A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 04: Conversation

"They'll feed us that much here." Ashyr told him. Such a request wouldn't make her feel like they were even anyway. The caravan fed her when her hunting wasn't fruitful, and she provided them with the extras if it was. If the caravan didn't have food to fill their bellies, Ashyr would pitch in the coin to assure that they could eat. Fed guards were good guards. It wasn't out of goodwill. It was out of pure practicality.

He shrugged "I suppose that you are correct in that assessment. I do draw rations from the quartermaster, after all. My reverse-invitation was not out of pure practicality." Frankly, Caleldir had sort-of-vaguely asked her out to a 'date' as the slang term went. Since she did not take the bait, she was not interested in him. A tragedy. Oh well, there were always other damsels. Not that Ashyr was really much of a damsel. Frankly, he did not doubt that she could beat him in an ordinary fight. She had the easy carriage of one who had been a warrior for several lifetimes of men.

"So... know any good jokes?" He asked, changing the subject.

Ashyr did, in fact know a couple. Most were in her native language and the rest were in Undercommon. There was no telling how they would translate. The drow was willing to try, however. Her previous grumpiness had mostly disappeared for the moment, though she had sworn to herself that shopkeep would pay eventually. For now, she was in a better mood. It was dark, and the constant headaches she got from the sun left when that horrid ball of light set. She felt pretty good. Playful, even.

"I know some." She said, her tone dubious. "I assume you don't know any languages of the underdark?" She didn't wait for him to answer. Nobody here knew those languages. "Ah... I'll translate. So three commoners get stuck in a cave-in, two males and a female. There was rubble on one side, a drop into nothingness on the other, but a good amount of space in between. They can't move the rubble and the drop goes nowhere. They are trapped. Quickly, they get bored and realize that there's nothing to do but fuck. They do so for a few days until the female dies. The males are still bored, of course, so they continue fucking. A few days more of this, and they start to feel disgusted with themselves... so they throw the female's body into the hole of nothingness." She snickered at herself. Ashyr always liked that joke. She hoped something didn't get lost in translation.

Caleldir began to respond to Ashyr's question about language, but the words died on his tongue when she began speaking. As she told the 'joke', the expression on his face suddenly became purposely hard to read: a sort of studied neutrality. When she had finished, he did not laugh, though he did smile in an awkward way. "Your story is... interesting. I am trying to reverse-translate it to see if the point of it is more apparent in the original language, but you will have to give me moment on that." His tone was as studiously neutral as his face. Stunningly however, he spoke in Undercommon. His accent was both heavy and flat and some of his word choices were highly anachronistic, as if he had learned the language from reading thousand-year-old Underdark literature, but he was comprehensible. He thought for a moment, then his face lit up. "Ah, I understand." He said, still in Olde Undercommon, "'Tis a darke jest concerning shame most intense, and souls that deal with that shame in a manner most profoundly unhealthy." He nodded approvingly. After a few seconds, he continued in Common. "The Underdark sounds like a terribly unpleasant place."

"What? No! Its funny because - " She replied, but cut herself off short. She was both frustrated that he didn't get her favorite joke and confounded that he knew a very archaic form of the common language of the Underdark. He didn't seem to think that either was a big deal. He was right about one thing, though. Her homelands were a horribly unfriendly place. The joke she told was mild by the standards of her people. There were no demon dicks or castrations in her joke, which set it apart as one of the more surface-friendly of humorous tales.

He let out a long breath, smoothly pushing away the discomfort evident in his manner. "It seems that we have some pretty severe cultural differences in play here." He observed. "My jokes are not likely to... Wait, I can think of one in a similar vein. A long time ago in my hometown, there was a woman who was suddenly taken ill, and appeared to die. Her husband threw a lavish funeral for her, but when the pallbearers were taking the dead woman to her grave, they stumbled and collided with the wall around the cemetery. After the jolt, the woman in the casket woke up from her coma, and popped out, clearly alive. She lived for another decade. When she died, her husband threw another lavish funeral. As the pallbearers were taking the woman to her grave, they stumbled in the same place, but the husband leapt up to steady them. "Watch out for that wall!" he shouted." Caleldir finished his joke with a cheerful nod. Hopefully, the cultural differences between the two of them were not too insurmountable.

She bit back her questions to listen to Cal's joke. It went over similarly well with her. She understood what it implied, but... "If he wanted her dead, why didn't he make sure of it himself?"

As they were talking, a chill began to settle across the city, a remnant of a winter only recently passed. Ashyr's exposed skin prickled with gooseflesh and the tips of her ears ache. When it got really cold out, she either went so deep underground that the surface weather didn't matter, or she was being active around the forest: running, climbing, hunting. Now all she was allowed to do was sit there and watch. The drow crossed her arms against her torso, an action that highlighted her cleavage unintentionally. Mostly unintentionally. Ashyr had warming clothing in one of the caravans, but she refused to go get it if it appeared that the other elf was just fine with the cold. Pride wouldn't allow her to appear weaker than him.

The cold had no effect on Caleldir. It never did. Well, that was not true. It was not discomfort that affected him but something else. His skin was ordinarily just pale, like that of most north-living men and elves who did not get all that much sun, but the chilly winds hitting his exposed flesh caused it to whiten slightly, and begin to show the barest hint of translucence. Only the very keenest of observers would have been able to detect the slight change, but when Caleldir observed Ashyr's subtle discomfort (and not observing her lovely bosoms, definitely. Absolutely not. Nope) his eyes immediately flickered down to his own hands, observing the change. He shrugged. "Because in that town they had really good divination magic. No crime ever went unpunished. He would never have gotten away with killing his wife if he had been of a mind to do so. But more than that, people of the surface..." he thought for a moment. "Let me rephrase that. People of my home country were not fond of such lawless actions. The biggest crime spree of my hometown during childhood was when little Tyonis Grum stole half a cake from every goodwife in the town. It was quite an event. They talked about it for years after." His tone was purposely light, as if he was concealing a small worry. He glanced again at his hand, fancying he could see a shadow of what lay behind it. He stood up. "The weather is getting rather chilly. If you would be so kind as to watch the tent flap for five minutes or so, I am going to grab a coat. I can get one for you as well."

"What? Uhh... yeah." Ashyr agreed hesitantly. She briefly contemplated refusing to let him get something warm from him, to somehow prove that she was stronger than him by not being bothered by the cold. She decided against it. If there was any reason she needed her skills as a fighter she needed to be a proper body temperature. An icicle, while dangerous when dropped, was not particularly good with a sword.

After walking just out of sight of Ashyr, Caleldir started vigorously jumping up and down and rubbing his hands together (it probably looked slightly silly). He checked his hands again. The color and opacity was back to normal. He let out a great sigh of relief. Not feeling the cold, he frequently forgot about the risks that it carried.

While he was gone, she thought over his response to her question about his joke. Particularly, she thought of lawlessness. Laughter swelled within the tent flaps. She never considered her homelands lawless. They had laws. The drow had tenants that were mostly followed very strictly.

After a few minutes of Ashyr's contemplations, Caleldir strode back into the tent with his typcial theatricality. "I have returned from my quest." He said gallantly. "And retrieved what I went for. Anything important happen while I was gone?"

Ashyr looked back up from her reverie. She flashed a brilliant and honest smile when he handed her something to keep warm, and shook her head in response to his question. She had other things on her mind than the immediate dangers of people watching a show that they had not paid for.

"I've noticed your very strict 'murder' laws here." She began after she got settled again. "We have no such thing set in place. It isn't lawless for a drow to kill someone - as long as the murdered is not a pregnant drow, of course. A drow could kill whomever she wants, as long as she's prepared to face the house war that usually comes after." She laughed a short, almost derisive bark. "Otherwise the Underdark would be full to bursting with drow. It would be unsustainable what with how long we live and how much we like sex." It both made sense and didn't seem at all evil to Ashyr. "So it's either a relatively quick death because you did something to piss someone off, or slow starvation because no one's allowed to do anything. I know which one I'd prefer."

"-And before you start to worry; yes, I know it's different up here. I don't plan on starting a one-woman murder spree." No, she planned on letting her people enslave and kill potentially thousands of surface folk.

Frankly, Caleldir was somewhat surprised to see Ashyr smile in a way not reminiscent of an angry wolf, snarling panther, or starving shark. It was actually quite refreshing to see. Of course, the joy that he felt from observing her joy was rather short-lived, as she leapt into a discussion of morality, or the lack of it, in the Underdark. "I had no idea things had gotten that bad." He shook his head, then continued in a thoughtful tone. "Last I heard, the Drow were suffering from the effects of terrific underpopulation, not overpopulation. Nirza Blackda- " Suddenly, he realized what he just said. "Err... Sorry. I suppose that I should read reports more current than twelve hundred years ago." He looked worried for a moment, but that worry quickly passed like a cloud over his face.

"Oh, no. We are enjoying a healthy population right now. All thanks to the murders, you know." She interjected. Her eyes danced with merriment, and she was tempted to say something more, but Caleldir opened his mouth to speak again.

"But I refuse to accept that slow death of starvation or unrestrained murderous sprees are your only options. The drow are famous for the quality of their enchantments, exotic trade goods, and alchemy." He left unstated, but slightly implied in his town that most of those 'enchantments' were murderous in nature, the 'trade goods' were nearly universally nasty weapons and traps, and the 'alchemy' was mostly poisons. "If... your people were to channel their skills towards more positive ends, you could trade for food with the overworld. In fact, you could become very rich indeed. The overworld can potentially produce enough food to support many thousands of times the planet's total population. And do not use the excuse that the overworld would refuse to do business with your people. That is simply not true. They are suspicious only because of the Drow's actions: if the actions ceased, so would the suspicion. Plenty of your people have found acceptance in the overworld, once they proved that they were 'not like their evil kin'." He shook his head. "No, it is your people's murderous culture that traps you in this vicious cycle of death and destruction. You cannot blame your location: only yourselves." His words had begun to take on a tone of subdued passion.

After a few moments of silence, he slapped himself. "I am sorry, that was completely out of line. Forgive my harsh words. I meant no offense."

Ashyr's face grew passive the more he spoke about what he thought her culture was capable of. It was clear that, beyond his book knowledge of a time even further back than her grandmother, he knew nothing of her culture. Her face grew even more serious and, frankly, slightly offended that he'd think it was as easy as being what the surface called 'good.'

"We are the children of the Spider Queen, Cal. If you know anything about the drow, you'd know about her." He words were neither prideful nor regretful. She just stated a hard fact. "The drow you find up here are outcasts for a reason." Let him think of that what he will. "To say nothing of the grip that the Light Elves have on the best lands of the surface." Or had, rather, in the case of these lands.

"Ah, the spider queen." Caleldir said flatly. "Like the other 'gods'-" He paused. The next thing he said was low and angry. "An obstacle." Before he could say much more though, he detected something on the barest border of his senses. Some rumbling he could not quite place. It was faint, subtle, far away. He frowned, turning to Ashyr to see if she knew what it was. She had elven ears as much as he did, if it was not his imagination then she would be able to hear whatever it was. But as he turned, he heard her chair clatter across the stone pavement. Ashyr looked worried. Without a word, she ran off. Was it just his imagination... or did she seem... guilty? No, it had to be his imagination.

Another, much louder noise met his ears. And then there was fire.