cups of wine (vedette)
Dark walnut suited this room. From the wood panels that coated the walls, to the circular spot of a table, to the high-backed chairs, to the bed frame. All of it stained as dark as could be, rich in color and deep as the night's sky. Koe thought the wine was rapidly ruining his sense of verse and rhyme. A child could have announced that it was deep as the night sky. With an annoyed sort of grimace at the pitcher - still half-full despite his impaired state of being - Koe hefted it, and poured more into his goblet. Wine was the sort of thing that could affect a dragon - if it was a dragon, full and entire, drinking from a horse trough. If a dragon shaped as a man took to drinking, he had all the same difficulties as a man of similar height and weight might have. Which was to say, he began to grow extremely intoxicated.
Koe had not been intoxicated in some time.
Parchment was spread out before him, an assortment of single bars that he had yet to flesh out. Fleeting sequences of song that gathered around him, that had to be written down before they were forgotten. After the first cup of wine he'd played a few from memory - and broke out the rest to play for Vedette's entertainment. She had a good ear, and a willing smile, so that when he played something Vedette enjoyed he knew it immediately. Koe did enjoy a larger audience. But something about playing for one brought back youth in a way that no elixir ever could. Wine, and a tinge of spice on the tip of his tongue, and his fingers light on the strings, and her laugh when he announced - grin swallowing his cheeks - that he'd forgotten the rest.
They both knew there had never been a 'the rest'.
Koe did not know what he should think of her. She was an enigma to him in some ways, ways that made him wonder what would happen if he put a foot wrong with her. No, Koe thought he knew. Behind all of those smiles and that easy manner was a critical mind. And an angry mind. Anger was not an emotion that came easily to him. Even those dragons who had consumed errant lordlings had not actually made him ... angry. He had been stunned, and horrified, and felt pity for them. But anger. Anger was something he tried not to cultivate, something he tried to excise as soon as it appeared. Not her. She had the sort of festering temper that he'd not seen since... well, since Minaht.
Which made him wonder if his intentions toward this lady dragon before him were entirely honorable. Entirely proper. Or even entirely thought-out. Vedette had a light he had not seen in quite some time. A spark of life. It was more than just her easy but genuine smile. It was more than that much-vaunted youth infecting his limbs. It was more than just a kiss of life to an otherwise dull and sometimes monotonous ride. How did a bard write endless songs on love, some of which still circulated, and still know nothing of his own heart's pattern of choice? Not that he thought he could be in love with Vedette. Or anyone, so soon after meeting them. it was not a question of love. Of lust, or of kinship, or of... respect? He did not rightly know. It was the not knowing that tormented him, coupled with the fact that he could not figure such things out for himself.
Minaht's eyes held the same spark once, the same life. He could recall it quite clearly. But she had been eager for something... power, or perhaps the illusion of it. A cause. A righteous cause that she could name to anyone to feel superior. It was not enough to search out her own worth. That had to be defined by someone else. First her family, and then Koe, until finally... until finally she had led herself astray with her desire. Until she attacked the being she claimed to love. What of Vedette? Because he saw that spark, because he saw that gleam, did it mean he would also someday see that desire in her as well? That temper and that anger which lurked just beneath the surface? He wanted to find out. Or the wine wanted to find out. Koe had not managed to work out which was which. He only knew that the music made things both more and less complicated.
He would settle for that.
A creak of old wood as he leaned forward, pressing the goblet to his lips, careful not to let any drip onto the sitar that straddle his lap. Two oil lamps were burning. One in the sleeping chamber, and one in the sitting room, so that orange coated her like a second skin. Even the lacquered paint on his sitar caught it well enough. Such paint had been resisted for its effects on accoustic performance, but the journeyman had assured him that it was thin enough in volume once dry. Koe had confirmed this with pleasing results. Now he could not imagine building another instrument without having it coated in that fine protective paint as well. Not that he had need of a new instrument. Now he was stalling. It was a relief not to think about the reason they were here, for a moment.
A great relief.
"All these years of travel," Koe said with a merry gleam in his eye. "And you never learned how to play an instrument?"
His tone was critical, but his face gave him the lie. Koe clearly did not mean a word that escaped his lips just now. The goblet went back onto the table, this time atop a sheet of music.
A happy sound, the clank of silver against wood. Dark walnut truly did suit this room.