Flissa had long thought of herself as a heard-it-all, seen-it-all when it came to bar-side conversations.
A decade of managing an inn in the heart of Denerim had given her considerable exposure to scandalous confessions and violent bar brawls, fuelled by too many tankards of stale ale and sparked by raging testosterone.
That notion had been true, at least until she started running The Singing Maiden.
Soldiers coming back from the frontlines of a fresh war told a vastly different set of tales from drunk Fereldan nobles - that much she knew - but troops returning from battle with other-worldly beings raining from an ominously green hole in the sky were in an entire league of their own.
On this particular day, a baby-faced, lanky human woman and a rather grumpy-looking dwarven man with a moustache so thick and woolly Flissa thought she could fashion a shawl out of were seated at the table by the fireplace, nursing mugs of flat stout.
The tavern was empty save for them and Flissa herself. Most of their peers were still out in the Fereldan Hinterlands under Scout Harding, presumably carving out a path for the Herald of Andraste through all the fighting.
For a moment, the seasoned barkeep wondered if Martha was still there. The last time she'd seen her cousin was slightly more than ten years ago, for First Day visiting. She had not been back to Redcliffe since then, for her parents decided to move to Denerim alongside their daughter after she found work as an innkeeper in the capital shortly after.
Best not to think about it, she thought to herself wistfully. Nothing you can do about it anyway.
It was times like this that Flissa wished for a little music in the humble establishment. A tune or two couldn't hurt, especially when time passed at the pace of grazing druffalos during quiet hours where she had little else to distract herself with.
But alas, hiring a bard in the spine of the Frostback Mountains would be a luxury the Inquisition could not afford. Even if they could, the money would be better spent on warmer tents or thicker blankets.
"Demons were just pourin' outta the sky like ya wouldn't believe! Must've been at least a dozen soddin' wraiths around us," the dwarf said as he finished the last of his beverage. He turned his head towards the bar and signalled for another drink. His fourth, to be specific.
Instinctively, Flissa's left hand reached for a fresh mug resting on the nearby shelf, while her right rested itself on a cask tap. Her practised hands repeated the quarter-hourly ritual of tilting the mug at the appropriate angle - neither too steep nor too gentle, as her old manager back in Denerim would say. Once the mug was filled to about three quarters, she would straighten the container, then turn the tap on full blast, resulting in a thick, creamy head of smooth, white froth…
… or so she would like to imagine anyway. The dreadful lack of quality equipment in Haven meant that decent carbonation was a mere dream never meant to be realised. On a good day, one would consider themselves of remarkable fortune to find a thin layer of bubbles floating on the surface of their drink.
Flissa let out a small sigh, then reached under the counter for a small stash of clean dirt (however much of an oxymoron that may have sounded). She grabbed a handful, then garnished the filled mug with it.
"A little bit of home never hurt anyone," she muttered to herself.
Flissa walked over and brought the drink to their table, just as the young girl got up to stand on her chair, arms stretched wide to mimic a giant being.
"That's nothing, you should've seen it when the Herald tried to seal the breach at the temple. I was there. We fought a friggin' pride demon the size of a building that shot lightning while shades were clawing at our backs."
The dwarf acknowledged Flissa with a grunt, which the barkeep had come to regard as the closest thing to 'thank you' in Grumpy Old Men Language. He proceeded to take a huge swig of his new pint, and said, "Pfft, y'all had the Herald with ya, doesn't count!"
"What?"
"Ain't a real fight when ye got a magical green hand that makes things disappear."
"You did not just say that."
Maker's breath, Flissa thought to herself.
The barkeep braced herself for the mess that was about to arrive. Hopefully not too conspicuously, she looked for the metal poker usually standing by the corner. She had brought it with her from Denerim as a parting gift from her old manager.
"Great for stoking fires and even better for stabbing troublemakers!" the old man had explained cheerfully.
Andraste's tits, Flissa cursed silently. A scout had come into the tavern at the break of dawn, hoping to borrow her poker to help set up some furnaces by the armoury for Harritt.
Not that Flissa had been planning to skewer the soldiers, but looking like she was going to had always been a rather effective method for stopping brawls.
"Real warriors fight with steel in their hands and blood on their shields."
At this point, the young girl stomped her left foot - mud-caked shoe and Maker-knows-what-else - on the table, the force violent enough to topple the half-empty tankards that were resting on it.
"You want to know what's a real fight? I'll show you one."
Her slender but calloused right hand reached for the small blade resting behind her waist.
The dwarf, in response, let out a primal growl, his bearded face turning into a bright shade of Llomerryn red.
"Bring it on, ya wee-"
"STOP IT!"
Flissa found herself screaming, and both her hands in the process of flinging pewter steins in the direction of the squabbling duo. While the woman wasn't exactly consciously aiming for their heads, her choice of lethal projectiles seemed to be about to hit dangerously close enough to home.
In an ironic set of circumstance, Flissa squeezed her eyes shut, afraid of the damage she was about to inflict on the two soldiers, while her targets stared cross-eyed at the pair of heavy (and surely very painful) drinkware that was closing in on their faces.
The seemingly inevitable disaster was, thankfully, averted when a single bolt flew into the scene, knocking the steins out of their preset trajectory, in what felt like an extremely dramatic slow turn of time.
The pewter steins rattled unceremoniously on the floor of the tavern with rings of sharp clank!
"Now, now, no need to get violent," a deep, throaty voice purred, followed by a rather amused chuckle.
Flissa opened her eyes, albeit with slight hesitation. Then she relaxed when she recognised the voice.
"Master Tethras! Thank the Maker!"
The dwarven merchant-author was his usual suave self, except this time with his crossbow in hand.
"You seem particularly happy to see me, m'lady," the archer noted, after which he bowed in a graceful show of courtesy. "Usually I'd charge a modest fee for saving someone from a life in prison but in this case, I'll settle for some brandy. Plum, preferably."
Varric Tethras then proceeded to take a seat at the table with the previously-squabbling duo, who now showed no signs of animosity they were sharing a mere minute prior. Seemingly shell shocked, they remained frozen in their spots, wordlessly staring at the exchange between barkeep and storyteller.
Varric set down his trusty weapon before him, and with his attention seemingly focused on wiping spilt stout off the wooden table, he said to the offending soldiers, "And for the both of you, it's probably a good idea to bury your faces in the snow outside and cool off. Unless you want Leliana and Commander Curly to hear about this.
The duo bailed out of the tavern at lightning speed, and once again, The Singing Maiden was as quiet as it had been in the morning. Silent, save for the slight crackling of fire, and now, the deafening dripping of stout off the corner of the table and onto the cold, stone floor.
Varric cleared his throat. "If you're no longer serving customers, I'm just going to assume it's an open bar."
"O-oh, of course, Master Tethras. I'm dreadfully sorry," Flissa replied. Her flustered hands grabbed one of the establishment's precious few glass tumblers from the top shelf of a locked cabinet, then proceeded to fill it with two-fingers of Fereldan whiskey.
With a turn of the waist, Flissa turned towards the larder and took out a quarter-wheel of goat cheese. Then, she grabbed a ladle and scooped out a heaping bowl of lamb shank stew out of a steaming cauldron on the stove, seasoned with elfroot and felandaris gathered by scouts just yesterday from the nearby river. Breaking off a few chunks of goat cheese, the barkeep distributed them across the surface of the bowl, then hurriedly brought both items to her patiently-waiting saviour.
"This… isn't plum brandy and I don't remember ordering anything else, m'lady," Varric said, an eyebrow arched in curious amusement.
"Y-yes, Master Tethras. I'm afraid plum brandy is a little out of our league. But this is our finest vintage and some stew, on the house, as a sign of my appreciation."
The dwarf let out a soft chuckle. "Don't worry about it, I was just messing with you."
Varric took a whiff of the steaming bowl set in front of him. "Smells great, but I can't eat this without a spoon, can I?"
Flissa let out a gasp of disbelief, then ran back to the counter and promptly returned with one.
"I- I'm terribly sorry, Master Tethras. I don't know what came over me, I just-"
"Flissa," he said, perhaps actually addressing her by her name for the first time. "Relax."
"Y-yes."
The next few moments comprised of a very satisfied dwarf slurping up chunks of lamb, tenderised by hours of stewing, occasionally interrupted by a sip of a pleasantly smoky but not very smooth amber liquid, while a somewhat awestruck tavern keeper watched him in silence from behind the counter.
Finally, she began to speak once more. "Thank you again, Master Tethras. I'm not sure what would've happened if you hadn't been here in time."
"Oh stop it, I'm going to blush," he replied, scooping a particularly tasty-looking strip of melt-in-your-mouth tendon with his spoon.
"If I may, Master Tethras, what brought you here today?"
"Me? Oh, the Chargers went out hunting today and snared a few nugs. They wanted to hold a small nug-get party and built a makeshift hearth. I was in charge of getting the fire started and thought of you."
"Of me?" Flissa asked, bewildered.
"Well, your very nice poker to be specific. Speaking of which, can I borrow it for a bit?"
Author's Note: Whoop whoop, whadaya know, back to FF after a 3 year hiatus. Writing fiction feels so weird now.