Join Me

A sitting room. Unlike many of the other rooms in the large house, this one is warm. Welcoming. Cosy. It has definitely seen a certain woman's hand. Recently cleaned and thoroughly dusted, the place has been decorated with splashes of colour and verdant hues. Small, decorative trees with small, colourful fruits have been arranged in a circular pattern throughout the room. The windows have been adorned with climbing ivy, which stretch their tendrils from small pots up the veins of iron that crisscross the fancy glass. The Gnome, with her characteristic orange hair, sits daintily in one of high-back chairs, dressed as if she were ready to retire to bed. She is lost in a book, a treatise on Gnomish history.

Daechir enters silently, padding to the entry to the room and looking around. Much has changed in this room even over the course of the last few days. Now it seemed much more homey than it had been before Tawyse's arrival. His red eyes linger over the plants with a touch of fondness. Then, after a moment of reflection upon the room itself Daed clears his throat politely. "Tawyse?" Her name is softly spoken.

Tawyse's prodigious eyebrows flick upwards in surprise, and she shyly looks over the top of the large book in her lap. "Hello, Daechir! How're you this eve?" She closes the book reverently, and sets it carefully upon the arm of the chair. Bouncing out of the comfortable chair, she pads silently on bare feet to the Elf's side. "Is there something you need doing?", she wonders.

"Not at all." He looks troubled nonetheless, and makes a motion with his hand for her to retake her seat. In fact he sort of ushers her toward it, finding a place for himself. Daechir sat on the edge of his seat, watching her for a long moment before finally speaking again. "Do you remember the conversation we had before about my charade as a person willing to buy slaves?"

Tawyse returns to her seat and settles back down, pulling her feet in to sit cross-legged. She watches him in silence and nods in response to his question. "I do. Why do you ask?"

"Perhaps I was a bit hasty when I suggested that I needed nothing done. I meant along the line of your usual duties, but you see..." He hesitates and clasps his hands together before him. "I need someone to beside me to complete the fasade. Since you know of the matter, and my part in it... I thought that I might ask you."

The orange-haired Gnome slowly blinks, the expression of her face changing through a few emotions before settling on puzzled. "You need me in this matter? What would my part be, exactly?" She leans against the arm of the chair, drumming her fingertips on the book.

"I would imagine quite as you are. My supportive house staff. Someone I brought with me to examine the merchandise as it were." He schools his face into nothingness, but it takes something to do it.

Tawyse blinks again, and rubs one of her cheeks, looking tired. "I suppose I can do that. But, uh, I think I would like to go incognito. A disguise. I am willing to help, but people tend to be uhm... vindictive about this sort of thing. I worry for you and myself, but also, those people who know me. Who might be made a target for vigilante justice. Is that okay?"

Daed smiles. "I understand, and I will come up with something to disguise you. I know someone in fact that may be able to do quite well for you." He nods and seems quite tired himself. "I appreciate you doing this, I would not ask... but you know how passionately I feel about this particular matter."

Tawyse nods and smiles in return. "Well... I know that you feel passionately about this. How passionately, I guess I am about to find out." She traces a finger idly around on the book's cover. "So then, what is your plan? What will we be doing and what is the point of this exercise?"

"We will be meeting with those who sell people as slaves, and talking with them about that. The idea is to get information about their source, and whom is buying the most slaves from them." He makes a small motion with a hand. "It is for the most part a very simple plan, for to make a complex one without knowing what we are going into would make it that much more likely that we will not succeed."

Tawyse nods. "And so I am to pose as someone who knows people's conditions well?" She rubs at that cheek again and hmms. "I know a bit, so I suppose I can embellish a little."

"If it comes to that I may ask your opinion." Daed is watching her. "It will be best to say very little, to allow them to talk and fill the silence. To try not to be surprised by them. And if this is too much for you tell me now.”

The wee woman stretches then, a few joints popping somewhere, and she lets out an unladylike grunt at this. "No, it is not too much, I can handle this task you set before me. Are you able to do this, Daechir?"

He considers the question seriously. "It feels sometimes as though it is killing some small part of me to play this person, but if it will save anyone; even one person then it will be worth it to me. So for their sake yes. I will make it through." He smiles softly at the end but not in a terribly happy way.

Tawyse stands again, and slips silently over to his seat, and lays a hand upon his. "I will be at your side from here on out. I shall see that you make it through to the other side of this, yes?"

Daechir gently lays his other hand on top of hers and nods. "You have my gratitude for that Tawyse. I will do my best to do the same for you."

-End-