Jakob, on the other hand, was enthralled by the sounds, the motion, the colors, the scents. Had he known how dreadful his companion found it, he’d have more than likely let loose a good humored laugh. There was something enchanting and new to him in discovering the clean sweat scent of a man who was lugging a dead pig over one shoulder. Another older woman filled his nostrils with cinnamon and rotten teeth. He grinned in wide eyed fascination, now and again turning to look around him.

He did a better job of keeping up with Laeris after that one failed picked pocket. As did Laeris, actually. Of course, when it came to choosing the foodstuffs, he was more than willing to allow Laeris to go through it all and leave Jakob to his gawking. He sighed and spent the minutes in mute delight, staring at the forever changing river of humanity, life, color.

Perhaps he hadn’t seemed much like he was a companion when Laeris stepped away from him. Jakob, in thought on if he really wanted anything and decided that no, he had everything he needed in his pack, was as shocked as Laeris at the attack. He blinked at the sudden violence and then looked about them. The stream parted and made room, but did not pause.

He wasn’t surprised about the bystanders' actions actually. The act of self sacrifice wasn't all that common in nature either. The death of one fawn might cause the mother to remain by while the babe was devoured yet the rest of the herd would have left. Even the mother would have remained only at a distance. Why should this be any different? It made a very good sort of sense to the forest elf.

Jakob chuckled. The Mother had become the Babe. Though, attacking Laeris had to be much like attacking a full grown bear. Jakob would not have been so foolish as the quartet of would be robbers.

Outwardly, the elf did nothing to show that he understood. Rather, he put on his best "peasant" look and instead dropped his sack. He cursed as tried his best to keep his sack from hitting the ground yet failed to notice that the end of his longbow had shot out and hit a rather direct blow to the solar plexus of one of Laeris’ assailants. Bent over his fallen sack, Jakob glanced up with a startled, dismayed expression.

"Oh! Oh I’m sorry, ser!" he rushed to help the man and tripped up in the sack’s strings, falling head first into the man, the heel of his hand going into the man’s jaw and cracking his head back against the ground while Jakob proceeded to fall a nice ways over the man, sack and bow and arms and legs akimbo.

"Stupid hill-bound idjit…" The man who had punched Laeris reached to drag Jakob off of the fallen comrade, only Jakob had cried out in horror at having knocked the man aside and hastened to get off of him rather too quickly. Between the forward momentum of the one reaching for Jakob and Jakob’s scrambling to extract himself, the back of Jakob’s head managed to land nice and squarely upon the man’s nose, throwing him back with a nice solid sound of pain.

"Good gods!" Jakob cried out in horror, wide eyed and in panic, though his eyes, if one were to look too closely, were sparkling in humor. "There’s jus’ so many of you all! How do you manage to live all atop one another like tinned olives?" He moved to the other side of them, closer to where Laeris and the rest of the group were. Jakob gazed in obvious concern at the two men fallen over, one conveniently out cold while the other stumbled to his feet cupping his bleeding face. "Come, let me help you up!"

__________________

‘What will my death be like?’ he thought- and knew at once
with abrupt certainty, that it would be just like his life:
... the same balance of bearables.
~Amis