old-time religion

Gareth walked into the inn, somewhat dejected. Each knock of his boots against the wooden floor was only a half-hearted attempt to not track dirt inside. While he did not wear it on his sleeve, his eyes had a depressed droop to them as opposed to one that reeked of boredom. Stupid. He could have registered for the tournament if he had just stopped mucking around in Hryst but here he was, walking into an inn to kill the time until he could sleep and repeat the whole thing over again until this damn tournament was over and he could leave this sadistic vicariousness behind him. He took off his dirt-moss-and-tree-bark-camouflaged cloak and hung it on the rack. Rugged and hearty, for as hard as Gareth used it there was hardly any tear on the thing. He adjusted his sword on his back—freshly reforged, thanks to one of his latest deliveries—until it had reached what he thought was a perfect diagonal across his back.

He received the same muted conversations and peripheral glances from the inn that he did most places in Domhan Tir. Their conservative nature could be a curse as much as it was a blessing, but he doubted any of them wanted to see the burns—Gareth didn’t even want to see them. He sat down at the bar on a stool with a love-bird couple on his left and some broken old soul on his right. His hand dug into his pocket as he pulled out a small coin and held it up to the bartender. The bartender turned his money into a pint of water and another pint of beer. A regular magician. Gareth rearranged his facial bandages to expose his mouth—his burns peeked out through the left corner of the bandage facemask—and he put the beer to his lips. Its amber color began to wash into his mouth and he tasted a malted wave across his tongue. It was ok, but no better. Too sweet and caramelized and he tasted a hint of some kind of nut. It wasn’t bitter enough for him but he supposed it was the best that he could do here.

As much as he travelled between the tri-region area, Gareth was Hrystian through and through. He enjoyed the smell of seawater and smoke and bitter beer and the feel of soot on his exposed hands but in all of that there was that façade of honor that he could spit on. So many knights were supposed to be of the people and for the people but there they were: neglected orphanages and starving street urchins while most of those knights grew fat and lazy in their relatively opulent lifestyle.

He sat in surrounded solitude and listened to the singer drone on about the noble struggle of lost love and he thought to himself that somehow there had to have been more to sing about here in Domhan Tir. He inhaled and rapped his fingers on his glass, disrupting the condensation that had been developing on the glass. He turned around in his seat and looked around the bar, trying his hand at reading the people around the inn. For the most part, they all looked like traditional Tirians—rugged people clad in earthly color and a hue of dirt that had yet to be washed off in the evening bath. But he saw one who stuck out of the crowd like a neon sign—she dressed in a higher end manner and one exotic to either here or Hryst and he assumed she either had to be from Aquavia or the newly reopened Zhadrah. He felt his gaze lingering and he turned away quickly. He didn’t like staring—it was never becoming and it never made him feel comfortable when it was done to him. If he couldn’t hold himself to his own standards, then he couldn’t hold anyone else to them, could he?

OOC: Hope you didn't mind if I jumped in.