A soft wind blew the fog in, uncaring to the people and objects caught in the moist, eerie blur. Animals found their fur wet, humans found their vision impaired and the land found itself cast into a mysterious, blue sheen. Amidst the strange appearance of twilight, the near-silent sound of fluttering paper joined the breeze’s voice. A page flipped over, revealing dew-stained folds of parchment that bore rough handwriting in vaguely smeared ink. The words, if read by any curious passing eye, seemed to be in the form of a journal entry. The page that revealed itself was at the very beginning, revealing its writer to have just started the sacred habit of keeping thoughts in the grasp of a book.
Rambling, that's all it would seem to be to the average person. There is no name written upon the journal’s entry, but the handwriting would be unmistakable by many. Its writer? She had forgotten the journal and its unfinished entry by now, having been drawn away by the sounds of commotion. She had laid that quill down and moved off with lips drawn into a thin line. Gobaith never really did change, after all.
- - - - - - - - - -
It had been a few days since her brand new journal had gone astray. Ayla sat before the empty furnace of the Taverne idly, glaring into the old, untended ashes with a look that accused them of all that could have possibly gone wrong in her life. She had searched high and low, yet that slick, black leather-bound book had vanished off the very isle it seemed. Lacing her hands behind her head, the elfess merely shrugged the thought off. The book hadn't held any tragic story or secret, after all. Just... Her ideas, her thoughts. Meager hints to what might actually be going through the silver-haired woman's head. It was more than most people got these days, Ayla realized. She had recently been far from the outgoing elfess she had been in as little as a year back. These days? She gave more of an appeal to the possibility of holding many secrets, whether or not it was 'many' that she bore. And she had taken notice of the different reactions she received from such a personality.
Chuckling to herself and the pointless musings running through her head, Ayla leaned forward and rested her elbows upon the tops of her knees. Slender fingers slid across each other as they laced before the elfess, her palms pressing against one another lightly. She took a moment to listen to the rattle of glass bottles here, the thunk of a coin there as Borgate went about his usual straightening up that he did obsessively. The tavern had been empty for a good hour or more now. Licking over her lips in the resulting silence, Ayla sought to break it by speaking to the dwarf.
"How much would you say this place needs a devastating change, old Borgate?"
Casually, was how Ayla spoke the well-chosen words. She stared off over her shoulder, the dwarf just barely in her peripheral vision. He had come to a brief stop in cleaning, his hazy, aged eyes darting to the elfess that sat in the chair of his taverne. What had she said about change? Grunting, Borgate shook his head and returned to meticulously scrubbing a mug clean. The young ones these days, always determined to change this, this and that. Things never could be simple again.
Smiling vaguely, Ayla looked back to the empty hearth. The grin faded in a heartbeat, throwing the elven woman's distinguished features back into a lulling look of ponder. "Not much, I take it..." came the breathy and distracted reply to her own previous question, only assuming what Borgate's look meant. The elfess couldn't agree less, in the end.