what's out there for you?" She laughed
"What?"
"Nothing, nothing, so are you going to go see him?" She asks
I kick the ground. "You wanna come with?"
"Sure, Mr. Monkey and I will come with you and help you turn him down gently."
"Thanks"
"Caspian, were going on a mission to break someone's heart do you want in?" Felicity called
Caspian looked up from her novel writing and glared at me and Felicity and Mr. Monkey.
"Do I need to punish you as well now, breaking hearts. Terrible children. Yours awful. Your poor mother does everything to make sure that you have food on the table and are clothed and you go galavanting about breaking peoples hearts" she swooned dramatically and then shut the book she was scrawling in "I'm going to go see Ceildrik he understand me and my woes"
Then sweeping away out of the tavern ahead of us she marched though the streets like she was a widow. Sometimes I worry about Caspian. But she has Ceildrik so I'm sure it's fine...
Soon after that we left and walked though the streets.
"So how do we find this Nico?" Felicity asked
"Its not hard to find him, if you know where to look. He's the reason the roads are all paved so nicely." I said pointing to the finely cobbled streets Felicity raised an eyebrow. It was likely she had never noticed before the streets being cobbled of stonework, finely priced together into a working road, it was always easy to tell where Nico made most of his trips to. Not that he let anything wild stop him in his tracks. The city's he visited paid him finely for his cobbling skills and for rode working. It was a specialty of his.
I had met Nico three years before on a fishing vessel where we worked side by side for six weeks, it was strange to get to know him under those conditions, when I had never met someone quite like him. That is to say it is rare to see a contraption quite like the one that Nico had made himself, for traveling and working, a wheeled monstrosity of a chair that helped him access the world. Of corse I had seen and heard stories of other people who had problems walking and who made other ways of accessing the world, they used magic to levitate, or they sat on other kinds of magical devises that would help them thought the world. They had pets and mounts they had friends and family's. But Nico instead had crafted a decide so that he could chose to rely on his own capability's and not magic, not people, only his strengths and weaknesses. He was like no one I had met before. 
His father owned the vessel that we were adored for those six weeks, in that time he didn't make excuses for his son, he didn't hardly treat him like a son. I later learned that Nico hated his father and only used him for his boat but that they didn't often speak, even when at sea for days.
When Felicity and I got to Nico's house he was planting flowers on the edge of his walkway and the beautifully decorated and manicured road was lovely.
"Nicoooo" I said walking over to him and taking him in a hug of a much to long unseen friend.
"Ramock" he said politely and shot a glance at Felicity and Mr. Monkey who were staying back from us.
"I got your letter"
"You bright people" he said "this is suppose to be a delicate operation of secrecy and your ruining it, by bringing people I don't know here."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, I get that your like in love with me and whatever but the notes have to stop."
"WHAT?" He said eyes wide.
"Listen I'm just not ready for that kind of commitment right now"
"Ramock I'm going to kill you, but first, I need you to go down to the docks and get my sister. You remember Therease?"
"Yes"
"I need you to go get her and bring her back here, discreetly, okay?" His voice was gaining an octave a second.
I looked at him though thin slits in my eyes then back at felicity "can my friends come"
He took a deep breath then waved them forward "what is your name"
"Oh hi, I'm felicity, I'm Ramock friend, I think its so cute that you have a Crush on him."
Nico opened his mouth as if he was going to say something and then thought better of it and changed his mind he shook his head. Then he took a deep breath and said "Felicity can I trust you to be discreet about information."
She looked at him a moment and then blinked and looked at me then back at him and smiled "of course"
"Okay" Nico said with a gentile smile a deep breath and then "go get my sister Therease from the docks, then bring her back here. Okay."
"Okay." Felicity said and we were on our way.
I stopped at the gate
"Why don't you just go if you want it to be so discrete?" I asked
"You know ramock that is a great question, I would but unfortunately, I can't get down there because my wheels would get stuck in the mud."
"Oh okay." I said and then we were on our way.
The walk didn't take long and mostly it was quite as we thought about different things. I thought about Therease. She was a spit fire of a young woman with a high laugh, she had always seamed full of joy and life, that was all I could really remember of her from my one visit to the little cottage that Nico's family lived in, I did however wonder why only Therease was joining him and not his mother or other sister Eloise, the more sturn and serious of the girls. My questions would be answers when we got to the docks.
Therease had changed in the two years since I had seen her and was no longer a budding woman but now a fully formed adult. She was beautiful and things about her had changed in every little way. But there was something disturbingly off about her besides her change from girlhood to womanness. Her hair now a bright flame where once it had only been the illusion of flickers in ashen hair. Her eyes now charcoal black all though were worrying to me. But I said nothing of it as we brought her back to her brother. Though the swampy lower streets. Higher into the better paved roads across the river of the districts where family's roamed.