By the time Darin returned, Ridahne was up and eating breakfast downstairs in the common room. Fresh eggs, rashes of bacon, and an apple with a mild white cheese. Delicious, but Ridahne found herself missing [I]teruk[/I], a curry-spice that found its way into a lot of Azurei cooking. The spice itself wasn't hot, though most things with it usually were, and she found northern cuisine to be bland in comparison. Not that it wasn't good, and she had grown very very fond of apple pie when she could get it, but it wasn't what she'd grown up on and therefore could never quite be 'comfort food'. 

"Yes, but have you even seen him before? Any of them?"
The blacksmith's apprentice, who had heard from his teacher all about what this elf woman had done the evening before, shook his head timidly. He was a quiet lad and not one prone to violence despite his tree-like build. She still had on her traditional Azurian clothing, not her traveling clothes, and her knives were still visible. He could only see the harness from where he sat, but he eyed it with all the same fear as if she'd flashed the blade itself in front of his face. "Ain't seen nobody with tattoos on the face or head come through here...er...um...besides you and that bald fella that you...uh..." He didn't finish that.
"Any idea where that practice comes from? There can't be that many cultures out there that tattoo the face." At his blank stare she prodded, "Nothing? Not even a guess?"

She wasn't being harsh but that did nothing to allay his fear of her. He kept thinking that she was some spirit of death, some mystical being with horrible, terrible powers of death and destruction. It wasn't because she'd killed three brigands in just moments and came out without a scratch. No, there was something about her that almost reeked of death. It was not a physical sense, just something he felt he knew as he looked into those amber-gold eyes. [I]And so relaxed about it too...[/I]
He shook his head, slowly at first and then more vigorously. "I...I'm sorry, I just pump the bellows and help Gareth work the forge, I--" She held up a silencing hand and he clamped his mouth shut. 
"That's alright er...Damien? I was just curious. Thank you." 
The lad nodded again, stood up a little awkwardly and scurried off to the other side of the bar looking like he'd escaped his own death, though he looked back at her like that death was seated on a barstool in the form of an elf woman. 

Ridahne saw Darin enter. "Ah, Martin. Good morning. Sit, have some breakfast. How is your shoulder feeling? And...have you given thought to my offer?" She was curious but didn't appear anxious about the question, about her fate. Truthfully, she didn't worry herself over it too much because she honestly wasn't sure how she felt about everything. Best to let fate take its course then, she'd thought. She didn't particularly want to be executed, but some beaten down part of her wondered what else she had going for her, and whether it wouldn't just be better to let her struggle end with as much dignity as she still had left. And yet, looking at Darin, Ridahne felt like she had things to do still. She might feel differently if Darin was in the care of another warrior, someone capable and determined and not easily swayed. But this human girl was alone, and Ridahne had just seen what kinds of things she was up against. She couldn't abandon her to that fate and secretly felt a flash of guilt for even thinking of her own end at a time like this.