He knew he should have never followed Darrian. Dolain should have gone straight to his place and slept the day away. Why did he help Darrian anyways? He despised the other elf and now here he was with an angry dwarf, two annoyingly stupid knife-ears, and a group, that apparently wasn’t too happy at him, headed straight his way. He reminded himself this was for Kay, for Shiv... but he couldn’t help but wonder where was Shiv. If Shiv knew his sister was taken by slavers, Dolain figured the young man would meet up as soon as he got word that Dolain was back... unless... the idea that maybe Shiv had also been taken by slavers occurred to Dolain and made his chest constrict. Best not to think about it, he reminded himself, moving his thoughts back to the dwarf instead of dwelling on what could be happening to his closest friend.
Unfortunately for Dolain, he decided to bring his attention back as soon as Falina began to let a flurry of angry words his way. His eyes widened. He didn’t fully understand what all the girl was saying or what she was implying, but he knew it was nothing good towards him. As she finished up her rant, Dolain stepped closer to Falina. He almost reached out to flick her on the shoulder, but restrained himself. Instead, he made do with staring down at her. His voice softened, and was uncharacteristically steady as he spoke directly to Falina, “You probably don’t know this because you came from under a rock, but this is my turf and whatever is going on in these walls is my business.” He glanced her over again, this time with a challenging twinkle in his eye. Dolain bit his lower lip and was about to say something else, but stopped when he noticed a familiar figure walking their way. Stepping quickly away from Falina, he watched as Lalin appeared to greet the group. Dolain noticed his bow in her hands. So she had brought it to him. A happy grin appeared on his features. He kept smiling even when Lalin’s tone turned to anger.
While it wasn’t necessarily predictable, Dolain had been watching Lalin and noticed when her muscles twitched and her arms began to raise. He was able to see the bow go up in the air and head straight towards him. He quickly ducked with a skill that expressed his background in barfighting. As soon as the bow had swished past where his head had been a second ago, Dolain returned to his standing position. He placed his hands on his hips. A loud, nervous chuckle left him as he gazed at Lalin in a sort of disbelief. Had she really just taken a swing at him? And now she was yelling. Even though he knew it probably would make her angrier, he couldn’t get rid of the smile on his face. As she shoved the bow and quiver towards him, he tried his best not to drop the items out of his arms. When Lalin seemed to be at a loss for words, Dolain forced the nervous smile away finally. He glanced at the items in his arms then let them drop to the side on the ground. Dolain swiftly moved closer to Lalin. He reached out, his arms wrapping around Lalin in a hug, “Lalin, I... I didn’t know you needed me that bad.” A concerned expression had appeared in place of the nervous grin from before. It was a sweet expression which Lalin, no doubt, had seen many times in the past.