"No way…" I heard my brother mutter quietly under a breath of realization and found myself unable to reply. Suddenly someone bumped into me and only then did I realize how badly I was shaking because I didn't find my footing again and began to stumble. Zane managed to catch me just before I fell and bellowed a "hey!" After the tipsy dwarf who had bumped into me. It fell on deaf ears and I was glad.
"Thanks" I muttered and shrug myself out of his hold, though he seemed somewhat doubtful of my ability to stand on my own two feet. I wasn't sure I could myself but I had a chance to prove my brother wrong and you can bet your ass I took it.
"Do you know where this is?" Zane asked excitedly.
"Yes, Zane, I do know where this is and you are damn right there is no way we can be here."
"Well it seems like we are here. Sis, this is WoW. Like MMO, World of-"
"I said I know where this is!" I hissed at him and he shut right up, although not without a scowl.
I looked quickly around and it didn't seem like anyone had been listening, thankfully. I then turned back to Zane with a lowered a head "This isn't possible, Zane. We're dreaming. Maybe you're dreaming, maybe it's me, but that's the only reason for this to be happening."
"Well this is the longest fucking dream I ever had, I can tell you that" Zane snorted, clearly not a fan of my desperate theory.
"Anyway," I shot him a glare, "let's go to the inn. Maybe if we sleep in a bed we'll wake up in our own, okay?" Besides, I was exhausted. Zane simply shrugged at that which I took as an affirmation and we made our way to the large stone building to our right.
The smell of food and beer pounded on us as soon as we walked through the door and we both stopped in a daze, nostrils flaring and stomachs growling. What I would give for a warm meal right now, I thought, almost whimpering. We'd better find someone who worked here if we wanted to get some service, so I nudged Zane in the side, who jumped out of his daze before smiling sheepishly at me and began walking through the noisy crowd.
There were all kinds of dwarfs in the inn and then the occasional gnome; many drinking, almost all of them talking, struggling to be heard over the next person. It was loud and one of the many things I couldn't deal with was loudness. I fought a grimace as I followed my brother through the mass of people, focusing on his back. Had he always been this tall?
It didn't take us long to find the innkeeper. He was standing near the bar, a brown-haired dwarf with long, loose hair and an impressive beard and mustache. In his hands was a beer mug which he was polishing feverishly while looking around the inn with careful eyes.
"Excuse me," My brother said, and the sharp eyes of the dwarf immediately focused in on my brother, with a single glance directed at me behind him.
"Aye, how can I help ye?"
"We were wondering if you had any rooms left- "
"Two rooms." I whispered behind him.
"-uh, yeah, two rooms for me and my—"
"One room with two beds is fine too."
-"Yes, but one room with two beds will work too." The last part was said with glare directed at me for my interference while he was talking. I diverted my eyes, not really sorry for helping.
The dwarf's face seemed to lighten up the slightest as he eyed the two of us, "Aye, I have two rooms with single beds. That'll be three silver for the both of ye."
I felt cold sweat gather in my arm pits as I realized that I had no money. How could I have missed such an obvious flaw? I felt the warm flush of shame wash over me and felt my fingers cooling considerably as they always did when I was nervous. A quick glance at Zane told me that he hadn't thought of that himself either and I was sure I could have liquefied into a puddle of goo right there.
"Ah, but yer lucky 'cause someone has already paid for yer stay. It's good to know the right people, I usually don't book out me rooms beforehand." He winked at us and gave us each a key to a room. I didn't understand and that wasn't the first time today. But instead of asking, you know, communicating with the stranger, I just thanked him very quietly and began walking to where the dwarf gestured, down into the cellar where the rooms where.
The rooms where all down in the wine cellar and I noticed that my room and Zane's were right across from one another. The loudness from upstairs was considerably dampened for some reasons but I was too tired to wonder why.
"This is so weird." Zane commented as we both stood dumbly in the middle of the wine cellar and I simply nodded for a lack of a better response.
"Is the uh… the room okay?" I asked him and his reply was to look at his key for a second before walking to the door to his room and unlocking it. I followed Zane to his room and almost fainted at the sight of a large, soft-looking bed in a huge, cozy room. There was a fireplace and everything.
"Nothing lethal that I can see," Zane said with a small grin and I simply nodded in response before turning to my own room. Thankfully, Zane followed without me asking him to and we both looked inside once I had unlocked the room. It was exactly the same as my brother's, except just mirrored.
I sighed. We needed to talk. I needed answers… I needed to wake up.
But right then and there, all I wanted to do was sleep. "Talk tomorrow?" I asked my brother and looked at him from beneath my far too long bangs. They almost looked black in this light. Or maybe my hair was just this dirty. Ew.
"Yeah," Zane agreed, "Whoever wakes up first has to wake up the other, okay?" The corner of my mouth quirked up that. It was an old rule we'd used as kids whenever we went on a trip somewhere so we wouldn't be lonely in a strange place. "Okay" I replied and bid a goodnight.
We closed our doors at the same time and I remembered thinking just before my door closed that I really didn't remember him having ever had any beard on his face, yet I shrugged the thought away and turned back to my room.
As I viewed the bed I realized how cold I was. Weird how it hadn't registered before. I stood there hugging my form for a while before I trusted myself to move, hearing the squishing of wet leather under my feet. The shoes were still wet, of course. Unfortunately, they hadn't magically dried on their own.
I then realized that being where I was, magically drying shoes didn't sound all that far fetched…
I groaned, not wanting my mind to go there as tired as I was and tried to hum a song to clear my mind as I sat on the bed. I managed to slip the skin shoes off my feet using my toes and then decided to take off my pants as well. It had been so long since I had been able to sleep barelegged under a warm cover. It's one of the small things in life you never think you'll miss until you don't have the luxury. I kept my knee-long shirt on, however, as I climbed into bed and dragged the fluffy covers up to my chin.
And I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.