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It was getting late in Mor Dhona; the sun had set bells ago, and Alys could feel the fatigue of running her bar starting to set into her bones. Today had been an alright one, and Alys was damn grateful for that, but that didn't stop her fingers and her feet from aching. The body just had a limit, and Alys was careening dangerously close to it. "Last half-a-bell," she mumbled to herself as she leaned against the bartop with a sigh. "Come on, Alys, just a bit more."
There was an air of exhaustion, of worry, that echoed throughout the whole town. Everyone remembered how the Crystal Braves had stormed the town, how the backrooms of the Seventh Heaven had been taken by force, and how the boys in bluecoats marched out their former comrades at swordpoint. It had been weeks ago at this point, but to Alys, to everyone at her bar, it may as well as have been yesterday.
With the oldest faces gone, keeping the torch lit had fallen much to the Domans and to the members of the Adventurers' Guild. Of the two, Alys had to admit she liked the latter a hair more - they were customers, and frequent ones, too. Regardless of her financial bias, Revenant's Toll needed both to keep intact, and thank the gods for them staying when they could have just left.
The bar had mostly cleared out, only a few of the older regulars hanging around until close as they nursed their drinks. Outside the windows, Alys could see the night guard patrol the empty streets as they always did, ready to chase the roudy back to their homes, and their wary eyes watched the darkest corners for any sign of would-be robbers or bandits. There had been a rise in crime lately, but Alys couldn't say she was surprised - desperation did terrible things to people, and with the Scions gone, and the hamlet on official watch from Ul'dah for its "participation in the Scion's crimes," things were only getting more meager.
Part of her was worried she'd have to say goodbye to yet another home soon, if things didn't change.
"I've seen that look before," a voice to Alys' right said suddenly. She glanced over, annoyed that someone had noticed her weariness, to find a man sitting on a bar stool, harp across his knee, staring back at her. Alys recognized him vaguely; he would come in every now and again, order something weak more out of courtesy than anything else. He'd perform for a few bells before taking a bow and leaving.
Strangely, Alys didn't quite remember him coming in.
"Seen what look before?" Alys retorted, her voice bladed from fatigue.
The Minstrel smiled thinly. "Fatigue." He gestured with a finger beneath both his eyes in slow arcs. "The oldest malady."
"What's the second oldest?" Alys prodded.
The thin smile grew thinner. "Hopelessness." He shuffled some in his seat, lying his harp down so he could scooch closer to the bar. "How have things been of late?"
Alys sighed, staring down at the bard with a blank look in her eyes. "Look." She started, her exhausted voice still more than capable of being strong. "I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but I've got to start cleaning up as soon as they-" She gestured with a thumb in the vague direction of her other, significantly less sober, clientele. "-pack up."
The Minstrel shook his head. "I don't intend to hold you," he said gently, "just to bend your ear a little for a stranger."
"Then you'd better bend it quick." The barkeep grumbled. She found a glass that looked a mite more dirty than the rest and started to clean it, hoping that her making her hands busy would ward off whatever lecture the man had planned.
The Minstrel sat easier back in his seat, and with a finger started to play with the strings of his instrument. The tune wasn't anything, just random notes, but it felt all the same so tantalizingly familiar to Alys' tired ear. "It's easy to forget, when the fates spin against us, that things were ever in our favor." The bard said, his eyes staring into, through Alys. "It becomes hard to remember that once, we had hope, and that things were getting better. You see the upwards climb as a hill, a break in the valley."
He kept strumming at his instrument with his fingers, and the melody was beginning to feel more coherent. It wasn't anything she knew, but it wasn't random, of that she was sure. "But why do we see the valley as the norm, and not just a break in the hills?" He continued, a curl in his voice that contained a dozen submerged feelings. "Why is good unusual, and bad what we expect?"
Alys stopped cleaning the glass, and looked at him sidelong. "I think you're asking the wrong person." She felt like she should have been more sarcastic, but she just couldn't find it in her to be cutting. Instead, she was just being honest.
The Minstrel smiled again kindly. "I disagree, but I can't convince you otherwise tonight." He stopped playing, and slowly worked himself up and out of his seat. As he did, he glanced around at the bar what felt almost like a final time, this weight to his gaze that made Alys worried. "For what it's worth," he said slowly, "I think that things will be climbing up soon." He turned his head back there, and winked. "Sooner than you'd think, I'd bet."
Alys frowned, then shrugged. "If you say so." She looked down at her glass and saw that it was clean once more, her fingers tinting the glass a faint tan as they rested inside. She placed the glass down on the bartop gently, letting the faint clink of it touching the wood recenter her on the work ahead. "Hells if-"
Alys glanced up, but the Minstrel was gone as sure as if he'd never been there at all. Lingering just beyond hearing, she could swear that she could still hear music.