Ordhan noticed that as he spoke, she listened with rapt attention, as if what he had to say was actually interesting. If not for her wide-eyed earnestness he might wonder if she were simply pandering to him in the way that merchants and ale-sellers do, to encourage a bit more gold spent. But there she sat, brimming with interest, as if he were telling a story or singing a song of his own.
Oh, such a pity that he could not take her joke for what it was. It must have been quite comical to see his reaction, the sudden rise of his brows and stiffening of his shoulders, the tension across the knuckles of the hand holding the mug. "What?" he said, astonished. Where they really that coarse here? She laughed, of course, seeming to put a good face on the unfortunate atmosphere.
Her cheerful, dismissive attitude towards trouble was the same concerning barfights. Perhaps she was simply so used to the rowdier crowd that it didn't bother her when it turned violent. Then again, she was a dwarf; Gwaren had its share of them, and by reputation they were much more accustomed to such things. "I hope that it does not get out of hand. Things can be very violent in Denerim." Oh, he had participated in his share of bar fights when he was younger--he had never started any, and never finished any, usually dropping out somewhere in the middle for some reason or another. None of these bore too great a consequence, with the one exception of the time that it had been nobles' children who had picked the fight. That event was...unfortunate.
But something she had said caught his attention. "What do you mean, like your mother?" he asked. Perhaps it was not proper to pry, but the knight was endlessly curious, a thing that often warred against his shyness.
"It is interesting," he protested mildly. Not fascinating, like a line of the Chant or a stanza of a ballad, but still interesting, and his saying so was more a hope that she wouldn't drift off again so soon and leave him to his solitude. But she was simply moving the conversation on, setting questions for him to answer. Ordhan could never keep up with the pace that she spoke; he hoped that his slow, thought-out answers would not bore her.
Ordhan faltered, eyes falling away and fingertips running along the edge of his mug. Surely she didn't want to hear gory accounts of battles, with all the death and fear that came with them. His life was certainly not one to inspire a minstrel. "I...am not sure what you would want to know," he answered sheepishly.