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A shy smile played at the corners of Linnéa's lips as she listened to the merry carryings on that surrounded her and her brother as they joined the group already seated around the inn's sturdy table. Laughing softly at the current turn of conversation, she leaned over toward Brokhelm and murmured, “All sensible talk goes out the door when puns come innuendo...”
Brokhelm laughed politely, but Linnéa could tell that with all the noise in the common room, he had not quite caught what she had said. After a few seconds, he added, “Sensible talk goes out the door when...when... what was that?”
Still smiling, Linnéa shook her head. “Never mind.” She was pleased to see that he had joined right in with the conversation, though. It gave her a way of taking part, too, without feeling that she was intruding. Left to herself, she probably would have slunk into the common room as quietly as a field mouse and, wrapping her cloak around her, taken the smallest table farthest from the fire for her own. Pushing a few strands of pale hair back from her face with one slender hand, she cast a quick glance around at the faces that lined the table. They seemed a jolly bunch, not threatening at all, although Brokhelm had seemed a little perturbed by something in the demeanor of the two men who had come in just after them. She saw no harm in them, however, and allowed herself to relax, setting her small bundle of belongings down on the floor between her feet.
While the joking and puns continued to fly around her, Linnéa let her attention stray to the man who had been about to offer a tale of some kind. Ever since she was a small child, Linnéa had harbored a love for stories of all sorts. Some of her favorite childhood memories were those of herself and her brother sitting before the fire while her father related the most wonderful tales of adventure and battles in far-off lands. Her husband had been a clever storyteller as well, able to make them up off the cuff just on the basis of an overheard sentence or the sight of a broken sword lying forgotten in the dust, but her favorites had always been the ancient tales, those that told of horsemen and the gallantry of the Riders of the Mark. She had never heard any of the supposed old chestnuts that this group was bantering about and hoped that a tale was indeed imminent.
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