Music and Stone (Closed)

[Yvonne]

Henry kept racking up those gentleman points, didn’t he? Holding open the door for her, such a sweetheart. Always in the right place and doing nice things by her. In the past she’d considered herself lucky if the dark elves she’d known hadn’t closed doors in her face, their lofty noses in the air - they easily overlooked her small stature and paid her no mind. Humans though, they could be altogether different, this minstrel especially.

“You damn well know I’m busy, you frivolous fiddler,” Tyvin shot back, not looking up from a twin-arced battle-axe sharpening against a revolving grindstone. Hohoo, temper temper. Easy does it now. Sparks of burning metal showered the stone floor as his experienced hands refined an edge into a menacing weapon, controlling the angle and the pressure applied. With his back to them and every ounce of concentration poring over his craft, Tyvin hadn’t realized anyone else had come in besides an old friend who understood his disposition well. Head down, but his ears looked decidedly hairy.

Yvonne let him work and took the moment as an opportunity to absorb it all. The uncomplicated smithy had four walls in a square arrangement and those boxed-in a round open-pit furnace filled with glowing coals. The ceiling itself narrowed into a small rectangular shape, then rose vertically. Upon closer inspection she realized that would be a chimney, for ventilation of abundant smoke. Workbenches littered with the smith’s tools bordered half of the room while an anvil and bellows dominated the other half.

The half-dwarf had a suspicion the armour and weapons resting or cooling on the racks had recently been forged. A distinct lack of dust upon the armaments gave it away - the blacksmith knew how to move his products and must have been collecting a tidy sum for his efforts. Either that or a desperate demand for his pieces snapped them up as quickly as he crafted them.

“What do you want Henry? The goblins threaten the town, this had better be good or-- oh,” Tyvin prompted with a snarl but caught his error, as his muscular, brawny body reluctantly turned to face them. Yvonne noticed pointed teeth and a few seconds of shame in his eyes which he rapidly buried, crossing his coarsely haired forearms and redirecting his focus to removing grease and filth from beneath a fingernail with a… was that a clawed thumb? No, but a long fingernail nonetheless.

“You could have warned me a lady had come into my smithy. I’d have kept my manners intact. Too late for that now,” the husky blacksmith complained. He shifted his gaze, a tad uncomfortably from Henry down to Yvy. Black of hair, a mustache, a short beard and those eyes; the drow-dwarf couldn’t make up her mind about them. Either his eyes were worryingly bloodshot or rendered a natural colour of red.

“A pleasure ta be making yer acquaintance, sir,” she greeted him, providing an elegant curtsy. Though neither was it low or linger as long as the curtsy she’d offered to Mother Matilda.

Already got this Tyvin on tha back foot. No need ta make him more uncomfortable than he already be. He looks ta be human but I never met one so covered in body hair. Even his eyebrows join together in unholy matrimony. Tha local barber taken off on an extended holiday, eh?