[piosenniel]

‘There’s a new guest just come in,’ said Buttercup hurrying into the kitchen to retrieve the platters of food that would be served for supper tonight. She arranged the bowls of chicken stew, thick with vegetables, on the big tray, and piled up a few baskets of freshly sliced bread in the center. Ruby followed after her with the crocks of sweet butter and a pitcher of ale to refill the guests’ mugs.

Cook, her job done, went before them and held the kitchen doors open for the two servers. Her eyes surveyed the room, looking at the hungry patrons and their eager faces. She gasped as her gaze fell on the young man sitting at one of the tables. She hadn’t seen him in a very long time. An old friend of Miz Pio’s. She recalled he sang beautifully, and he played the lute if she remembered correctly.

Best of all, though, she remembered his stories. Some of them quite scary, just the way she liked them. There was one he had told about Ungta, the wicked cave spider and the special arrows of the Dwarves he had used to bring her down. That spider’s blood was green and foul smelling, she recalled him saying. And she could see the image of it as it gushed out when he drove his sword into her.

Cook snatched a bowl of stew, a basket of bread, a crock of butter from Buttercup’s tray and a fresh, foaming tankard of ale from the behind the bar. She sat them down carefully in front of the man, and plucked some utensils from her pocket for him.

‘Mister Eru, isn’t it sir?’ she asked him, as she sat the tankard down by the bowl of stew. ‘Good to have you back? Are you just passing through, or will you be staying a while.’ She eyed him hopefully. ‘And might there be any new stories from your travels?’ Dropping her voice low, she continued, ‘Anymore encounters with wicked big spiders, by any chance? . . .’