Wyckmere Mirth
A call for camp was a welcomed relief. Wyck's neck ached from the constant glances skyward that accompanied every new bend in their path. He knew the appearance of a dragon again would not come without some warning, but subconsciously he couldn't help it. Height was a funny thing and he wasn't entire sure how high a dragon could keep their flight while keeping a watchful eye on the ground. He tried to create scenarios where-in the dragon flew to the other side of the world, dove deep into the ocean, or other outlandish reasons why it might have gone completely off path in search of what it sought, but they felt like platitudes one might hear when trying to get a child to sleep when they feared monsters biting at their toes.
There had been a few minutes when he completely forgot about watching the skies. It had come after they passed a patch of honey-dip flowers peaking out from behind the bramble bush plant that typically covered the plant's feet. A wild flash of oranges and yellows mixed into an insect-attracting mirage and Wyck had plucked half a dozen of them before jogging back up with his place in the march. For the rest of the hour, he spent each passing step pulling the petals from the flower and chewing on their sickly sweet flesh. The flower carried very little in the way of weight, but the after-effects created a buzz in his ears that flowed down to his feet and helped keep his pep. He pressed one into D'Artegenon's hands too before tucking the remainder of them into a breast pocket. The half-orc tried to ignore the gesture, but Wyck was silently persistent and clearly wouldn't take the man's refusal seriously.
~*~*~
Camp offered a new set of activities and Wyck's priorities seemed to be in personal comforts. As D'Artegenon disappeared into the woods, Wyck was already in his routine. He tossed his own sack to the side and got to unpacking the essentials. Two thin wool blankets marked the bedding for both men a few feet apart. A pair of metal cups were tossed at the foot of the rustic beds, as were a few other amenities of the road that made such trips just a bit more bearable. They'd lay there until they were needed.
The campsite was a collection of clustered activities and when Wyck looked up from his finished tasks he saw that some of the others had broken off into a variety of tasks. Since his demotion as camp cook, he'd found the freedom to be a tad annoying. Now he was expected to invent tasks so as to be busy while the others worked on the essential things. The burden came with some minor perks, but so far Wyck had been hard pressed to revel in them.
~*~*~
The smell of dinner hit his nostrils like a smith's hammer finds the anvil. He was well trained to ignore the hunger pangs of travel, but to be faced with such novelties as a cooked meal washed away those veils. He was starving. He made sure not to be the first to the fire with a bowl, but he wasn't more than a few steps behind them with his own. He politely accepted whatever was offered with a wide-eyed thankfulness and briskly got out of the way of the next person. He found a place a few yards away from his own bedding where the ground looked soft enough and he wasn't in the pathway of the campfire's smoke. He embraced his bowl with both hands and inhaled deeply while he tried to guess what might be hidden just beneath the surface. It was true, a meal made by another always held with it a certain level of excitement because you'd not been hovering over the cooking fire staring at it the whole time.
He was two spoons in before he looked up and truly took stock of the bustling campfire. Allegiances had set in -it seemed- and there was comfort in that, even for an outsider. The rote bickering of strangers meeting strangers was dreadful and there had been more of it here than any of his last few stops. But this had also been the strangest of cases of the last half dozen as well.
Roland approached, but Wyck thought he meant to sit behind him somewhere, out of the way or at least behind the social wall of Wyck and what would eventually be D'Artegenon when he returned. When the soldier sat down beside him, Wyck foolishly quickened his latest spoonful and it made a wild slurping sound before his mouth was singed from the heat of it. It took him a full moment to recover. The physical reaction helps hide the mental one, as he tries to recall the inn, Roland's revelations, and anything else pre-dragon appearance.
His brain tried desperately to link the two, but only fragments emerged. Instead, he offered tokens of a different color. "Your name is your name, your story is your story, but it was your loyalty to it that was strange. We were there because we were meant to be there, proven to you by our gestures, and yet you kept your secret. What was it? Three days, four? But then to drop it so suddenly, so easily, was downright dangerous." His words and his tone conflict. He's chastising Roland like he's a child, but his tone is soft and understanding as if he knows it's a lesson he'll have to repeat again for a youthful ear. The words came, but so too did his hunger. He chanced another spoon of the broth before continuing.
"But my mood is not because of you. It is because of something else," Wyck nods toward the camp, "I don't know what to make of it yet. It usually doesn't take this long." He stops hard, looks down at his spoon in regret and then laughs, "Maybe it is the dog."
He shifted in his seat so that he could finally look at the man directly, politely. "So you're some kind of reformed criminal, then?" A return to the blunt repoire from Wyck is accompanied by a wry smile.