The quill scratches soothingly across pale parchment, leaving an ordered trail of numbers. Beyond the door of the small office, where the scribe now works, voices from the larger room jumble together: bartering, arguing, laughing. Their sound melds into an inchoate, muted roar, like the lapping of waves on yielding sand.
A stocky dwarven merchant sticks his bearded face through the gap between door and jam. "How goes it, Ivandar?" he asks.
The dark-haired man looks up from his copying, straightening his back and tilting his neck from side to side to work out the stiffness. "It goes well, Master Ulfas. I've started the second copy already. I'll have the third done for you by the end of the day, as promised."
"Good, good," the dwarf replies. "Then I'll not delay you with questions. Let me know if you need anything."
Ivandar glances over the parchment, quills, ink, pummice stone, and other tools the merchant's guild has provided. "Should be fine," he assures the dwarf; "but, at need, I'll come find you."
Ulfas nods and withdraws, to return to his bartering and sales out front.
Ivandar turns back to the pages he's copying, but his concentration has been interrupted. He stands, stretching the kinks from his back, and moves to check the sheet laid to dry on an adjoining desk. The small room is lightly used this afternoon, only two other scribes bend to similar work, each lost in their own worlds of numbers and receipts.
Ivandar lifts his most recently completed page and shifts it back and forth. The white sand scattered upon it - used to absorb any excess ink - rolls about the page. This proves the writing dry, so he pours the sand off into a small bowl and adds the page to the small stack of its fellows.
He fills a rough clay mug with water from a ceramic jug, and stands with it, sipping, looking out the small window. A few unimpressive birds peck and scratch at the patch of winter-withered grass behind the guildhall. Absently, he runs the fingers of his free hand along his opposite arm, echo of a remembered touch.
He'd risen that moring, not from his familiar bed in the small home beyond the hedgewall, but from one in an upper room at the Pony. Its mattress was far less comfortable than his own, yet had been made more enjoyable by the company it kept. The gentling of his lips into a half smile at the memory is offset by a slight furrowing of his brow.
Events in the past few days have been ... unexpected, to say the least. Good, yes. Probably. But unexpected. He remembers copper hair threading with his own dark strands this morning, touched by the dawn light sneaking impudently through the shutters to peek in on them. An entwined closeness he's not had for many long months. One now rediscovered suddenly. Maybe too suddenly?
"Ought to be more worried by it," he murmurs to himself, between sips from the mug. Or worried by the fact he isn't more worried by it. The last thing he needs is a repeat of the disasterous courtship with Ayleen. The one that left blades along the edges of his shattered heart, razors that still shift unexpectedly to cut at him from within.
He shakes his head, tossing away the thought like a buzzing horsefly. Foolishness. That had been a relationship of years. Hardly comparable to the scarce fortnight he's known the huntress, for all that her company has proved unnervingly comfortable. As if the jagged edges of their wounds mesh, cogwheels turning in familiar tandem.
Ivandar sips again, glancing over to where more blank pages wait the attentions of his quill. "Infatuation," he mutters. "Nothing more."
Besides, what does he really know of her? Precious little, despite that thrumming connection which seemed to spring up so quickly. Love - real, dangerous, wounding love - requires a lot more than brief acquaintanceship. He knows this. Knows it requires learning the whole of a person, not merely the surface.
What does the copper-haired huntress do, off in the wilds? Does she have other lovers? Are there secrets or dangers lurking in her shadowed past, poised to spring forth? What silly, innocuous words or sights can set her off? Which ones can make her melt and grin? He knows none of these things. Knows so little.
No, he assures himself, this is merely companionship, comfort, closeness -- just like they agreed. A respite from loneliness. And it can be enjoyed as such. Should be enjoyed. That will be safe. Yes; safe. Both of them are too wise - and too injured - to rush into anything more. Or to want to. Right?
"Just infatuation," he repeats, setting down the mug. He manages to sound convincing even to his own ears.
He steps back to the desk, dips the quill into the inkpot, and resumes his copying. If he finishes in good time, it may still be early enough to stop in for a drink at the Pony again tonight. And see who's there.
