An Odd Crew - II

Timestamp: Plains North of Ostiarium - Night prior to the beating drums and huge bonfire

The night of their second day of traveling, while gathered round the fire after making camp, Melandra pointed her spoon at Tarmen in mock indignation. "I am no ruffian, Ser. I fight with unshakeable honour, and everything I own I have earned - through virtue or my virtues. Nor am I a Lady, least not in the traditional sense. Or rather, I am not always a ruffian nor at all times a Lady. At any rate I am recurrently both, but periodically neither. I came to Arcadia to escape such definitive aspersions to my person. But I have kept myself for the most part insulated in the Duke's Keep to allow adequate time for the mystery of me to marinate among the colonists. So as we have not been properly introduced, I suppose your misinterpretation of my precise personage can be forgiven."

She spun the spoon around with a practiced flourish that generated an accompanying and highly unaccountable swooshing sound, before deftly diving into her bowl of stew. Around a mouthful of…it was generous really to call it stew, but around a mouthful of stew, "Diplomacy among foreigners with whom we share no common tongue, words, or possibly values - I think we can agree that variety of statecraft is likely to require selectively dispensed violence. If any among us could be called a hammer - your words, not mine - I would be the answering instrument of surgical precision. Not with the spoon, but with the sword and sheath. Which begs the question; who is to share my tent tonight? Sir Zane? You rode our horses nearly to death; have you saved any such stamina for what's to come?"