A Match of Monsters

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"Yer quick. It took me two weeks 'fore I stopped getting lost back there." Rowan smiled brightly at Elain over a steaming bowl of soup. "And you brought the little dragon with you."

Elain hesitantly responded to the dwarf's wide grin with one small of her own. "I guess I'm good with directions."

Rowan nodded and hummed in agreement, then turned back to her meal. She was not ignoring Elain, exactly, rather it just appeared that she had lost that overwhelming sense of curious friendliness. Now that she knew who Elain was, it seemed that she was content to give the new human a little space.

It was a completely different attitude to before, and Elain hesitated as she adjusted to it.

All around them, the large kitchen was bustling with machine-level efficiency. Six other dwarven women and one man ran about their tasks, darting about each other and their surrounding s with such light movements that they could have only been born from familiarity.

The atmosphere felt welcoming, yet demanding to her as she observed her new colleagues. All of the women, including Rowan, wore the same red and black dresses despite the fact that most of them clearly were the cooks and not barmaids. Three of them were old enough to be growing beards and unlike the tavern mistress, choosing no to go clean shaven. The oldest of the women had crows feet stretching across from the corners of her eyes and a thick growth of facial hair that would make any human male green with jealousy. Neatly trimmed and combed, it the thick black expanse of it extended down to her exposed cleavage with an elegance that the men's beards could not achieve.

Elain had seen some of the dwarven women with beards the nigh before, but only out of the corner of her eyes and not so closely. Coming from a hamlet populated almost entirely by woman that could not physically grow even small scruff on their cheeks, she felt overwhelmed by the casual display of so much facial hair.

It was just another reminder of how different their cultures were.

The older woman stood at the bench pointing and telling the others what to do, even one of the younger staff members Elain recognised from the night before as the tavern mistress's daughter. Other than to gesture at one of her colleagues, she never stopped chopping the vast pile of vegetables in front of her; maintaining her own work even as she set everyone else's.

Her voice was loud and firm without shouting, the tone gruff but not unkind. It carried well over the whistling of boiling kettles, the clash of pots and pans, and the heavy steam in the air.

It was a voice like a drill sergeant's, and one that Elain would be able to hear easily no matter what.

Beside her were the swinging doors into the tavern room itself, and as Elain watched, the dwarven man came tumbling back through them with empty plates in his hands.

His outfit was just as much tavern staff wear as the women's, yet very different. It appeared more like what she would have expected a fictional pirate from her stories to wear.

The linen shirt was stark white with loose, billowing sleeves that tightened at the cuffs, its neckline lacing up past his collarbone. With smooth, black thread. A thick, golden leather belt chinked the shirt in at the waist, where it was tucked into vibrant, bloody red linen trousers just as loose as his shirt. He wore a finely woven black, sleeveless jacket and tall black leather boots polished brightly enough to shine with every step. His beard was combed and oiled, the dark brown mass much thicker and longer that the cook's, with gold ornamentation woven into it around the edges where it tapered off at the bottom.

As Elain catalogued his appearance in her mind the way she had everyone else in the room, he noticed the direction of her gaze and gave her a large grin. Stopping only briefly to place the tower of dishes in a large sink assigned for them, he headed towards the small table in the corner where Elain had slipped in beside Rowan.