Another smile. Clopin smiled at his friend before looking down at his lute, continuing to pluck the strings. He loathed playing for their master--he was always treated like some kind of trained animal--but he liked playing for himself and the other slave. This was music that came from the heart.
"Non-gypsies rarely do." His fingers started to dance across the instrument. As he flicked through his mental store of stories, he got more absorbed in the soft music. Finally, he picked one that wasn't meant to be a morality tale. The morality tales were always rather horrifying.
"A long time ago in a forgotten kingdom, there were three peasant brothers. Two were wise, but the youngest was a fool. They were poor and their mother, ailing, couldn't do the things she used to. The brothers had to support their family, but their village was small and had no work for them to do, so slowly but surely, they were succumbing to poverty and hunger.
"The king of the land had a daughter ripe for marriage, but he was a superstitious man and he didn't trust any traditional methods of picking a suitor. The king decided on a plan to find his daughter's future husband, and then he declared that there would be a feast. Every man of the land and beyond was welcome, rich or poor, able or crippled, royal or simple."
He began slowly, his eyes getting distant, as if he were actually there. Listening to him, one could believe that he was speaking from personal experience. He spoke as a natural story-teller, someone who's spent his whole life telling stories to help others escape the evils of the present.