Slowly, the feeling returned to her fingers as she warmed them near the hearth. She’d leaned her quarterstaff against the chair she sat in, and had hurried to the fire too quickly to have removed her backpack. Now that her brain seemed to have thawed out a bit, she shifted to pull the pack off and set it beside her chair.
She never truly understood how one could know they were being watched but the feeling, which she’d first attributed to being a part of the initial anxiety of entering an establishment in this world for the first time, did not subside. She lifted her chin and blinked through the mostly melted ice crystals on her lashes so that she could scan her surroundings properly.
The man was not hard to spot, he was staring so boldly. She’d been expecting someone watching her covertly, not something so obvious. She made eye contact and raised a questioning brow, then quickly searched the room to see if perhaps staring was just the custom here. She was new, after all. No, she didn’t see anyone else staring at anybody, so the act must at least not be the norm.
It was with great reluctance that she pulled herself away from the warm embrace of the hearth, but she always followed her curiosity before she followed her comfort. She lifted her pack with one hand and grabbed her quarterstaff with the other so as not to leave them unattended, and then approached the man’s table. For a moment she merely stared down upon him with a challenging look, but she was new here. Maybe she’d missed something important, or had done something grossly against the customs of this world. Her eyes quickly softened as she opened her mouth to speak. ”You stare more than the people from where I’m from do. Is that normal here?” She asked, used to being direct. She was somewhat surprised by the hoarseness of her own voice, but it happened plenty back home too, during blizzards where the cold air just got to be too harsh and burned at the back of her throat.
Tala
there's a world that was meant for us to see
