babette | WE'RE ONLY HAPPY WHEN WE'RE SHOPPING

[Arnbjorn .]

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=style, background: #2e2e2e; width:430px; height:550px; padding:0px;] seven days to the wolves seven days to the poison and a place in heaven time drawing near as they come to take us TAGGED: Babette! WORDS: 852 All of Skyrim could burn down from a war; Whiterun wouldn’t change. Contrary to popular belief, Arnbjorn had no beef with the city that the Companions claimed to have founded. Disdain for the city’s checkpoints that funneled in the new arrivals, or even at the iron-headed guards who were starting down at him and his short company from within those checkpoints didn’t cause the scrunch that disfigured his nose. They weren’t worth disliking, even if they tried to make themselves seem like they could single-handedly defend the city from trouble if they needed to. The twitch didn’t come from the city’s sewage, either; it came from familiarity. Only when Arnbjorn searched for the smells of fellow werewolves did he manage to find that the scent had already crept into his nostrils and waited there for him to acknowledge it. The smell of other werewolves didn’t bother him – in fact, it was a scent that, lesser than that of Astrid’s scent, triggered a sense of attraction. These scents, though, were specific. Every fourth or fifth footstep in the ragged pathway leading up to Whiterun’s gate carried the imprint of a face in the werewolf’s mind. Every surviving sprig of grass entwined itself with a few strands of fur. That was the part of Whiterun that would never change. But Arnbjorn wasn’t in Whiterun to nuzzle his way back in with any Companions. Today wouldn’t witness any assassinations, either. As the gate to Whiterun neared, Arnbjorn huffed, glancing down by his arm where the form of a ten-year-old girl walked alongside him. Those guards up in the checkpoints, if they knew it was a werewolf and a child vampire who had been slaying them for over three hundred years entering their city, would have dropped those “intimidating” glares and pissed themselves. Let those ugly helmets of their keep choking off their brains so they’d keep thinking Arnbjorn and Babette were some father and kid visiting the city, as Arnbjorn didn’t doubt they did. It wouldn’t matter what they thought, though. As he knew all too well, he and the under-grown vampire weren’t here to fulfill a contractual Black Sacrament. No…Arnbjorn found himself on the opposite end of the spectrum of Dark Brotherhood duties from an actual assassination. And the werewolf saw fit that he could make a complaint about such a departure from his usual duties once again, just before the gate guards came into view. ”I still don’t see why it had to be me to come along,” he grunted out, under his breath. ”I’m pretty sure one of the Five Tenets was don’t bring the werewolf where there’s raw meet.” Of course, he knew he was probably nothing more than the go-for for this supply run, relegated to doing much of nothing but standing by and toting the food off once Babette had done the bargaining for it, but the point still remained. There was a reason the Dark Brotherhood had to keep a pretty good amount of food stores in the sanctuary at all times, and that reason was usually Arnbjorn’s appetite. Putting him in charge of anyone’s food was typically a bad idea. It was best that he keep quiet about it, though. The gate guards were already looking them both over as the approached. The one on the right looked to be the naturally wary type – he looked over the approaching adult and child, before diverting his gaze elsewhere and straightening the arms crossed over his chest. The other one was apparently the genuinely decent guard out of the two and stepped over towards the center of the gate doors. Arnbjorn stared at him impassively. ”What’s your business in the city?” This much of the conversation, Arnbjorn could answer for. Guard wouldn’t take well to some smart-tongued girl biting back at him; the men and women who guarded Whiterun Hold were far too proud for that. ”Picking up food. What’s your business in stopping us?” The guard’s shoulder rolled in an obvious sign of his displeasure at Arnbjorn’s words, but as a credit to his brains, he didn’t react otherwise and paced out his answer. ”You shouldn’t have to ask, what with the war going on,” came the man’s excuse, a touch of frustration behind it. ”And then this with the dragon sightings…” Arnbjorn had been catching wind of these dragon problems. He recalled the story about a dragonborn well enough to produce a campfire story about it on the spot, but for the man before him, Arnbjorn felt no urge to reply. Arnbjorn didn’t fully believe the whole thing about the dragon sightings anyway, but as with most things, no one expected nor needed him to believe in their fantasies. Let them believe what they wanted. A few seconds pause, and the guard finally turned to unlock the gate. ”I have no reason not to let you in.” Good thing. Any longer and those helmets may have finally tempted Arnbjorn enough for him to test how resilient they were. The doors squeaked annoyingly and parted at the guard's coaxing, leaving Arnbjorn to glance Babette and enter the city he'd known for way too many years in his life. Right...shopping time. NOTES: Hope this is fine!

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[babette .]

one two buckle my shoe three four shut the door .

The good news was that vampires were faster than the mortals. The bad news was that despite being faster than her werewolf companion, at a sprint, Babette struggled to keep up with the much taller nord for most of their journey from Falkreath to Whiterun. Bretons were a small people, and she was but a child. Her green cape was just a bit too long, and she found herself constantly tripping on it, but the large hood was necessary to avoid the sun. Whiterun was not her favorite city to go in to. Worse was Morthal. Well, she did find it incredibly amusing to feed on the citizens of a hold who’s Jarl was so vocal about witchery, vampires, and the like. But Whiterun smelled like dog. When they stayed the night there was horrible howling. Arnbjorn she had grown accustomed to. But it was not by any means the type of place that she wanted to spend any real amount of time. She would honestly rather be stuck in Riften which always smelled like dead fish to her than be in Whiterun. There was something altogether unappetizing about wet dog that made her avoid feeding in Whiterun, though she might have very little choice this trip. Arnbjorn was not a particularly chatty companion. He spent most of the time complaining about menial tasks. Babette could have laughed. It was better that than to constantly be treated like a child. ”And I am fairly sure that one of the tenants is stop complaining and do your job.” Even if that job was a supply run. It had to be Arnbjorn. Allimir was a fellow vampire. One vampire and her dog was bad enough, make it two vampires and they would be asking for trouble. Taros was off on holiday, doing heaven’s only knew what. She shuddered to think what assassins did on holiday. She had never taken one since Vicente had taken her in so long ago. Astrid was busy being in charge. Nazir would draw far too much attention, and were she sent out with Festus only one of them would return to the sanctuary in one piece. So it had to be Arnbjorn. Besides, he was the best at Whiterun. He would keep the dogs at bay. When they approached the gates to the city, she fell a half step behind her giant companion. Despite being the elder of the two, Babette knew she would appear to be the daughter, as far as the guards were concerned. Her answers would only be swift and sarcastic anyway. The guards would hardly take kindly to being harassed by a child. The two assassins did not want to draw attention got themselves, though Arnbjorn’s answer to the guard almost made her giggle. She bowed her head and bit her lip to keep from letting her laughter escape. Dragons seemed exciting sure. But she had seen no sign of any dragons in her three hundred years in Tamriel, she highly doubted they had any reason to begin appearing now. But the guard let them enter with a tone of displeasure. As she passed she glanced up at him, and nodded her hooded head just slightly ”Thank you.” She had made a small list of the things she personally needed, plus there were the usual items from the market, and she wanted to sneak up and peek at the Skyforge. That had not been written down on her list. But there was something fascinating about the Skyforge to her. Impossibly old, but making the strongest steel in all of Skyrim. She could not help but be intrigued by it. ”I need to stop at Arcadia’s” Between her previous contract and tending to the new recurits many wounds, Babette had not had time to go find her own supplies. She’d been raiding the local shops, but the tiny town of Falkreath only had so much. Arcadia always had a much better stock. ”And then the normal things. You should buy something pretty for Astrid. Well. Something pretty and dangerous. An Ebony dagger perhaps.” Babette was fairly sure that wives liked getting gifts. Even wives whose profession and past time were the murder of mostly innocent people.

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word count - 707. tag - arnbjorn . outfit .

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[Arnbjorn .]

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=style, background: #2e2e2e; width:430px; height:550px; padding:0px;] seven days to the wolves seven days to the poison and a place in heaven time drawing near as they come to take us TAGGED: Babette WORDS: 647 ”Huh,” came Arnbjorn’s noncommittal response to Babette’s response to his complaints. ”This should count more for my year’s charity than a job.” He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d been dragged off for something as unfit for his skill set as a city supply pickup. Usually, Arnbjorn’s kinds of supply pickups included the slaughter of whoever was unlucky enough to be in possession of those supplies. Arnbjorn didn’t negotiate. It wasn’t in his character. But, again, Babette could handle the swindlers in the marketplace even if they would think of her as a little kid. That would probably be their downfall; it was everyone’s downfall with Babette. The short vampire hadn’t impressed him much as a Brotherhood member, either, until he’d seen her feed on a target. Let the chops in the Whiterun marketplace hope they could reach some kind of a deal with her, or they’d get a nice little wake up call to the tune of two fangs to the neck. Or not; Babette didn’t exactly have as much of a tendency as Arnbjorn to bite before thinking. Though the guard that stopped them wouldn’t know it, the fact that Arnbjorn didn’t bite into them should have been a reason to celebrate. All the man who opened the door got outside of Arnbjorn’s sarcastic question was a huff from the werewolf as he passed into the streets of Whiterun. The former Companion all but forgot about the guard once he took in the unchanging sights of Whiterun that matched the unchanging smells. The little blacksmith’s shop to the right of the pathetic excuse for a bridge beyond the entrance first drew his attention - the sounds of metal clanking usually got his attention right off the start. The sound bothered him outside of the time Arnbjorn himself was doing metalworking. Aside from that annoyance, Whiterun offered nothing for him to see that he hadn’t grown sick of while he’d lived at the Jorrvaskr. Arnbjorn shot a passerby, a member of one of those pointless rival clans in the city, a cold look before trudging off again for the marketplace that sat straight ahead. He decided that the faster that he and Babette got done with their menial tasks, the better. Babette brought up Arcadia’s, a place Arnbjorn would never set foot in if he could help it. He didn’t have any problem with the woman who ran it from what he’d known about her in the city, but the promise of all of the potions and elixirs and everything else in that woman’s story assaulting his nostrils had kept him outside of her little shop ever since he’d accepted the blood that currently flowed in his veins. ”You do that, and I’ll be busy wasting my time and making the guards’ knees rattle,” he responded, deciding it was going to be miserable having to wander around a marketplace filled with people who recognized his face well enough to trigger some of their stupid gossip. Hmm…buying Astrid something. Arnbjorn had never been the gifts kind of man, though he’d tried a few times to drag something worthwhile home to Astrid. Mostly, his gifts to her had been of…another nature. Whiterun did have a general goods shop that sold pretty decent weaponry... ”I’ll see what I can do.” The market closed in around them, leading Arnbjorn to stop at the edge of it and take in a few of the street venders’ faces before grunting indifferently and turning his gaze towards the goods place. Glancing Babette before leaving her to her own thing, Arnbjorn sloughed his way to the door of the general goods shop and pushed open the door to enter, not having any delusions that he’d end up buying anything from inside. At least it was better than getting a whiff of Babette’s concoctions…most things were better than having to go through that experience. NOTES: Blargh, I hate this ending. XD

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[babette .]

one two buckle my shoe three four shut the door .

She was certain that if anyone was allowed to count this as charity it was her. Babette was the one who listened to him complain about it, as she had listened to every assassin complain about it for the two hundred years of her life that had been devoted to the service of Sithis. It was only through her devotion to him that she did not kill half the nitwits they sent her out with. They always went through the same tired complaints. This was beneath them. They were much better used killing people. Why did they have to babysit the kid? Oh, I’m a big scary werewolf and I should be doing big scary werewolf things. It was just pathetic. All the complaining and the grumbling it was just getting old, but then everything was getting old. She’d been in Skyrim for more than two lifetimes. Babette had begun to wonder if she should try to help rebuild the brotherhood in one of the other provinces. She could do more for her unholy patron that way than listening to her companions complain about how this task was beneath them. They may or may not have noticed that she did not complain. She could also be better used killing, but in her brothers eyes she was always a child, and as such was given tasks worthy of a child. She could handle any task that the others could handle. She could likely handle them better. She was a tiny terrifying vampire and should have been doing tiny terrifying vampire things. Whiterun was as it had ever been. The blacksmith outside of Warmaidens hammering away. One of them men was telling a traveler they ought to try mercenary work. It seemed like a strange thing to be discussing in the middle of the street. there were a handful of children playing tag. Part of Babette wanted to join them. She loved tag. Babette was not really a child though, and she spent so much of her time trying to convince the other assassins of that. If she were to skip off and play tag with the other children, she doubted Arnbjorn would ever let her forget it. So, she kept her focus, tugging her hood lower over her face. There was some kind of argument going on between two of the clans. She was certain it annoyed most of the people here at this point, but Babette found it sad. She could remember a time that the two clans were friends. She had played with Eorlund Gray-Mane on the steps of Jorrvaskr when he had been a child. Not that she would ever mention it to any of the other Dark Brotherhood members. Babette was a fierce vampire. She would never take time out from her contracts to play swords with a child. Even if that child would grow up to work the Skyforge. ”Now pup,” she said with a small huff. ”Don’t break your new toys.” Honestly she was a little bit concerned that one of the guard would say something that upset her werewolf, and he would attack them. He tended to bite first and then continue until they were dead. It was a Nord thing, or possibly the beast blood, she was unsure which to blame. Probably a mixture of both. Still, the less notice the vampire and the werewolf called to themselves, the better off they would be. ”Just be careful, Arnbjorn. If I have to explain to Astrid why half the town of Whiterun died while we were here, that’s not going to be pleasant.” Not pleasant for babette at any rate. Astrid would forgive anything that Arnbjorn did. Babette wondered what it was like to care about someone that much. She made it a standing rule to not get attached to anyone. They would all die well before she did. And she had never found anyone with the potential for her to turn. In three hundred years there was no one she had met she’d want to spend one lifetime with, let alone the rest of time. The pair parted ways for a brief period. She understood why he did not want to go to the alchemy store with her. She loved the smell of potions and ingredients. She was a Breton, they were a highly magical people. She had grown up playing in her mother’s alchemy gardens, helping grind items for potions. She remembered the time that she had eaten the petals off off one of her mother’s nightshade plants and spent a week in bed ill. The alchemist dotting Skyrim felt almost as much like home as the sanctuary. He was a Nord. Nords liked the smell of rocks and taverns. She could never have made him understand how amazing alchemy was anymore than she was capable of being a blacksmith. Were she not a vampire, she would not even lift most of his hammers. Even still, with her small frame the were unwieldy. When she entered the store, she forced herself She stood on her tip toes leaning heavily on the counter. ”Hello,” She smiled at the imperial behind the counter. ”I’m here to pick up some ingredients for my mother.” Because what ten year old child was making potions with void salts and daedra hearts? Oh yes, she was. She smiled handing the list to the woman, then skipping off to play with the things on the alchemy table. She heard Arcadia tell her to be careful, and had to strain not to roll her eyes, and instead smiled back at the woman a nodded, before she finished inspecting the equipment. She much preferred her set up in the sanctuary. The imperial alchemist had all of her equipment backwards. When Arcadia had finished gathering her suppies, Babette paid the woman, and skipped back out into the market. She had seen Arnbjorn duck in to the general goods trader. Part of her wanted to wait outside for him, but she was far too impatient for that. ”Here then. I’ve got the things from the alchemist.” She said as she moved up next to him. ”Did you find something lovely for Astrid? You could buy her a circlet. I think they’d look lovely in her hair.” She did have such nice blonde hair. If Astrid were not equal parts terrifying and cruel, Babette might have asked if she could put ribbons in it. She would have put ribbons in Arnbjorn’s too. Puppies always looked more adorable with bows. She giggled a little to herself at the thought. How terrified his contracts would be, being slaughtered by a werewolf with pink ribbons in his fur. Oh no. Not pink that was hardly his color. Perhaps a nice lavender. ”How did you know you wanted to spend the rest of your life with Astrid?” She asked finally, completely ignoring the man behind the counter. ”You only have one life, so how do you know that Astrid is the person to spend it with? What if there is someone else you like better later?” She sincerely doubted that leaving Astrid would be a good plan for her werewolf friend at any time. But, how did he know that he wanted to spend the years that he had with her? Romantic relationships were something that Babette had remained mostly unaware of until recently. Dark Brotherhood members rarely married. Or if they did they were much quieter about it than her current leader. There had been the occasional couple in the sanctuary, but she’d never been as fond of any as she was Astrid and Arnbjorn. Most of them died out quickly. Loving someone was a distinct disadvantage. It gave you a constant weakness. They were not in a business that allowed for weakness.

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word count - 1308. tag - arnbjorn . outfit .

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[Arnbjorn .]

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[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=style, background: #2e2e2e; width:430px; height:550px; padding:0px;] seven days to the wolves seven days to the poison and a place in heaven time drawing near as they come to take us TAGGED: Babette WORDS: 832 Sharp eyes cut their way to Babette at her pup comment. ”Haven’t heard that one before…”, the werewolf sarcastically grunted. Werewolf jokes came with the territory of being a werewolf, and Arnbjorn probably played into the hands of those who’d make them by turning everyone around him into a term for food. He’d assigned Babette a few of the same terms over time, but to reinforce the point that her words weren’t amusing to them, he didn’t use them. Instead, he looked over her head to the open areas of the marketplace as she explained what it was he could and could not do. Sometimes Arnbjorn wondered if Babette didn’t have it backwards in her head – that everyone around her was a kid and she was the adult in the group. He snarled distastefully. ”If I didn’t kill any of ‘em while I lived here, got no reason to change my mind now.” He angled his chin towards Arcadia’s shop. ”You just do what you need to so we can get out of this city.” And the vampire girl was off to toy with her plants, leaving Arnbjorn to mull over the idea of grabbing something Astrid would appreciate. She didn’t deal in potions like Babette. She’d need something a little more personal. Once inside the general goods shop, Arnbjorn shared a cool nod with the man behind the counter, who ate on some small plate of food in front of him and barely seemed to care anyway. Otherwise, the trader’s appeared – and sounded – empty. It wasn’t a busy time of day. Though the place had a bit of the same smell that he remembered, the few years of wear had given the scent a different tint to it that Arnbjorn shrugged off and proceeded to ignore as he focused on the actual wares of the place. Arnbjorn could see nothing much worth speaking of. With the war raging, the Imperials that were in charge of Whiterun had probably confiscated most of the more dangerous wares so the Stormcloaks couldn’t get their hands on anything worthwhile and start a resistance in the city’s walls. If anyone really thought that would stop the followers of Ulfric Stormcloak, they were out of their minds. The trader’s wasn’t completely empty, though, and Arnbjorn trudged his way over the creaky floorboards to a display holding a few weapons. There was nothing to what he found – they were all the bare-bones sort of blades that the city’s guards would be toting around on their waists. None of it would impress Astrid in the slightest, especially if it didn’t impress Arnbjorn. He spent longer than he would have thought staring at the goods in the place and probably worrying the man behind the counter into the belief that Arnbjorn was a thief, because before long, a walking conglomeration of smells walked in, taking the form of the little vampire again. Arnbjorn swallowed to halt any reaction to the stink and took a glance at Babette as she fell in beside him. Another glance, this one at the man behind the counter, indicated that he was much more comfortable now that he’d found out the brawny Nord trudging around his store had brought a little girl with him. If the man had only known… Arnbjorn made a noise of thought when Babette brought up the idea of a circlet for Astrid. Circlets made sense – they weren’t anything unfitting for an assassin who spent more time on her job than flaunting around in society and they weren’t something of which Astrid had a surplus stored somewhere in the Sanctuary. With his gaze resting on the shelf featuring a trio of circlets, Arnbjorn mulled over it for a few more seconds before deciding it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at them whether or not he dragged one out with him. He stepped over, only to have Babette’s question distract him from the shelf and set him to looking at her for a few seconds to judge the reason for the question. As usual, Arnbjorn ticked it off as a child’s curiosity, looking back at the circlets as he responded. ”I’ll give you the easy answer. There was and never will be anyone better than Astrid,” Arnbjorn replied, taking one of the circlets and looking at it a few seconds. He didn’t know how to shop to begin with, and he definitely didn’t know how to pick out an item he’d never had his hands on more than twice before in his life. The circlet received a stare as if it was the next thing Arnbjorn was set on killing. Ugh, Babette was probably going to want more of an answer than he’d given. Setting the circlet aside, he continued. ”We don’t have three hundred years to live. Got to make some decisions that feel right. I don’t second guess much.” Finally, his shoulders slumped after a little more staring at the circlets. ”You should be the one looking at these…” NOTES: Yay this one was better!

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[babette .]

one two buckle my shoe three four shut the door .

His answer was not an easy answer. It was a pathetic answer. It was the kind of answer that you gave to your wife when she asked you a question and you knew that no matter what you said it was a trap and you were going to end up sleeping out in the stables. She had heard her father give many pathetic answers that were vague enough to sound like they were a good thing, but did not actually answer the question. ”There are a lot of people in Skyrim. Even more in all of Tamriel. How do you know that there is not one woman out there who is a better mate for you than Astrid?” She asked, knowing full well that he was never going to be able to answer the question to her satisfaction. Werewolves seemed like the mate for life type to her. Vampires tended to find mates to which they were very attached. But vampire lives stretched on across centuries, span eras, and she imagined they millenia if the vampire were careful. It was hard to live with one person for that long without murdering them. The few vampire couples she knew would spent a few hundred years together, then some apart then get back together. That seemed like a more reasonable plan to her, but if you were only going to live sixty to a hundred years you wanted to make sure it was with the right person. ”It must be an awful relief.” She said with a bit of a frown. ”Knowing that you only have to spend one lifetime with somebody. Instead of just going on forever and ever married to the same person.” Or forever and ever stuck in the body of a ten year old girl. Forever being a tiny little breton child. It was a horrible curse. She glanced behind her to make sure that the man behind the counter was looking away as she climbed up two shelves and onto her tiptoes to reach the circlet that she wanted to look at, but her fingers could not reach, and she was already unbalanced enough. With a very audible sigh, she hopped back down to the floor. ”That one. The gold one with the red stones. They’re probably not really rubies but its pretty. And it will match her armor nicely. Though a black band would be nicer. An ebony circlet shouldn’t be much harder to make than a gold one, do you think?” Of course Arnbjorn did some smithing, he ought to just be able to make something pretty for Astrid. She doubted that it would happen like that. He seemed too rough to make something delicate and pretty. Then, Astrid was a little rough to, maybe she wouldn’t like something delicate and pretty She crossed her arms over her chest, and her frown deepened. ”And if you only have what? Maybe twenty good years left in you, how do you know you want to spend them with Astrid? And why one woman? One woman with whom you have no children. Is not the purpose of such coupling to produce offspring?” She asked. There were no other children in the Dark Brotherhood for obvious reasons, but if Astrid and Arnbjorn were married, they would surely want offspring. They were assassins, true, but they were not heartless. And almost all women wanted a child at some point, it was the only way that the population continued. Continuing the population was always important to a hungry vampire. Not that Babette would try to eat their child. But generations down the line, she could make no promises. ”Do you think your condition would be passed on to offspring?” She had never considered the possibility of vampire’s having children either. She would never do so. She was always going to be ten. But most of the other vampires were much older. Could Allimir have children? She thought he would have lovely children personally. ”You would name your child after me of course, wouldn’t you? I feel it would only be appropriate. Soldiers name their sons after their commanding officer.” Babette may not have been the commanding officer in the Dark Brotherhood, but she was the oldest member. ”How disappointed would you be if it decided not to follow your career and became a priest instead? I think that would be just awful.” Especially as she would be the one listening to them complain about it constantly, until they died. At that point, she might consider helping them along. ”This whole love thing is very, very confusing.”

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word count - 770 . tag - arnbjorn . outfit .

[Arnbjorn .]

seven days to the wolves

time drawing near

TAG: Babette Words: 792

ONE LAST THING: Bahaha, I had a good time writing this. XD

”What’s got your little head so full of questions?”, Arnbjorn rhetorically asked after Babette continued to press him about Astrid. This subject of mates must have been all that was on little girls’ minds most days, but Arnbjorn wasn’t going to bother prodding his short company about that assumption. He also didn’t want to bother with her impromptu interview, filled with questions that Arnbjorn shouldn’t have needed to answer at any point, but against his better judgment he only huffed quietly at Babette and continued. ”I don’t care to know, and I seriously doubt there’s anyone out there even half as good as Astrid.” He would have added in more ways than one, but being around a ten-year-old and having some random shop owner listening in curbed his language for the time being. ”Even if I did care, looking for someone else is a waste of the time I have with her.” Hopefully that would pacify the little vampire’s need for an explanation. If not, sarcasm would need to be employed.

She didn’t ask for more explanation, only seeming to fall into some sort of reverie about living with the same person as Arnbjorn continued his struggles with an inability to comprehend shopping for a woman. It couldn’t be said that Arnbjorn didn’t wonder about Babette when she hit these moments where he started to figure she wasn’t all too fond of being an ageless child, but his persona had never allowed him to be much use for sitting back and discussing the nuances of life with much of anyone unless the other person figuratively chained him to the subject. As soon as the werewolf started to wonder what was going through the mind of the girl, though, she’d taken it upon herself to start clambering her way up to the circlets. Only stepping close enough to make sure her ascent didn’t end suddenly enough for Babette to find herself across the floor on her head, Arnbjorn stared at the one she was reaching for and noticed it was probably the one that had looked best to him in his confusion anyway. The stare remained even as Babette hopped down and verbally pointed it out, Arnbjorn only turning from it once she mentioned ebony. Making something for Astrid? That, Arnbjorn could understand better than shopping. He’d never claimed to be the best of smiths, but as long as the smithing wasn’t complicated, Arnbjorn always managed. With a thoughtful grunt under his breath, he recalled the fact that he did have some ebony available at the sanctuary. ”I’ll save us the trouble and make one,” he ultimately declared, ”but you’re gonna need to figure out the size.” Glancing the disinterested shopkeeper again, Arnbjorn started a slow gait back towards the door.

As if on cue, though, the girl resumed her previous subject. By Sithis, Babette wouldn’t let this one go by the sound of it and possessed no ability to keep her curiosities to one question at a time. Sifting through the majority of Babette’s ramblings, Arnbjorn actually graced the last of her questions with an answer once he got to the door and started to roughly shove it open. ”Heathen werewolves in old times ate their young,” Arnbjorn dryly told her once out of range of the shopkeeper’s ear, not giving an answer that necessarily applied for him, but one that might convince Babette to stop pursuing her offspring questions. Arnbjorn wasn’t even sure if it was true. ”This condition’s in the blood. If that means anything for the pup’s blood, then yes.” Considering he’d never thought about having a child in his entire life, Arnbjorn hadn’t touched the subject of a wolf’s blood on the offspring. If Babette wanted to look into it for pure curiosity’s sake, that was completely up to her.

Arnbjorn tried his best to keep from hearing everything Babette continued to say to him, bringing him eventually to the point, once they were outside, that he grumbled a few words about wishing the fangs would stop her tongue under his breath to himself. She’d delved so deep into the child idea that the name Arnbjorn would choose concerned her. He didn’t turn to look at her. ”If I didn’t have to hear so many questions from you, I’d give the name a thought, and if she asked as many questions as you, I’d want her to be a priest. She can ask someone else her piles of questions.” Arnbjorn shook his head to himself. Anyone but Babette, and he would have gotten disgusted a long time ago. Encouraging her to quit with the interrogation for a while would be great for his sanity. ”You finally done? Try getting to what we came here for to begin with.”

as they come to take us

TEMPLATE BY: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE MIKEY ! @ CAUTION.