Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » Mike and Ralen - Meet Cute

"Best to stay clear of seasonal work, like fishing or farming. Though farming is a bit better of the two," Mike said. She pointed to Caleb briefly, "He's almost twenty-two and I'm a bit over thirty," the wizard replied casually. "What about you?" she asked him.

Caleb pulled a piece of paper out from under his armor as he adjusted it. "Hey, Mike," he called as he examined the paper, "I found my tally sheet!" He studied the paper for a long time before looking over at his 'brother' again. "How do you spell fratricide again?" Mike ignored him to let him figure it out on his own. "If we ever do find a town where that's legal I doubt we'll stay there long. It would be too tempting," she joked.

Ralen couldn't help but stare at Mike. Over thirty? The man didn't look it at all. For one thing, his face was too...clean-shaven. "I'm twenty-seven. How do you keep your face so clear? Gods, I feel like my face is full of goat hair every morning." And he scratched at his jaw as if just thinking about it would make him sprout a beard.

At the sudden question of spelling fratricide, Ralen half-laughed. "What's the tally-sheet for?" Then more seriously he added, "If there are assassins, you wouldn't know who they were because they keep a low profile. Unless you're a target and then you'd be dead faster than you could blink." He shuddered. "Assassins are not fun people to mess with."

Shaking his head, he slowly stood up and stretched a bit.

Mike smiled as Ralen. She found it cute how he fretted about his facial hair. "Goats aren't that bad," she said, "Boar or bear would be far coarser. As for me, I lucked out you could say. Never could grow a proper beard and where I'm from most men take pride in having a full beard. Different place, different standards."

"It's a count of how many times Mike asks if fratricide is legal where we're staying. He asks that a lot," Caleb said. The warrior noticed how his 'brother' was looking at their meal ticket. This could either go well for them or more likely go very badly. "So .... uh ...... what is fratricide?" he asked hoping the question would distract Ralen enough to keep him from taking too much notice of Mike's odd behavior as she slowly leaned toward the well dressed man.

"Huh, is that right..." Ralen murmured, once again getting that feeling of not-quite-rightness from Mike. Then he realized Mike was leaning closer towards him. "I guess goat hair isn't that bad..."

Confusion crossed Ralen's eyes, unsure of Mike's intentions as he looked into the other's eyes. He wasn't attracted to men--he was attracted to women, but that didn't explain the situation he found himself in now. Fortunately, Caleb's question snapped him back to the present.

Ralen cleared his throat, averting his eyes and leaning back a little. "Uh, fratricide is, uh, killing one's brother." He glanced between Mike and Caleb. "You're keeping count of that?"

Caleb walked over and planted himself between Mike and Ralen. "This guys a little weird sometimes. I think it's cause he doesn't get enough sleep at night. It makes him goofy," the warrior said to try and help his 'brother' out. he grabbed a hold of Mike and rubbed his knuckled roughly his older siblings' head.

Mike pushed against Caleb but the man was stronger than her. She laid a hand flat against his breastplate and focused on that one spot. Suddenly Caleb let go and jumped back. "Hot, hot, hot metal," he yelped as he quickly loosened his breastplate and dropped it on the ground. Mike scowled at her little brother as he rubbed his chest through his shirt. "You've been warned time and again not to do that, Caleb!" the wizard shouted as the green flames around her hand sputtered out. "I was helping," the young man protested as he held a hand over his breastplate to feel if it was still too hot to touch. "You were being weird," he told the woman.

Ralen scowled, but took advantage of Caleb's presence to get to his feet. "You don't sleep?" he asked Mike. What was up with that? And what did Caleb mean that Mike was weird? Something perhaps to do with the fact that Mike had been leaning towards him?

Ralen shook his head to clear his thoughts. He was confused and not sure he wanted to try to dig through it. He glanced at Mike as Caleb bounced around, yelping about the heat. "You didn't have to do that." He caught the flicker of green flames on her hand before they went out. Interesting.

"Anyway, we should hit the road again, get as many miles between us and the town as possible." He collected the pack mule and his mare and mounted up again, casting a sidelong glance at Mike.

"I suffer from insomnia," Mike said absentmindedly as she realized that Caleb had done the right thing - sort of. It wouldn't do for her to act silly and girly around Ralen while she was working for him, especially when he thought she was a man. She should have said something to him sooner to clear things up, but if he knew she was a woman he would treat her worse than he kept believing she was male. "The days when I could throw him to the ground are long past I'm afraid. He knew the risk he was taking," she told Ralen as she walked over to her mule to repack and get back on her mount.

Caleb put his breastplate back on a bit loosely and swung up into his horse's back. "Mike wouldn't really hurt me .... not bad. Not really bad," he assured Ralen, "He is my big brother after all. You said you had brothers. You know what it's like."

Ralen nodded at Caleb's comment. Did he ever know what it was like to have brothers who had magical gifts. He smiled humorlessly. "Alright, but don't make me have to separate you two if it gets out of hand."

At the mention of insomnia, Ralen sighed. "I'm sorry to hear that, Mike. Is that why--or rather when--you spend so much time studying magic?" It made a little sense, if he thought about.

They headed out again, the terrain changing gradually to encompass more trees and hills and the rolling green meadow eventually fell back to give way to a veritable forest with a lightly-traveled path. Birds chirped and flitted between tree branches as squirrels chattered at them in annoyance.

"Or when we're between jobs," Mike said, "If I'm up why not get something done." Mike kept herself busy petting her mule and whispering at it as they traveled. Caleb pulled ahead of Mike and nodded to Ralen to try and get him to move away from Mike. "How far until the next town?" he asked. "We'll probably be camping for a while, Cae," Mike pointed out not minding if her brother got a little way ahead of her as long as he stayed in sight and didn't wander off on his own.

Ralen couldn't imagine. He'd always had work to do and didn't require others to offer or pay for anything.

"Well, at this rate, we'll make it to the next town in about three days. Why? Missing your feather bed already?" Ralen asked with a smile.

"The last mattress I slept on was full of straw," Caleb said in confusion. "Usually we just sleep on the ground. Sometimes we have blankets. Mike likes to keep them packed unless it's really cold out." Caleb lowered his voice so Mike couldn't hear him. "When we stop again we should talk. ....." he glanced back to Mike, "Mike's ...... he'll be mad if I tell you, but you should know about him. ..... Okay?"

"What are you up to, Caleb?" Mike called from behind them. She didn't like it when Caleb talked to others alone. He was far too capable of saying something he shouldn't and she wasn't near enough to correct him if he did.

"Oh, sorry..." He had overestimated their living conditions. Straw mattresses he was familiar with from his regular traveling, but he couldn't imagine sleeping on them all the time. "You should use the blankets more often, they'll keep you warm and dry."

Ralen made a face at Caleb's cryptic comments about Mike. "What do you mean, something I should know about him? He seems like a perfectly nice guy." Mostly harmless except for his gift, but it might explain the strange off-feeling he kept getting from him. Either way he wasn't going to refuse to listen if Caleb wanted to share.

"We're talking. ... About stuff. Like uh ... squirrels. Wait, not squirrels, just stuff. Stuff you don't care about," Caleb called back in a panic. He didn't want Mike to know what he was doing. Mike sighed and nudged her mule to catch up with the men. "Maybe you should talk less," she suggested, eying her brother closely.

Ralen couldn't help it, he doubled over in laughter at their banter.

"Caleb was just telling me how you keep the blankets stored away, but that's not going to keep you warm if you're sleeping on the hard ground." He covered for the flailing knight.

"Uh huh," the wizard muttered unconvinced. "Blankets aren't needed during summer very much," she said, "It may even stay fairly warm through tonight." Under other circumstances Mike and Caleb would sleep under the stairs on a warm night, but with Ralen along that wasn't the best of options for Mike. "We could talk about squirrels if you wanted to," Caleb offered nervously. "Didn't Sis ever tell you not to talk to strangers?" she asked her brother. "Yeah, but this guy's not a stranger," the fighter said, "He's Mr. Ralen and he's taking us to get a job."

Ralen chuckled. "Just call me Ralen. Everyone else does. Man, you two are diehard travelers then. It still gets cold at night--even in the summer." Or maybe he was just spoiled.

Then just because, he added, "Squirrels are a pain. I've had them chuck nuts at me before--but that was before I learned I could throw them back with my gift."

"Have you spend years sleeping out on the ground, Ralen?" Mike asked, "Summer nights are not cold. They are hot and you try to wear as little as you can get away with and even that doesn't stop you from sweating buckets." Caleb didn't say a word for nearly an hour. "So keep on until dinner time or do rich people eat more than two meals a day?" he asked.

Ralen couldn't help but become defensive. "No. But I have spent nights stargazing and while the days are hot as a baker's oven, the nights still generally cool down."

He huffed and looked away, answering only when Caleb broke the silence an hour later.

"You want a snack to tie you over?" He twisted to look at the pack mule, and then narrowed his eyes as he raised one hand. A few gestures later, he had the pack open and cheese and bread was traveling to Caleb first, and then to Mike, before Ralen grabbed some for himself.

"I guess we'll make camp just before sunset--so we have time to pitch tents and everything."

"Maybe you need tougher skin if you're going to sleep outdoors," Mike retorted. She didn't think the man knew as much as she did about the subject. She was aware that different regions had different weather, but they weren't high up enough for snow to be an issue or very near any oceans either as far as she knew.

"Thanks," Caleb said as he took the floating snack without question. Mike laid her bread on one hand and placed the cheese on top. Slowly it began to turn to toast and the cheese to melt. "Should be a river or lake somewhere around here," she said as she scanned the greenery. "It might be farther a head than I remember. Fresh water's always handy to have around. Never know what could happen in the space of two weeks."

"Or maybe I like having soft delicate skin," Ralen retorted, totally forgetting his earlier comment about having goat-hair on his face. "I'll keep my featherbed, you can have the great outdoors since you love it so much." That might have been a bit harsh, but then he hated feeling inferior.

The toasted bread and cheese was a brilliant idea, and Ralen was a little disappointed he didn't have his brother's fire power at the moment. Oh well, bread and cheese was good enough at the moment.

"There is a river up here somewhere, but I think it's a few more miles ahead. We'll come to it soon in the next hour or so, I think." Ralen replied, his tone smoother now. The food helping with his mood.

Tentatively he asked: "How long have you two been on the road then? I'm assuming not all your lives but most of it?"