(Closed to Maia and Heartsblood.)

There was a lot to be said about the worth of a warm drink on a cold night, but there was even more that could be said about the merits of a cold drink on a cold night, especially if that cold drink was alcoholic. Sipping a frothing cup wouldn’t necessarily send a shiver of warmth down one’s spine, but enough of it could do wonders for making one forget about ever having been cold in the first place.

Gabriel had neither the intention nor the financial means of getting drunk, but the bitter cold oozing in through the window next to his table seemed to be mocking him for his sobriety. He slouched in his chair and glared sourly at anyone who got close enough to laugh ale-curdled breath into his face, which happened far more often than he would have tolerated in a less crowded establishment. It was a small tavern in an unremarkable town about five miles outside of Knife’s Edge, one of the few roadside establishments that didn’t have an inn on its second floor. He’d been to one of those earlier in the evening and had finally left in a fit of jealous intolerance after having watched one too many smirking men follow a busty girl up the creaking stairway. Prostitution was a little too unhygienic for his tastes, but the weeks of lonely travel had put a yearning in his heart that only the company of a charming woman could satisfy.

A lump rose in Gabriel’s throat to accompany the image of the green-eyed beauty that rose in his mind at the memory of such a woman. If real life was like a storybook, he would never have left Elise’s side and would have abandoned his journey to recover his father’s daggers, taking her home as his bride to be the lady of the Talisman fiefdom. They would have had children and grown old together and never once had to worry about murderous bandits and silly quests for the retrieval of family heirlooms.

Alas, life was much crueler than that. Elise was far away and Gabriel was broke, too embarassed by the prospect of returning to his mother and sisters without the treasures that he'd sworn to find to even write a letter requesting money from his family's coffer. Gabriel despondently swirled his finger along the rim of his half-empty mug, taking shallow breaths through his mouth to avoid having to smell the rabble that surrounded him. In truth, the tavern was actually on the higher end of the town’s available alcohol-supplying establishments, but it was far below that which the noble man had spent the bulk of his life accustomed to and was therefore barely acceptable. Unfortunately, being without money limited his options, and as the sky began to swap its pink veil of sunset for night’s dark cloak, Gabriel was coming to the depressing realization that he would either have to spend the rest of the night nursing the mug of ale that he had purchased with coins fortuitously found in the street or else sleep in the alley like a homeless beggar. His plan was to go to Knife's Edge in search of rumors about the bandits who'd murdered his father, but if he didn't even have enough money to pay for a hotel . . .

He grimaced at the direness of his situation and sighed mournfully, lifting his eyes from the stained wooden table to scan the jocular crowd. It almsot seemed as though the day was a holiday, judging from the festive mood of the crowd. Was there a celebration going on whose cause he’d missed? It didn't seem just that so many people could choose the night of his ripest melancholy to rejoice in the boundless squalor of their poverty-stricken existence. Sure, they had money to waste on ale, but they were probably going to have to forgo food for the next week to make up the deficit caused by their alcoholism. The men were laughing now, but they wouldn't be grinning so cheerily when their magpie wives found out about their night of drunken revelry. Gabriel's frown deepened and he repressed a shiver as a gust of wind outside sent cold air seeping through his coat. How could everyone else be so happy when he was so miserable?