Legends of Belariath
Roquai
Tohm and Othelia
It’s late at night in this place. The bar flies have gone away to sleep in their rented rooms and most other patrons have filtered out, returning to their beds and bunks and homes. That was the way things went for most of the Lonely Inn’s customers. It was a fixed, banal pattern for well-known warriors and quest seekers. They had money to spend, hours to waste between adventures, lots of tawdry worries, and lots of free ale to drown them with. They were the lucky majority.
The inauspicious few here that could barely afford admission could never find a dull moment to down their drinks. Enjoying a pint with a friend or a fellow nobody was a hard-fought battle because of the hectic ambiance.
Pushing through the main entrance, blocked by a thick wooden door better suited to the gate of a fortress than an inn, and looking to be older then the rest of the building by at least a decade, a tumultuous sea of sights, sounds, and smells rushes to greet us. Spreading about the room are pockets of travelers, all seemingly wealthy and boisterous. That is the natural impression. The flashy and loud are always the first to gain attention in these rampant social settings. So, standing in that same doorway, the true air behind the energized atmosphere becomes clearer with time.
Dark booths line the walls. Many are drawn closed with light-dampening curtains. Inside those recesses that aren’t closed to us are bodies that can be seen doing a number of things. All that halts curious gazes from prying into the personal activities of these standoffish persons is insufficient lighting. The gloom gathered inside of these pockets is at a perfect tone and depth, concealing the occupants while drawing in the curious stare to no relief. Watching a cheerless face wrapped in darkness, their eyes scanning directly through you and out the door whence you came, lends you the impression that secretive temperament will never change, and that discontinuance might be prudent.
Between the groups of adventurers, and sometimes in the middle of them, are other figures that are not so extraordinary. They willingly drown themselves in the din that seethes around their ears, giving a polite nod or a quip phrase to friends (or enemies?) who make passes at them. Regality is the theme of the day. It’s plain to see that these cooler figures are less decked out than their extravagant acquaintances. It doesn’t seem to bother them.
Yet still, the axes of conversation in this place seem centered around the traveler types. The air has a distinct lack of basic company, the roots of Nanthalion.
There are wenches and serving girls who have been peasantry all their lives. That’s obvious by the masks of feigned mirth on their faces as drunken patrons slap their bottoms. Only poor townsfolk take such indignity for scraps of food. But there isn’t a single one of these common folk who are enjoying themselves. Not a single one is rubbing elbows, or even so much as enjoying one another’s company.
That would appear to be the case in every corner. It will be much longer into the night, when the common buccaneers have left the tavern’s main floor to do other things, when the commoner folk feel welcome enough to show up in abundance. And even then, there will be so few.
So, we wait. Don’t worry about getting in anyone’s way. The reason that earlier character, the suspicious one in the booth, looked at us so nonchalantly and coldly was because he couldn’t see us. In terms of physics, we’re hardly even here. Consider yourself as a speck of dust or a will-o’-wisp. It hardly matters because the results are the same; you aren’t to touch, only observe. We’ll miss out on a lot of fun for sure, but trust me, this is ideal for voyeuristic exploration.
We don’t apply to the Lonely Inn in any physical sense; we can close our ghostly eyes and appear at the time and place we want to be. We’re already at our destination, so let’s just skip forward by a few hours, into the smothering darkness before the first morning’s light…
You can open your eyes, now.
The hearth fire has almost faded, although it’s at least as enchanted as the rest of the tavern as the embers never die. The lanterns sets about to replace the sun are at the ends of their wicks. Whores and slaves sleep behind the bar and in closed booths. We can’t see them but we know they’re there, their big hearts drumming in our omniscient ears and their sweet breath warming our facetless faces, tangled bodies radiating with soporific life. It’s a very peaceful time at the lonely inn.
Amidst it all are two very peace-loving people. Halflings, actually. And they’re playing a game.
They’re sitting beside a long table usually reserved for drunken gatherings. The inn is a universally biased place, so proper seating for these half-folk isn’t hard to find. Tables, however, are nearly impossible. Instead of rousing one of the sleeping servant girls to drag a lamp stand up from the kennels, the pair of jovial hobbits has made do with a bench. The larger halfling’s knees fit under it with about an inch to spare, leaving plenty of room for his companion.
This duo consists of a father and daughter. What they are playing is a game with no name and a hundred labels. Specifics are both unnecessary and would prove to be fruitless, and boring. There is no interesting halfling lore I can quote to you behind this time absorbing activity, nor any interesting halfling lore about halflings. What IS interesting is our innate ability to watch, and only watch, and perhaps remember. So we peers downward, up from below, over their shoulders, and around their sides to view all that needs to be viewed.
A single coin is in the middle of the bench between then – and then it is not. What just happened? Our thoughts are interrupted by a burst of muted giggling from the both of them. The female, the daughter, opens her fist, which was tucked underneath an elbow. It’s empty.
The other halfling, whose name is Tohm, does the same. In the middle of his fat hand is the object we had our ‘eyes’ on before. It’s shiny, and red. If we’d done out homework we would know that this is a copper denomination, one one-hundredth of a mehrial.
Their bellies still convulsing with laughter, Tohm sets the coin back in the middle of the bench.
That makes more sense now, you think. We lean in more closely. In a flash of hair and peachy skin the coin is gone again. Even with our hawkeyed vision, the only way to determine the winner is to cheat. Again, Othelia, the daughter, opens an empty hand. This time, her cheeks burn with the same tone as the coin’s. Tohm opens his fist while making a cooing noise, muttering in halfling slang, taking a boastful moment to reset the piece and reset the game.
To simplify, we can call this little pastime “snatch-grab.” What they are doing is a race. One must grab the coin before the other – simpler than you thought, eh? We can ignore the game for a moment while we speak on other things, because the instant the coin settled from being dropped it was snatched up again, and that time has already passed while you weren’t paying attention. Othelia won, but the brilliance of her cherubic cheeks remains.
No one watches these two. There is a man tending the bar who is dressed, who walks, and who talks like all the other richer patrons. There is one unconscious Half Elf at the end of the bar, sprawled against the counter with his legs akimbo over the floor. Discounting the slaves and servants asleep in their alcoves, these halflings make up exactly 50% of the room’s inhabitance. These are high times for such little people.
Below us, Othelia does the proper thing by pausing the game to share a few words with her father. She holds the coin in her bunched-up fist below the pit of her arm. Never would she lay the coin on the bench and continue to speak, for that implies she’s waiting for someone to steal her copper by setting it out in the open, and Tohm would be forced to oblige in proper hobbit fashion. But we’ve missed the gist of their conversation and only catch the tail of Othelia’s parting statement before lowering the coinage back to the bench. Deftly, she gives it a spin by flicking her broad middle finger, causing it to whirr like a top in perfect stationary stillness. A paradox - a spinning coin that appears to be still.
The blur of red-orange grows sporadic and sputters. It slows down, no longer spinning but gyrating along one edge, getting slower still, now wavering and keening airily against the wood.
“You never could snatch the wheat seedlin’s outta me hands. D’ya remember those times?” the father taunts in lazy halfling dialect.
“I was six, Da,” she spoke gently, with a hint of laughter, as if having to remind him. Quicker than a switch, Othelia’s tiny fist shot out and lifted the coin off the table’s face, hugging it to her blouse. Her grin was filled with flat, pearl colored teeth. Tohm was reminded of fresh white corn kernels gleaning out of the shuck on a sun-baked cob, and couldn’t help but smile in kind.