To give their full attention to their guests, Lonfar prompts Osian to close up the shop for the day. “Yes, Lord Uchal has already come by, so I can, I can do that,” he agrees, still tripping over his words a bit. He secures the front door and flips a sign at the window from open to closed. The board has the same symbols for these statuses as the elves have seen in other shops, but the words themselves are also written on each side.
The group goes through the door behind the counter into the back half of the building, which is the residential part. Smells of simmering food fill the air, indicating that they will not need to wait long before the meal. “Why don’t we eat in traditional Dunefolk style,” Lonfar suggests. Heppa gasps in excitement, while Osian mutters about his poor knees. Ignoring that, Lonfar spreads a tasseled blanket out across the floor of the common room and gestures for everyone to sit or kneel upon it. “Our clan was a very mobile group, usually making do with tents and carpet. Tables and chairs would have been too awkward to drag around everywhere.”
“But fortunately, we’re stable now,” Osian says, “so we can sit on chairs…”
Lonfar gives him a playful shove. “You can sit on the floor a little while for the benefit of our Dunefolk visitor,” she says, indicating Tric. She then steps into the next room to fetch a large platter of food. Lonfar sets the communal dish down in the middle of the blanket and invites everyone to tear off a piece of the large, flat bread that accompanies the rice dish. The main dish is very aromatic and contains cashews and raisins, as well as some other things that Hepalonia cannot quite identify. Lonfar pours a mug of mulled mead for everyone and offers a toast. “May you never thirst. May you always have enough to drink. Please, enjoy the meal.”
After Alric’s mother demonstrates how to use the soft bread to scoop up some of the rice, Heppa tries a few bites. The food has some sort of hot spice in it that is not very appealing to her, but she politely continues, not wishing to offend her hosts. Curious, Heppa asks, “Is this traditional Dunefolk food?” Lonfar confirms that it is a recipe she learned from her parents. “Oh! What spices are in it? How is it made? Alric told me his favorite food was a rice dish with some spice blend. He mentioned that Damal made…” She trails off, registering the change that has come over Lonfar.
There is no question in Lonfar’s mind that these two visitors know her son and that, as Tric indicated, Heppa shares some level of intimacy with him. Otherwise, she would not know Alric’s favorite food. But it bothers her that these two clearly also know Damal. Struggling with the contradictions before her, she excuses herself to regain her composure. “Why don’t I go get the spices to show you,” she says as she gets up and heads into the neighboring room.
Tric contains a look of mortification at how this is going so far. He cannot believe that Heppa has just gone straight to that. A cold open for a hot dish, he reflects. Tric finds the food delicious, but it is far spicier than anything he has ever experienced. The cooling mead puts out some of the fire in his mouth. Trying to fill the silence left by Lonfar’s departure, Tric asks Alric’s father, “So, Osian, you’ve been a papermaker your whole life? You come from a long line of papermakers?”
“Oh! You’re interested in papermaking too? I did have to redevelop some of the trade myself, learning some of it by trial and error.” Osian’s normally excitable manner dims some, as difficult memories resurface. “I lost my home in the war. I was still apprentice level when the undead hordes poured over the border and destroyed my village, killing my whole family. I had to make my own way in the world. Like many other refugees, I made my way to Weldyn. Of course, Weldyn was then nearly overrun by undead, and everyone hunkered down, cowering while that all happened.” Osian tries to shake off the morose mood and says more brightly, “But I’ve been able to really build something here, been able to provide for my family. And nothing too terrible has happened too recently…”
Tric feels that he has not fared much better than Heppa as far as ice-breaking conversations go. However, the details Osian shares about his youth put the distant past in better context. He is from farther west in Wesnoth, and this highlights the scale of the havoc Mal-Ravanal wrought. The entire kingdom was overrun; the invasion was not just some walking corpses rolling through Hisanham and then harrying Gweddry across the countryside. The personal insight is also interesting. Osian seems to value safety and security, and he puts as positive a spin on his situation as he can, considering that he lost his son along the way. He is excitable, but he is also a bit of a worrier, not unlike Alric when certain inexperienced woodland elves decided to take on the South Tower underworld themselves.
Lonfar returns with a spice rack and sits back down alongside Heppa to show her the ingredients. Heppa is hesitant at first, not wanting to say the wrong thing again, but Lonfar immerses herself in a discussion of how to prepare the dish. This is a nice, non-contentious topic, and soon they are having a detailed conversation about the recipe. Although Heppa does not care much for the flavor herself, she will now be able to make it for Alric, provided the right ingredients are on hand. She wonders what additional foods would work well with these spices and asks about other traditional Dunefolk dishes. She is genuinely curious about the topic, but she also wants Alric’s mother to like her, and this seems a safe subject.
Lonfar relaxes into this conversation, and some of the tension in the room eases. She talks about how in Wesnoth, some of these spices are harder to come by than they were where she grew up. Some of them require a very dry climate, so they only grow on the very southeast edge of Wesnoth. “I have to get them by special delivery, shipped up from down there. My falcons are only able to carry scroll cases. It’s not like I can have them—”
“Oh, they don’t have harnesses?” Heppa asks. Alric told her Serces had made Aderyn’s new gear, inspired by what she had created, but she is not sure whether it was entirely original.
Lonfar crinkles her brow. “I don’t put jesses on my falcons,” she says with some distaste.
“I don’t mean leashes,” Heppa hastily clarifies. Alric’s birds were not kept in cages and were free to come and go as they pleased. Lonfar seems to have the same opinion of falcon confinement. “Here, let me show you a drawing.” Heppa takes out her parchment and makes a quick sketch of Aderyn looking so cute in her delivery get-up. “A blacksmith made something like this,” she says, without mentioning the designer. She is afraid to say Serces’s name, given the response they got when Alric and Damal were brought up. There could be bad blood between him and Lonfar; Heppa has no way of knowing and does not want to risk it.
“This made receiving supplies from Damal much, much easier,” Tric comments. “It can only transport a modest, lightweight amount, but for high-impact things like alchemical supplies, you could deliver a little bit. The falcon can still move with sufficient speed to, hypothetically, chase off another bird. And it can hunt if it has to.”
Lonfar and Osian both look over the drawing with interest, conferring over it. Clearly they both have some engineering bent. For all that he has trouble remembering how Lonfar’s bell system works, Osian did design and build all his papermaking equipment. They appreciate the novelty of the idea but worry that it might cut into the wings too much. “I wouldn’t want to burden the falcons with something like that,” Lonfar ultimately decides.
To Tric, this seems like a good place to try again. “We’re going to Dan’Tonk next, but we’ll be passing back through South Tower,” he says carefully. “Is there any message you would like us to give to Alric more directly?” Lonfar purses her lips, and Tric continues, “Or… I think he hired a new scribe recently. So that might take care of things on its own.”
Heppa is surprised to hear Tric say that. It seems a lot to infer just because Alric was upset with Damal and has an employee who knows how to read and write. “He did?”
“Well, Heledd isn’t biased against magic like his other scribe,” Tric says to his cousin. To Lonfar he adds, “We can hand-deliver a message if that’s something you want us to do, but no pressure.”
Since Tric has raised the topic, Heppa ventures, “Or if there’s anything larger that you want to send, something too big for a bird to carry?”
“Yes!” Osian says eagerly. Then he catches himself and looks to Lonfar. “Right?” he asks more hesitantly.
Lonfar nods calmly, far more collected now than she was at the start of the meal. “Yes, certainly. But for me to figure out what to say, we’re going to have to confer.” Tric misunderstands, assuming that she and her husband need more time. He says he and Heppa can stop back in Weldyn after their visit to Dan’Tonk, but Lonfar clarifies that the “we” includes the elves. “I have questions for you,” she says frankly.
“Ask away. I’m Tric Manu,” he says with a smile, hoping this is more interview than interrogation.