Three moons ago Priya had found refuge at the Prancing Pony Inn. The night was setting in and she was on her way to her room when she encountered a strange foreign man, leaning against one of the many doorframes. His dark skin engaged her attention and she eventually found herself asking him ”Why are you brown?”. The man explained he had travelled from South (which was later on specified as Far Harad). It was a rather nice conversation, until out of a sudden, Magpie appeared out of thin air, wrapped his arms around Priya, lifted her up and carried her to ’safety’ - in his mind, saving the damsel in distress from the ’dangerous’ man. The events escalated during the next few minutes and soon you could see Magpie holding a chair planning to hit the foreigner with it and the stranger in return instantly drawing out his knife. Priya begged the man to put the blade down, fearing for her friend’s life. For Priya’s relief Magpie was smart enough to back away after being scolded by one of the barmaids and the foreigner reluctantly sheathed his blade. No one died that day.
Priya couldn’t find it in her to trust the knife-waving dark man, so she introduced herself as ’Alia’. The foreigner was sharp-sighted and picked up she was lying. He told her, she could call him ’Ned’ (which obviously was not his name either). During the next few days they had many, more or less, sarcastic and jesting exchanges of words. They must have seemed like a bickering old couple as a man who happened to overhear one of their conversations, asked ”How long have you two been together?” They weren’t even friends at that point and it is actually very difficult to say, when it was that they ’became friends’.
Perhaps some sort of unspoken trust just slowly started to form and after a while Priya offered to teach ’Ned’ fishing. Ned must have gotten awfully bad impression of fishing as Priya merely managed to fall into the river and get a hook tangled in her hair. She tried to convince ’Ned’ it was all part of the fishing ritual. It was then, when ’Ned’, got tired of being called ’Ned’, and he asked to be called by his real name, Seia. Priya of course continued to call him ’Ned’, though for the sake of variety she called him sometimes ’Stabber’ as well.
’Stabber’ was not far from the truth. Seia had in his past stabbed twelve men to death and he continued to live up to his ’title’ as during the next few moons he tried to kill Magpie four or five times. It got worse when the notorious drunkard thieved Seia’s belt. After that, the bickering and brawls between Seia and Magpie, seemed never ending. Priya, believing in the good of people, couldn’t accept unreasonable violence against anyone. She tried to protect Magpie, obviously succeeding in it up to some end, as the man still runs free fulfilling his pranks. The conflict between the two men however provoked countless arguments between Seia and Priya. She couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just ignore Magpie, nor could she understand how would Seia be able to just kill someone like that, without mercy. Or why he viewed killing a man and then thieving him, more honourable, than thieving a man and leaving him alive. Seia couldn’t understand Priya’s point of views any more than she could his.
Seia had told her tales of Far Harad. Of the Tribes. Of Mûmakil. Of Haradrim laws. Of their violent past-time games. Of how the sun looked when it went below the dunes every night. He had grown up on the cruel merciless sands. It was the way of the desert - to kill, or to be killed. Priya however had grown hiding behind her father’s leg, cradled in safety and after her father had abandoned her, she had encountered mostly just kindness. Seia had encountered mostly just prejudice and hatred. One could say, there was very little they shared, despite their infinitely stubborn nature and strange sense of humour. They were the exact opposites. But perhaps in the end, it’s the differences, that draw you towards someone?
