Eleneth let out a little grunt as she made the extra effort to get herself up to the roof, careful not to let her weight shift too much as to let loose the small, thin looking rain gutter she had used to support her endeavor up. She knew she was a slip of an elfmaid, but Eleneth herself knew that she often found herself telling little white lies about her weight, mostly to herself, and she wasn't about to find out just how far she was out of shape from her travellling days so many years ago. As the elf girl looked over the dark, cobbled streets of Waterdeep below with her hair being whipped to and fro from the freezing winds that came down from the spine of the world this tiime of the year, she shoved the self doubting voices that told her that her hiney was a little too round and womanly for her to be considered an elf girl no longer.
"This is so obvious...I mean, the first thing he'd expect me to do is to watch him approach from the rooftops.." Eleneth muttered to herself just above a whisper, cupping her hands around her eyes to keep her tresses from covering her vision. She had to admit though that her heart was now thumping against her chest, with her cheeks glowing rosey pink. Her amber eyes alight with a barely hidden joy that made her want to scream at the top of her lungs. "You are right, fair lady. I did expect it." a husky voice whispered barely an inch behind her ear, making her heart skip a beat. Eleneth knew that she was in trouble, having this stranger this close, her back totally exposed. Her hand flew toward the box she carried, which she managed to fumble out of her hands and watched it tumble off the rooftop and into the streets below with a small crunch, shattering it into tiny pieces of broken wood and splinters. "I did not mean to scare you..." the voice continued as Eleneth suddenly found herself swept up to her feet and locked in an embrace of sorts. She felt a heavily muscled forearm against the small of her back, with his cold hand wrapped around her hip. His other hand was neatly placed under her chin. The elf girl's head was spinning from the sudden vulnerable position she found herself in as she gazed up at the man's face, wrapped with a black cloth. His dark, coal round eyes gazed down at Eleneth's face as he whispered, "Still as beautiful as ever...Do not be frightened, elfmaid. If I sought to harm you, then you would have not even known it." He said soothingly and suddenly winced as Eleneth's free hand put the tip of her dagger against the man's back. He let out a low chuckle and then suddenly leaned down for a kiss, wrapping his clothed lips against Eleneth's. The elf girl let out a gasp of surprise as the kiss, over before it even began properly, ended, and found herself spun out of his grasp. She did not know for sure why she started to chase this man who stole her lips, but the game was irresistable to her. The man, dressed in black pantaloons and tunic, already was making a good headway across the rooftops, lightly tumbling and jumping over the dimly lit streets of the city. Eleneth was following close by, the dress she had worn earlier in the evening in tatters from the numerous snags and stained black with soot from the chimneys. She stabbed at the dress as she ran off the ledge of a corner smithy, ripping the length of it off her and turning it into a short skirt with frayed edges. The length of cloth floated down harmlessly to the streets below as the elf girl ran on and swung onto the clothing line across a rather large alleyway, cutting the length of it to swing across and landing on her toes at the window ledge of the house across the street away from the man who kept on running. She ran the length of the ledge as fast as she could, jumping over the opening window and the head of a very tired and angry looking man who looked shocked at her being there three floors up from the streets below, and then used the man's head as a springboard to flip herself up the roof, landing neatly on the sloping shingles on her hands. Eleneth's eyes were smiling as she spun herself up to her feet and jumped across to the other side, causing the hooded man to stop in front of her. She began to realize, as her eyes began to sting with her own droplets of sweat, that the years she had spent playing a bar minstrel was like a life led behind a opaque looking glass, distorted and unreal. This was truly her in the now, this feeling of quickening in her limbs, the little aches she felt in her legs, the cold wind blowing against her face, with only her body answering her whims as she knew it would, pushed to the limits.
"You didn't really think you'd get away that easily, did you?" Eleneth asked, her words coming out between small, quick gasps as her lungs burned from the sudden burst of activity. It felt wonderful to feel this way after so long, but it also made her feel very foolish and weak, knowing how out of shape she really was.
The hooded figure chuckled as he approached closer, saying in his low husky voice, "Who said that I was running away, little elf."
Eleneth's smile disappeared as she held out her knife, saying, "Don't come any closer."
"Why not." The man stated as he kept coming
Eleneth took a step backwards, and another, and another as the man approached closer. She felt the cold breeze whip against her bare legs and wished she didn't cut away her dress, of all things. Her eyes watered as she felt the back of her head hit hard against a brick chimney, but she dared not blink. Her eyes followed the mysterious man as he stopped within a touching distance from her, and followed his measured steps with her eyes as he circled her. The exhilating feeling of excitement disappeared so much like sand blowing away in the wind, replaced with a feeling of forboding and of utter dread. She knew she was in danger, and the dagger she held before her seemed ridiculously inadequate. Was it the man's presence that made her feel this way? Or the way his hard, black eyes looked upon her, making her feel weak and so naked.
"Do not be foolish, little elf." the man cautioned softly, knowing even before Eleneth put her body into action. She knew that he had read her shift in weight, and once again she felt extremely defenseless, like a candlelight fluttering away desperately in the breeze. "I told you that I would not harm you, didn't I." The man continued as Eleneth turned slightly to keep him in front of her, hugging the chimney behind her, clutching at the sharp, rough bricks that protruded out like scabs.
"You're the black crow." Eleneth managed to say, hoping that her voice gave herself some measure of strength. She desperately missed Duron and knew that the crazy dwarf was right in warning her.
The man chuckled again as he replied softly, "I am many things. That name being one that I picked out of my many hats."
"What do you mean."
"I mean what I mean. It piqued your interest, did it not? Plus the dagger you left behind so many years ago." The man continued as he circled. Eleneth knew that the circle was getting smaller with each of his steps. Her brain screamed danger and her limbs wanted to break out running. She felt herself trembling and she knew it was his gaze that was doing it, yet she dared not look away. "I know you. I have watched you for a long time now." He continued. "I know where you work, I know the friends you keep. I even know your pretend fiancee, the one that likes men and fancies to keep you by his side because he thinks it gives him something above his peers, like a special little jewel that no one else has. I even know your old friend Duron. Did you know that he was quite twisted? Oh yes, I know them all. And especially you."
Eleneth's heart was now beating furiously as her limbs became as heavy as lead. "Please..." she croaked out. "Don't..." she whispered pitifully as she felt his hand on her cheek, caressing her and pushing the strands of her hair away from her neck. The hand felt ice cold. "What...do you want..." she heard herself whisper as she heard her dagger fall to the roof tile with a clatter.
The man replied softly, "You."
Eleneth felt her world spinning as the man before her began to caress her. Then she remembered no more.
Eleneth felt the coarseness underneath her fingertips, around her body, as her eyes slowly opened. The first thing she saw was the unbearable bright light that filtered through her dirty stained windows, mercilessly beating down on her face. The next thing that popped hurridly in her mind in a panic is that she always left her curtains closed the evening before because, well because she liked to sleep late and her window faced east. The elf girl sniffed the air as she opened her eyes further, shielding her eyes from the light with her hand as she tried desperately to blink away the clawing remnants of sleep that once again began calling her name.
"Ow.." she moaned as she tried to get up, her head sending sharp, unpleasant pains bouncing in her skull. It was perhaps then she knew that she had been poisoned. Well, poisoned was probably too strong a word, she morosely observed. Hoodwinked. Yes, hoodwinked. She liked that word much better. She then remembered the kiss, and how she felt after afterwards, when she was chasing after that stranger all over the place over Waterdeep's rooftops. The sweet, slightly tangy taste of the stranger's lips. Or was it the cloth that covered his face that tasted such. She then quickly looked under the sheets to find with a sigh of momentary relief that all her clothes, or what remained of her dress that she had bought just a week ago from a travelling caravan that promised her that it was Amnian silk, was still on her. It was, of course, covered with soot and grime. It was ruined.
Eleneth knew that she had passed out. No doubt about that there. How she got back into her little loft above the corner bakery shop, and back into her bed, now that was a bigger mystery to be solved! The most logical thing that she could come up with was that the man had carried her here, and deposited her into her bed. She certainly couldn't have sleep walked back to her place, she noted with some grim judgement. At least for the moment, the knowledge that she had come to no immediate harm from last night's jaunty acrobatic craziness gave her some comfort, until she tried to get out of bed and realized that the little strain to carry out that little wee simple task caused her to groan out loud in pain. Every part of her body was aching right down to her little toes!
"You're such a fatty little piggy." Eleneth muttered to herself morosely as she fell back into her straw bed and covered her head with her threadbare blankets. "10 years ago...he would never have gotten me like that...10 years ago, I would not have been beat!" she stated angrily into the stuffy air of her wooly blankets.
Her mind then travelled down the road of just who this man was. Why did he take such an interest in her? If he knew who she was from her past, the who could it be? Then the last thing the man had said before she passed out, made her shiver a little with forboding apprehension. Duron was right. She was in danger. But yet, he had left her unharmed. After what seemed to be a long moment of suffocating silence where she absentmindedly stared at flecks of dust floating lazily in the air in front of her, Eleneth resolved herself once again to get out of bed. This time, she tried rolling herself out, and succeeded. Bending as little joints as possible to achieve standing, she winced and groaned as she hobbled herself over to a little porceline wash stand and a silvered metal piece of a shield that she had been using for a mirror, shrugging herself out of the dress. There she stood, staring at her reflection and sighing. Everything about the face that stared back at her screamed plain in her mind. And as she looked down to her toes, she sighed yet deeper as she noted the beginnings of a pot belly! "He wants this?" Eleneth muttered as she leaned her forehead against the mirror, staring at her reflection. She yelped as the shield, a cheap piece of souvenir that she had collected from her earlier travels, slipped off its mount and crashed into the wash basin and the rickety wooden stand that held it up. The porceline washbasin crashed to the floor with the sound that set the elf girl's teeth on edge, and sent the cold water splashing all over the floor and on herself.
"I should have stayed in bed!" Eleneth moaned aloud in frustration, and gingerly walked past the shards of the wash basin, her movements awkward and unbalanced. She managed to reach to the rickety closet that stood guard in the corner next to an empty coat rack adorned with bird feathers of all kinds and bits of colorful string, and grabbed a black leather pants that she thought were forgiving of her seemingly bloated body and a white, sleeveless cotton shirt that had a small collar.
Descending the stairs in somewhat a better mood, Eleneth surveyed the bake shop with its tables of day old breads and pastries in the back, and the fresh steaming loaves and honeyed cakes in the front shelves behind the store's front windows. The heat from the brick oven felt pleasantly nice as well as she watched
Henry, the baker and owner of this shop, stared up at her from his counter near the front of the store. Eleneth already saw a line at the counter that extended out to the streets. A busy day indeed.
Henry was a young man with a shock of brown hair that bordered on black, and had a beginnings of a mustache that he could never successfully grow fully, and always ended shaving off, more or less at Eleneth's off hand remark about how silly he looked. He had the burly arms of a sailor or a blacksmith from kneading and pounding on dough almost all his young adult life, and had what the elf girl thought were very kind blue eyes that never lost their wonder at things he didn't understand or comprehend, which involved most things outside of this bakery. He was never the type to hide his ignorance or had the foolish sense of egotistical self importance to mask it, a trait that Eleneth always found endearing ever since he was a little boy whom she used to babysit.
"Hey sis. Had a rough night, huh?" He said with a smile as he handed a bag of muffins to an old lady who smelled heavily of perfume and overly painted on face.
"Henry." Eleneth said as she smiled back at him, faltering as she saw drops of water seep from the ceiling and falling into Henry's bag of flours in the back. She noted the old woman looking at her disapprovingly and looked away.
"Here..catch!" Henry called out playfully, and Eleneth barely had a chance to snag a warm, sweetened roll in her hands before it went sailing away to the dark recesses of the bakery. "It doesn't have cream in it, does it?" Eleneth asked.
"Beggars can't be choosers." A saucy voice reminded as Eleneth turned the bread over and over in her hands. Betty, the new baking assistant, Eleneth noted. Well, that and Henry's potential betrothal material, or so his parents confided in her. Eleneth watched on as Henry frowned at the slightly overweight, dark haired lass with an apron around her midriff. "Yeah..yeah." Eleneth said with a smirk as she descended the rest of the stairs, trying to defuse Henry and Betty's potential conflict on her account. To truly show that she had no hard feelings on Betty's account, Eleneth bit into the roll, rolled forward into a handstand on the staircase, and then as her weight shifted foward, tumbled out of control down the stairs and then out the open door, taking out some of the customers who were waiting in line in front of the shop. "Owww..." Eleneth groaned as she rubbed at her back, half straddling an old man and a young woman who had happened to break her fall. The bread roll, well, rolled out of her mouth and into the streets.
"Git off me!" the woman screamed
"Hehe..." the old man leered as Eleneth scrambled to her feet and pushing his wandering hands away from her body, her face crimson from embaressment. Both from her fall and the snickers from the customers waiting in line at her expense. Of course, she also heard Betty's laughter mixed in there as well. Henry had come to her side quicker than she realized, and was saying, "Are you all right!"
Eleneth wiped the cream off her face and hair, succeeding in smearing it in even further into her long braids, and stammered, "Never...felt better. Ow..Henry, you better tend to your customers." She then started to limp away, shooing away Henry's protective hands. "Elle, come on. You're hurt, let me take you back to your room." Henry insisted after her as she kept on limping up the street as fast as she could. The elf girl only looked back once to wave and to make sure Henry wasn't following, and then winced as she was splashed with gutter water from one of the roof tops. "WHY!" Eleneth screamed at the top of her lungs, startling a horse that was tethered there next to a lamp post, causing it to nicker and step back from the elf.