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“Amalthea,” said Mr. Dekarios.
She shot up so fast her head spun, her face flushing under the sudden attention. She’d been sitting at the edge of the fire tracing idle patterns into the grooves of her lyre, the conversation between the group little more than pleasant noise. They’d been going around for the past few minutes asking everybody’s favourite something or other. She would have liked to retreat into her tent, but she figured her sudden departure would draw more attention than simply making herself part of the scenery. Now she felt like a field mouse under a sky full of hawks. Lae’zel stroked her thumb across her blade, eyes fiery under her brows. Shadowheart tilted her head at her as if she was inspecting dirt under her heel.
She peeked the connection open. ‘Yes, sir?’
“You must have a vast repertoire. What’s your favourite song?”
Her memory lapsed into a melody that came as simply as breathing. ‘It’s… an aria my mentor composed,’ she said. ‘I doubt you’ve heard it.’
Karlach furrowed her brows. “Raphael wrote ‘Dragon’s Hoard’ ?”
‘What? No-’ But Karlach was already mumbling and beating her thigh as if finding the best place to jump into a game of skip-rope. She sang, “I can’t afford a dragon’s hoard, for I’d be torn asunder,”
“It matters not, my lass has loot much sweeter yet to plunder,” Wyll jumped in.
They finished together with a knock of their tankards. “Betwixt her legs I’ll drink to dregs ambrosia, ale and honey, and if I should go drown in her I’ve wasted not my money!”
‘That’s- that’s ridiculous!’ Her face ached with the fury of her blush. Her mind was a spray of playing cards and Astarion was cackling. ‘That isn’t my favourite song!’
“That's what I heard,” Shadowheart said, ducking out of the shower of Karlach’s hot ale as she continued to sing with Wyll. “Unless Raphael isn’t in the lucrative business of penning lewd drinking ditties?”
‘He- of course he isn’t!’ she cried, but to her dismay the delicate tones of the aria were nowhere to be found under the table-stomping. She forced the notes of the piano back in but Astarion interjected, shimmying into her space.
“Oh no no, I want to hear this story.”
Amalthea shrank into herself. ‘It was catchy,’ she said. She snapped the connection shut.
It earned a round of laughter from them and the conversation swept past. She would chime in from time to time when called upon, oranges, soft coral pink, she’d be a cat if she could choose, but in the lulls she was free to recall in solitude looking into a pub one sunset.
A bard danced upon the tables, bright-smiled and shining with sweat, fingers on fire across his lute. Everyone seemed as one as they sang, the burly arm of a sailor slung over a patriar’s silken shoulder. Blissfully, raucously happy, all their slurring voices coming together in song.
It was catchy- the simple word made her wince- but dirty and unrefined. Base, when she was made for far greater heights. She’d have to take care to remember that. She watched the other’s smiling faces glowing in the firelight, recalling that fleeting moment long ago where she forgot she was supposed to be afraid.