Dinner-Iliana

   Iliana had spent the day in her shop, making jewelry, and trying not to think about how potentially awkward her evening was going to be. Obviously she was unsuccessful because she was an eternal pessimist and always jumped to the worst conclusions. She’d almost considered pretending to be ill to get out of it, but that would just make things even more awkward, and it was just plain rude. You didn’t repay favors by lying and going back on your word, so she was going, no matter how disastrous she imagined it would be.

   It probably wasn’t at all fair to Garth to assume the evening would be a disaster, but he seemed so nice and Iliana… wasn’t. And she didn’t want him to find that out about her when they were only just becoming friends. She didn’t really have any friends in Kattegat yet, and she couldn’t go ruining the only promising relationship she had at the moment.

   Finally, she closed her shop, went home and got ready. She’d been in charge of bringing something to drink, but had also bought some freshly baked bread on her way home. It was polite to arrive with more than you were required to bring, especially when making friends. And though Garth had said mead was fine, which was the beverage Iliana preferred, she’d picked up some ale as well, since he’d mentioned it.

   It had taken her awhile to get ready because she was entirely unable to make decisions. What sort of dress was she supposed to wear? How was she supposed to do her hair? She normally wore jewelry, because she was trying to sell it, but she wasn’t selling any to him, right? Eventually she settled on a simple dark green gown, because she knew it complimented her hair nicely, left her hair down for once, instead of braiding it back, and chose not to wear any jewelry at all. She’d decided simple was the way to go, and made it the theme of her appearance for the evening.

   She put the ale, mead, and bread in a cloth lined basket, fastened her cloak around her shoulders, and headed out into the cold night, towards Garth’s house. This was actually the first time she was going into anyone’s house in Kattegat other than her own. She didn’t think the great hall at the harvest feast really counted.

   Knocking on the door quickly, Iliana found the cold air helped to calm her thoughts, and took a deep breath, hoping this would all go well. She even tried to quiet that ever present pessimistic voice in her head that told her things never go well for her. This would. She’d try her best to make sure it did.

   The door opened quickly, and Iliana smiled at Garth as soon as he came into view. Entering the house, she looked around quickly, curious about what his house looked like, but not wanting it to look like she was really scrutinizing or anything. Her attention quickly returned to him and she handed him her cloak when he offered to take it from her. “How are you?” she inquired as a greeting, before holding up the basket with the things she’d brought along. “Where would you like me to…?” she trailed off the end of the question. She didn’t mean to seem impatient, she just wasn’t sure where he wanted her to place it.

   “Thank you for inviting me,” she answered immediately. He was being extra polite, which Iliana thought was kind of funny. They barely knew each other, so obviously he had no way of knowing that she wasn’t the sort of person who offended easily. In fact the last time she’d spent one on one with a friend, she and Brynja had spent the whole time teasing and being mean to each other. But Garth couldn’t know that about her, and him finding out honestly worried her. Would he think she was strange and not want to be friends anymore? He seemed so nice, and she couldn’t imagine him being the sort of person who was ever deliberately mean to someone else.

   Luckily, he mentioned cooking, and she smiled and nodded at him. “I brought bread, and mead, and ale. I wanted to contribute a little more,” she told him with a small shrug of her shoulders. “Oh, um, we can cook now? I’m not very hungry but I don’t mind talking and cooking at the same time?” By the time they finished they’d probably be hungry, she rationalized. Looking at the ingredients he had already prepared, she could guess what they were making. “Stew?” she inquired, trying to figure out what the cubed chunks of meat were. “Is it rabbit?” That sort of thing became easier to determine when you prepared all of your own food for most of your life.

   When he told her to look at the table, she saw the knife he’d promised to make her and raised an eyebrow at him before walking over to pick it up. “It’s beautiful,” she remarked immediately, taking a moment to look at the work he’d done on the hilt. It was far more intricate than she’d been anticipating, noting the gems he’d laid into it. After properly examining the handle, she unsheathed it to admire the work on the blade itself. “It’s so detailed. I love it.” She turned back to smile at him, “Thank you! Though, I do remember insisting to pay for it, and I don’t have anything with me. I’ll have to come by your shop tomorrow.” Because she was going to pay for it. She got the impression she’d be haggling with him to raise the price, rather than lower it.

   Turning in the direction of the food, she noticed immediately that he’d already gotten nearly everything done, short of actually putting the ingredients into the pot. “Next time I guess it’ll be my turn to do the cooking,” she said, laughing a bit, since he’d left very little actual cooking to do. It didn’t occur to her that she’d just unilaterally decided they’d be having dinner again in the future.

   “So, we should probably get everything in the pot and then we can… talk while it cooks?” She’d managed to simply react to the things he’d been saying or doing, and most of her awkwardness had dissipated, but now that she’d recalled him saying they could talk and relax, that was exactly what was now making her feel awkward once again. Iliana didn’t particularly care for talking about herself, and hoped Garth would be happy with answering her questions, and not asking her any of his own.

   She took a seat in front of where he’d placed the knife, and turned to look at him, hoping to kick things off and keep him from asking too many questions. “You said the other day that you’d been a blacksmith for quite a while? Did you always want to be one?” She found it interesting that some people seemed to have ‘callings’. She wasn’t sure she’d call jewelry making a calling exactly and wondered if he’d felt drawn to smithing, or if it was just something he’d discovered he was good at, and had chosen to pursue.

   Almost as soon as Garth had taken her cloak, Iliana was regretting wearing her hair down. She had a lot of it, and it was getting in her way. Plus, cooking with your hair all over the place was not a good idea, but she hadn’t even considered that when she’d made the decision not to braid it or pin it into place. So she pulled it all over one shoulder, in an attempt to keep it mostly contained. With her hair semi-under control, she smiled at Garth when he took the basket and thanked her for coming. He told her he’d been looking forward to it and she thought that was quite a nice thing to hear. Obviously she wasn’t going to tell him she’d been dreading the whole thing. That wasn’t a nice thing to hear.

“Me too,” she answered instead, with a smile, like the polite person her mother had tried to turn her into. When she explained what she’d brought, he told her she didn’t have to but she waved it away. She was glad she’d done it, especially when she realized he’d already done most of the work. “It was the least I could do.”

She noticed for a few moments that he’d suddenly become a bit closed lipped and wondered if she’d done something wrong. She certainly didn’t want him to stop talking, because that would ruin the part of her plan where she did very little talking. They couldn’t both stop talking, or it would be too obvious and awkward.

Luckily, once the conversation turned to the knife he’d made her, he started talking again. When her gaze moved from the knife to his face, she noticed he was blushing and couldn’t help but smile in response. Was he blushing because of her? It was kind of nice to realize she wasn’t the only one who did that. Though, knowing how much she hated feeling awkward and blushing around others, she felt a bit bad that it could be her fault. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to fix the situation without calling attention to it, which would probably only make it worse.

“I couldn’t accept this as a gift, it looks so expensive.” She understood what it meant to sell a piece you’d put a lot of time, money and effort into. It meant ensuring you were fed for another month or two. “I don’t know what you might need jewelry for, but I would trade you for it?” A mostly even trade, since she was certain he’d charge more for a knife like this than anything she’d ever made, was about the best she could offer, other than paying for it like she wanted.

It wasn’t until he repeated ‘next time’ that Iliana finally became aware of what she’d said. She’d just very clearly asked him over for dinner at hers and hadn’t even realized it. She discovered the idea didn’t immediately horrify her and decided she didn’t mind spending time with him. Now that she knew he seemed to be just as awkward around her as she was around him. Why she found such a strange bit of information comforting, she’d never know, but she did. “Right, it’s a plan,” she told him with a smile.

Once the food was squared away, and they were sitting down to talk, Iliana thought her plan of getting Garth to talk about himself had worked brilliantly. She could understand deciding a life of fighting wasn’t something a person might be interested in. She’d made the same decision when she was younger, when her mother had tried to convince her the life of a shield maiden was for her. But then her plan backfired quite easily when he asked her about herself. She probably should’ve seen that coming.

“Um no, I didn’t really have anything in mind,” she answered simply, which was true. Her father had wanted her to become a blacksmith like him, and her mother had wanted her to become a shield maiden like her, and then they’d died and she had to fall back on the only skills she had. “I think I just got lucky with jewelry. My father was a blacksmith, so I spent a lot of time with him, and…” she shrugged. That was basically the whole story. Other than orphaned at thirteen.

Once again she tried to turn the conversation back to him. “You’re originally from… Skagerrak? Right? Do you miss it?”

As surprising as she found it, Iliana was actually having a very nice time. She was still feeling a bit awkward but having noticed the occasional reddening of Garth’s cheeks, she assumed it wasn’t a one sided thing, which actually helped her feel a little more relaxed. She sipped at her mead slowly, enjoying the sweet taste, and trying her best to actually participate in the conversation. She’d certainly prefer if he just kept talking so she didn’t have to, but she wanted to be able to have a real conversation with him without blushing or fidgeting or looking ridiculous, so she had to be involved.

After she suggested a trade for the knife instead of accepting it as a gift, or paying him for it, she was pleasantly surprised when he accepted the idea. He mentioned going home and she thought it was so sweet that he’d get presents for his mother and sister. Sure, that was probably fairly normal, she guessed. She wouldn’t really know. But Iliana thought he was sweet to do it anyway. Before she had a chance to say so though, he told her she deserved nice gifts and she shook her head with a smile. “I don’t need gifts. But you’re very sweet, to give me this in exchange for gifts for your mother and sister. What do you get out of all of this?” She wondered, gesturing to the knife, genuinely trying to figure him out. Was he really just this nice? She found that hard to believe. In her admittedly limited experience, people weren’t just nice for no reason. But from what she’d discovered about him so far, he very well could be.

With the stew stewing, they’d started talking about themselves, something Iliana had hoped to avoid. But clearly it was too late now to accomplish that. After she told him about how she’d gotten into jewelry making, he told her she was the best and she knew she had to be blushing harder than she had before. She’d been about to whisper another ‘thank you’ when she realized he’d just called her beautiful and her eyes widened as she looked at him across the table. Was he… joking? Or was he being serious right now? While she wasn’t an insecure person, she was certainly a skeptical one, and always assumed people had ulterior motives for everything they said or did. What possible reason could he have for being this nice to her? Other than the slightly obvious ‘he wants to sleep with you’ that passed through her mind briefly, but this seemed rather above and beyond if he just wanted to sleep with her. Right?

“Um… thank you?” she replied, finally, hesitantly. How else were you supposed to reply to something like that? Hopefully he wouldn’t think she was too odd for not knowing how to politely react to compliments like that. They were a fairly rare thing for her.

When he started talking about his family, she smiled at him. His affection for his mother and sister were abundantly clear, but when he mentioned his mother’s husband, she frowned a little bit. His step father didn’t seem like a very nice person. She didn’t know how someone could marry a person and hate their child. It’s not like whatever the situation was with his real father was his fault. He shrugged it off, but it was hard to miss that it had clearly affected him. If he didn’t care about the way his mother’s husband had treated him, Iliana didn’t think it would’ve come up.

“He sounds shitty,” she replied with a nod. Being mean was basically her default setting so the words had escaped before she’d really thought anything of it and immediately bit her lip when she realized what she’d said. “I mean…” she started, attempting to recover but was unable to, and just shrugged. “Sorry, that’s not a very nice thing to say.” Hopefully he wouldn’t be too offended.

Fortunately, he started talking about why he’d left Skagerrak and about his sister and she smiled again. It was pretty cute, the way he talked about her. They were clearly very close. “That must’ve been hard, leaving her behind? But she’s a shield maiden? That’s very impressive.” She’d always been a big supporter of warrior women, even if she herself wasn’t one.

He asked her about Uddevalla and Iliana nodded at him. There was nothing especially interesting about Uddevalla, in her opinion. “Yes, I’m from Uddevalla. It’s… very gloomy there.” She didn’t exactly hate the gloom that hung over the whole place like a dark cloud, but she never would’ve been able to make a decent living selling jewelry there. “I miss my friends? All three of them,” she added with a laugh. “But I don’t miss the place. Iron is fairly abundant so it’s hard to actually make any money selling jewelry there.”

She couldn’t think of anything else to ask him about his background, but she couldn’t not ask him anything or he’d have free reign to just ask her whatever he wanted and she didn’t like that idea one bit. “You’ve been here for a while, right? What do you do for fun? When you’re not making gorgeous knives?”

Iliana could tell from the way Garth reacted to her question that he hadn’t been expecting it. And he seemed shocked that she’d even ask such a thing. His answer seemed honest to her but… strange. He really was a genuinely nice person, it seemed. It made her feel bad for even asking him that, like he’d think she thought he wasn’t really a nice guy. He was just… too nice. Too nice for her, anyway. “Well, you’re very nice. Probably one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” Because Redra was certainly right at the top of that list as well. “I just… haven’t met many people who think that way,” she added, feeling a bit awkward again.

Honestly it was her own negative outlook on life that probably had her so shocked by his behavior. If she wasn’t always immediately jumping to the worst possible conclusions, and assuming the worst from people, she might’ve realized there were plenty of nice people in the world. But… that was simply not her experience.

Things had become more awkward when he complimented her and then she felt bad because he was worried he’d made her feel uncomfortable. He had, most definitely, but that wasn’t really his fault. She just didn’t know how to interact with him like a normal person, it seemed. “No, it- you’re fine. It’s fine. You just caught me by surprise. Thank you.” She said more like an actual thank you and less like an awkward question this time, which was a nice change for her.

He laughed at what she said about his stepfather, which was a relief. She let out a bit of a sigh, but returned his smile and nodded at his response, “Well, I get the feeling he deserves whatever you have to say about him.” She didn’t want to linger on a negative topic, and clearly his stepfather was a negative topic for him, so she was glad when he started talking about his sister instead. Being an only child, she couldn’t exactly relate. “I’ve never… had that kind of thing. I bet it’s nice,” she told him with a smile, before realizing she’d just done that thing she’d told herself she wouldn’t be doing; Freely offering him information about herself. At least she hadn’t blurted out anything like ‘hey, I’m actually the worst.’

She blushed again when he added that he was thankful she’d moved to Kattegat because they’d met. He really just needed to stop saying such nice things because she had no idea how to reply and she felt rude and then she felt awkward, and all he was doing was trying to have a conversation with her. But he answered her questions and told her what he liked to do in his spare time and she smiled as she took another sip of her mead. “I can tell,” she replied with a laugh. He clearly enjoyed spending time outside.
He asked her the same question, and Iliana had to think for a moment. She stared at him the whole time, chewing on her lip without realizing it. “Um, I haven’t really been here long enough?” she answered, still trying to think. “Back home I mostly…” mostly spent her time alone, at home or in her shop or occasionally with the twins, being mean to people with Brynja for the hell of it, “kept to myself, I guess? Or spent time with my friends when we weren’t all busy.” Iliana tried to think about things she just liked, rather than things she enjoyed doing, and shrugged at him a bit. “I like watching it snow, and being outside in the wintertime. Probably because Uddevalla looks really pretty and slightly less gloomy when it’s covered in snow,” she told him with a smile.

After a few moments, Iliana realized she didn’t have any other questions for him and for whatever reason, it wasn’t causing her to panic. Despite being utterly determined not to answer any personal questions she didn’t need to, or give him free reign to ask her whatever he wanted, she didn’t hate the idea of it any longer, and mentally shrugged, deciding that he wasn’t like other people, and wouldn’t use whatever she told him to hurt her. Plus, this evening was turning out far better than she’d expected, so if he had questions, where was the harm in just letting him ask them? “I can’t think of any other questions,” she announced after a minute and shrugged at him again. “Do you have any for me?”

Smiling at his reply, Iliana nodded at him. “Well, I’m glad you’re different,” she told him honestly. It was nice for her, she realized, to not have to constantly worry about what someone really wanted, or was really thinking. He was being nice to her because he was a nice person. It would certainly take her a while to adjust, but she liked being able to relax around him.

Iliana laughed lightly at his comment about siblings. She didn’t have any herself, and didn’t know what it was like to have any, but her best friends were twins, so she knew it could be a bit crazy at times. Her eyes widened in surprise when he said he’d like her to meet his sister, but she nodded at him again. “I’d love to. She sounds nice.” At least, if she was anything like her brother, she’d be extra nice. “Does she visit you often?”

Garth told her he’d like to see Uddevalla when it’s covered in snow and she smiled a bit, finding the idea of him in Uddevalla almost comical. “I’m sure you’d like it. If you like snow, at least. But you should visit Uddevalla; With all the iron, you might be able to save some money getting it there?” She didn’t really know if the price was dramatically different in Uddevalla than it was in Kattegat or Skagerrak, since she hadn’t actually had to buy it in Kattegat yet.

“That’s true,” she replied when he said she’d figure out what she likes to do once she’d been there longer. “I’ve mostly kept to myself, and the shop, working on projects. Once I start to get out more, I’m sure I’ll have a bit more fun.” Thinking back about what he’d mentioned he enjoyed, she added, “I do like to ride. It’s been a while, though.” Her mother had had a horse, but he’d had been one of the first things she’d sold after her father died.

When he answered her and said he might have a few questions for her, it doesn’t worry her the way it would have earlier in the evening, and she chuckled a bit in response. But her smiled faded just a bit at his questions. She probably should have expected a question like that. Iliana looked away for a moment. “Yes, I’m an only child. My mother was a shield maiden and my father was a blacksmith. They always wanted a lot of kids but… that didn’t happen, obviously.” She smiled at him briefly. “She died when I was twelve, and him a year later. So, it’s been just me. For a while.” Shrugging lightly, she hoped he wouldn’t be weird about it.

While she obviously missed her parents, she didn’t like to dwell and she certainly didn’t need anyone’s pity. But Garth didn’t exactly seem like he’d change his opinion of her for something like that, so she wasn’t too worried. “That’s probably why I’m so awkward around other people,” she told him with a laugh, trying to lighten the mood a bit. “Was, um… was that all you wanted to know?” She thought he might’ve decided against asking any more personal questions after her last answer.