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Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

     "Y'ever t'ought 'bout work as a merc'nary? Y'look suited fa it."
     The voice was mottled, the accent thick enough to curdle most of the meaning. Neither were enough to pique the interest of the traveler being addressed. And yet...
     Against her will, her ragged excuse for shoes scuffed to a stop on the uneven stone road. Sounds of the town around the two carried on: marketplace rubbish rambling on from their stalls about various forms of great deals, the clerk for the shop down the way chopping up firewood to stock their hearth for another frozen night, children tripping over too-long skirts and trousers while running from some unseen enemy, guards clanking by in their identical emotionless metal faces. All around was noise, but in the moment the traveler turned to face the owner of that mottled voice, there was just a beat of deafening silence.
     The words were drawled out like being a sword-for-hire was a secret path to unlocking her destiny, closed to all but a select few. Perhaps it was. Perhaps that's why this man had had the audacity to address her so suddenly. Perhaps that's why what he said interested her, when on any other day she would have ignored a man and voice and words like this. Then again, the man himself soured the spell in his words. His skin was dark, thick and cracked and almost scaly about his neck, his hair scraggly and knotted and refusing to be tamed by the leather strip binding it.
  He had all the usual indicators of a life lived more abroad than at home, teetering on the thin ledge between comfort and poverty. Mismatched pieces of armor, tweaked here and there to fit or where they been welded back together and rusty and dented enough to betray he'd seen many battles. His sword held a few small flecks of blood, missed when he'd been polishing it, and the leather strips on the handle were frayed where his hands had gripped tightly. The act of polishing itself, however, told the traveler all she needed to know. It betrayed a pride but also an embarrassment of his line of work. It showed that the sword was his most prized possession, that he wanted it gleaming and spotless. But this also showed that he wasn't proud enough to flaunt his exploits, that he wanted to hide the bloodshed he dealt in. Adding to this was the duality of the sun-cracked, grimy skin and the pudge subtly lining his jaw. It spoke of a man without the courage enough to truly live as a mercenary, and a man that used his small coin for indulgences and luxury.
Delilah let a small grin peel her lips apart. His hands were dirty, both figuratively and literally, bathed in the blood of others that he'd tried so hard to scrub off and ingrained with the grime of years on the road. His fingernails were chipped and cracked and lined with who knows what, but he had failed to notice the blood caked under hers.

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

     "Y'ever t'ought 'bout work as a merc'nary? Y'look suited fa it."
     The voice was mottled, the accent thick enough to curdle most of the meaning. Neither were enough to pique the interest of the traveler being addressed. And yet...
     Against her will, her ragged excuse for shoes scuffed to a stop on the uneven stone road. Sounds of the town around the two carried on: marketplace rubbish rambling on from their stalls about various forms of great deals, the clerk for the shop down the way chopping up firewood to stock their hearth for another frozen night, children tripping over too-long skirts and trousers while running from some unseen enemy, guards clanking by in their identical emotionless metal faces. All around was noise, but in the moment the traveler turned to face the owner of that mottled voice, there was just a beat of deafening silence.
     The words were drawled out like being a sword-for-hire was a secret path to unlocking her destiny, closed to all but a select few. Perhaps it was. Perhaps that's why this man had had the audacity to address her so suddenly. Perhaps that's why what he said interested her, when on any other day she would have ignored a man and voice and words like this. Then again, the man himself soured the spell in his words. His skin was dark, thick and cracked and almost scaly about his neck, his hair scraggly and knotted and refusing to be tamed by the leather strip binding it.
  He had all the usual indicators of a life lived more abroad than at home, teetering on the thin ledge between comfort and poverty. Mismatched pieces of armor, tweaked here and there to fit or where they been welded back together and rusty and dented enough to betray he'd seen many battles. His sword held a few small flecks of blood, missed when he'd been polishing it, and the leather strips on the handle were frayed where his hands had gripped tightly. The act of polishing itself, however, told the traveler all she needed to know. It betrayed a pride but also an embarrassment of his line of work. It showed that the sword was his most prized possession, that he wanted it gleaming and spotless. But this also showed that he wasn't proud enough to flaunt his exploits, that he wanted to hide the bloodshed he dealt in. Adding to this was the duality of the sun-cracked, grimy skin and the pudge subtly lining his jaw. It spoke of a man without the courage enough to truly live as a mercenary, and a man that used his small coin for indulgences and luxury.
Delilah let a small grin peel her lips apart. His hands were dirty, both figuratively and literally, bathed in the blood of others that he'd tried so hard to scrub off and ingrained with the grime of years on the road. His fingernails were chipped and cracked and lined with who knows what, but he had failed to notice the blood caked under hers.