(It really is hard to keep up with everything happening on the Isle. So while I think this should bring our merchant and Duke up to speed.. I'm sure something has happened to change things already. *sigh* What can ya do? --Stay online 24hrs a day? Heh, wish I could. ;) Anyhow, look at that beginning Jer did. *sighs wistfully* Isn't he great?) ~~~~~~~~~~ <Branton> ..The feel of his nose hairs crackling frozen-brittle against his nostrils gradually forces Darell to a sniffelling, unhappy state of wakefulness. Blinking open eyes crusted with dust and ice the young nobleman sees nothing yet in the pitch black of his predawn tent, not even the flicker of coals from the brazier he was certain he had left burning. He draws a deep breath through his yawn to wake himself and instantly regrets it as the dry freeze sets a layer of frost down his gullet and sears his lungs to burning coughs. Each inhale of coughed air only seems to add to his pains until he willfully forces himself to calm down. "Damn cold," he whispers hoarsely to the empty night around him. Shifting carefully on the thick and warm downfilled cot mattress so as not to loose any heat from his blankets, he reaches out a bare hand and arm to feel for his breeches and boots. "Ack! They are like ice," he hisses as he pulls his numbed fingers back from what had felt like leather. Knowing he has to get dressed or die here frozen he snatches the boots and leggings under the covers with him screaming softly as the frigid fabric touches his 'warmest' parts. <Branton> ..Shivering and clenching teeth that would otherwise be chattering themselves to ivory sand in his mouth, the young Duke huddles around his clothes wishing deperately for them to warm faster than they are. Long moments of silence, other than his own breathing and heartbeat, pass as he slowly curls tighter and tighter about his clothing to leech out the ice. "Dd-damnit," he grumbles wishing also for a light, "tt-there wwasn'tt evenn a ddamnabbbble ww-arning fff-ffor tt-this." His mind whirls back around memories of last night wondering if he had missed some sign while staring upon the beautiful Aurine as they laughed and talked and he even coaxed her into a dance. Suddenly her sunny smile explodes to the front of his mind and just as quickly flims over with blue-black ice and the shade of death. A string of epithets concerning father winter and mother nature and horse dung stream in guttural cries as he forces himself into his half-thawed breeches and boots of iceblocks. Then springing up from his cot in a fearful flash, ignoring its squeaks of protest and his own warnings of rising from the rickety contraptions, he grips the corners of his blankets tightly at his adam's apple to cloak his bare chest. "AURINE!" he cries through his tent once as he stumbles around, banging his shins against ice-rimed chests and camp furniture, in search of some shirts in the dark. He closes a fist over some frost-crackling cloth not caring what it is and tears through his tent flap into the night. The night is almost as dark as inside his tent, the moon only a pale glow behind the thickness of silver clouds shovelling off their burden of thick, heavy flakes. Already a layer just a little deeper than his ankles covers the small clearing they had picked upon a little knoll less than a few hours ride from the falls. The firepit they had been using for two days now was dark and nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the white carpet. If he hadn't noticed through the icey-white cloud of his own breath a few of the stones he had placed around it he would have surely broken his leg going through it. "AURINE?!" he calls through the stillness. Only his echos answer him and even those quickly dying in the muffle of falling snow. Even for the storm it was unnervingly silent. Barely risking a glance to the trees only yards from him, he concentrates on the dark shadow of her tent and soon trudges through the clods he has kicked up to her. "Aurine?!? Aurine!! Wake up! Aurine? I am coming in!" he calls through the tent trying to wake her and finally just barging into its darkness. <Aurine> "Darrell?' her reply comes just as the flap of her tent is thrown open. "Darrell, what's wrong?" she coughs, her voice urgent in her questioning for all the racket he was making. Thick blankets, and the cloak she had added when she had woken a couple of hours earlier to a horrid chill. This was worse. "Gods! It's cold!" she starts as soon as that frigid air sinks into her warmed skin. Her tent is as dark as his, the brazier dead.. to her bleary, adjusting eyes there is only his dark shape hovering in the opening that she can see. She coughs again, rasping for breath in her surprise and for the icy air. Her manners left her in his urgent tone, his name bursting from her lips for the first time since he had coaxed her to waltz.. his title the only thing he had heard before that. <Branton> "Oh by the grace of the gods," Darell gasps in relief as he crosses the tent, gliding like the shade of Death himself to Aurine's gaze, and drops to his knees upon the carpeted ground next to her cot. In fact so close to her cot that he jams his hip against it, shaking it a little though his encircling arms hold her steady enough. Lifting her from the cot he squeezes her against his, she realizes with a start, bare chest and wraps her up in his strong, warm arms and his own heavy layers of blankets. "Oh thank the gods," he pants softly, his hot breath washing through her hair and tingling against her scalp as it fights back the cold night from touching her. "I was afraid I might have been too late when I woke up and found it so cold. Aurine, I don't know how it came upon us so fast, but it is snowing out there." <Aurine> She can only gasp as she feels his strong arms wrap about her and all but haul her down from her cot. Thick blankets get tangled and mashed between them, and she shivers for the unblanketed areas at her back. "It can't be.." she can only mutter, words trailing off as it there was no reason not to believe him as her cool cheek is pressed to rest against his chest from the strength of his embrace. She twists an arm awkwardly to tug at the blankets smashed between them, pulling them down and to her lap before encircling her arms loosely about his waist and beneath his cloak. "I'm alright," she murmurs reassuringly as she gives him a gentle squeeze. * Branton breathes another relieved sigh at her confirmation and relaxes slightly around her, his arms now just protective and warming instead of clutching. He tips his head to press his lips to the top of her head. "Thank the gods," he whispers the prayer again, his mouth nuzzling against the silken threads of her hair as his breath streams from his nose and for the cold he cannot smell the soaps and perfumes of her trade upon her. For some reason his heart misses a beat for missing her scent. "We.. we need to get you dressed," he offers also in soft whisper as his fingers slowly uncurl and release the fists of her thick algode nightgown he had been clutching. <Aurine> "I agree," she nods, sleep mussed ringlets tickling beneath his chin, her cheek rubbing just so against the soft curled hair of his chest he might think she was nuzzling to get closer. But the slow, gradual laxing of her arms says otherwise. * Branton takes her slipping embrace and the muffled sound of her words as if she were drifting off again. "No, no.. Aurine, wake up? Are you up?" He shifts the handful of blankets in his left hand to the right and then reaches within the small tent of blanket he holds around them both to tip her chin up gently. <Aurine> And those almond shaped eyes blink open to view his shadowed features. "Tired.." she murmurs, "..but I am awake. Bert is going to throw a fit knowing I'm still out here.." he would likely know more about Bert now, the older fellow that was a long time friend of her family. A slight smile had drawn wrly upwards at one corner of her lips but it fades, melting into a slow, concerned frown as her eyes drop from his own, fixing blankly around the vicinity of his chin. "I hope they're alright.." her caravan would be outside in this as well. <Branton> "Shh, its alright," he whispers reassuringly, his tone confident for its softness as he explains, "We are further inland from there. The storm would have hit them before us. They probably saw it coming around dinnertime and went into MystHaven. Bert is a smart fellow and in any case he would not want to listen to Jaydon's complaining. I have never heard of a hired blade more intent on his luxuries." He chuckles in jest to lighten her mood. <Aurine> For a wonder, it does seem to work. To some degree. Her gaze focuses once more upon his dark eyes and a small, forced smile inches upwards at one corner of her lips. "And I don't believe he'll desist until he's home with his Josalyn," the woman's name comes with a small degree of distaste that he might note. She couldn't be jealous of her, could she? She ends the wandering thoughts with a firm shake of her curly head, "Besides, they have more resources there then we do here," meaning that she intends to focus on the problem at hand. "I need to get dressed,' she reminds him. <Branton> "Oh! Oh yes, of course of course. I'm sorry," he stammers and gently, but quickly pulls back. Shivers stab into his naked torso laced on the steel of winterblade. "Allow me a moment to ppull on tthis ss-shirt?" his teeth chatter to the end as he already begins trying to stuff himself into the pair of extra breeches he had mistakenly grabbed. <Aurine> She catches the blankets that had been trapped between them when he had pulled her from the cot, and quickly lift them to cover her front half in protection from the biting chill that he had previously guarded her from. "Certainly.. of course,' she mutters between teeth that clench from that first sudden breath of icy air. She shifts about upon her knees, and braves slipping a hand out from the blankets to reach towards clothes she had laid carelessly over her bags the night before. <Branton> "Oh, da-" he catches himself from swearing in her presence and offers a blind smile towards her, "Sorry, I must not have grabbed a shirt. My brazier went out from the cold too, so did the fire outside. I.. I'll just run back quick." He straightens up proudly and tries to summon what dignity he feels he might have left as he drapes the leggings over one bare arm, then hitches the cloak of layered blankets a little tighter over his shoulders. "Once you are dressed, I think we should stay together in a single tent. Do you want to come over to mine?" <Aurine> A small moment of silence follows his question as she dumbly nods in reply. Catching the simple fact that she can't be seen in the dark shadowed tent, she speaks quickly, "Y..yes. I will be there shortly." Movement is heard as she staggers to her feet, blankets and all, and then he would feel his cloak brushing his arm or his hand.. perhaps simply thrust forwards to gently brush his middle. "Take this with you." * Branton wraps his fingers gently around the tight little fist that pressed into his hard stomach and carefully pushes it with the cloak back to her in the darkness. "It will be alright, Lady, I can move pretty fast. Just bundle up in it and come quickly once you are dressed? I would feel better knowing you are keeping warm in it." <Aurine> "I have a cloak.. and I will bring all of these blankets with me as well. Now don't be foolish," as if to emphasize her point, her teeth chatter softly in the eerie silence of the night, the muted sound just barely reaching his ears. "Take it," another hand reaches forwards. At first it lays over the one that had caught her own hand, and then her fingers can be felt gently pulling his own from her fisted hand and shifting them over the bundled fabric of the cloak. "I will be there in a few minutes." * Branton frowns in the darkness and takes the cloak finally. "Please do not be too long?" his voice is soft and pleading, then before he can stop himself he has bent closer to the heat radiating off of her so that his lips might home in upon her cheek as one of his arrows to target. "Thank you," he whispers then to her ear before he disappears out into the night, the tent flap letting in a swirl of snowy breeze. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com -- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe dragontales" in the body of the message.
