The next morning arose. We had made camp a mile away from the bandits, though we were pretty sure than none of them were interested in running into us - especially Garbus - again. No wild animals bothered us, either. It was actually a peaceful night.

So I was pretty surprised in the early hours of the morning to find Elynea sitting by the campfire, poking it with a stick and wearing a face like someone just murdered her pet goldfish. I had seen angry women before, up close and personal, but the wrath in those blue eyes went beyond anything I could have ever done. She noticed me getting up and out of my bedroll, and her eyes followed my every move.

Oh damn, what have I done this time?, I just wondered.

After a while she finally spoke. "Reinhardt," she addressed me. "Do you think I'm pretty?"

I looked at her angelic face, the heavenly waves of golden hair surrounding it and the divine body in the white dress that was still in excellent condition despite the fact that it had endured a month of captivity in a filthy bandit camp. "This is some sort of trick question, isn't it?" I responded distrustful, rubbing my left cheek.

Elynea scoffed and threw the stick into the slightly glimming wooden remains of last night's fire. "He is the hero that saved me," she mumbled with surpressed fury. "So, after all that has happened, I asked him whether we could share the bedroll. He accepted. We lied down together, pulled the roll over our heads... and he started snoring." The sound coming from the depths of her heart sounded like a mix of a sigh and a sob. "That never happened to me before. I mean, he didn't even touch me!"

I had no idea how to answer to something like this. Instead I worried about what we should have for breakfast, and I started going through our supply bag. The voice of that beautiful young woman pulled me back into the conversation: "You must have had your fair share of rejections - how do you deal with it?"

Suddenly she was a lot less attractive to me. I looked at her from the corner of my eye. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean..." She responded without hesitation and without any hint of regret for that hurtful assumption. Probably not even realizing what she just had said to me. Her voice became almost a dreamy whisper: "If you look at Garbus, he is... such a hero! Strong, but gentle. A mountain of a man, but inside a heart of gold. And you... you are just 'but'."

Of all the butt jokes I heard throughout my career, this one was certainly new. "Now listen, missy, there were only two women so far that ever rejected my advances. One of them was you. The other one... a fellow bard, about your age. Not only did she know the art of seduction well herself, but as I found out the hard way, she was also a bloody sorceress!"

"Oh!" She seemed genuinely surprised. "And how did you cope with that?"

"I was grateful to still be alive and just went on," was my honest answer. "Maybe you should do the same. Speaking of which, we can drop you of at the next bigger city on our travels, if you like. You shouldn't roam those lands all on your own."

"Where are you going?" I should have expected that Elynea asked me this question sooner or later. I hesitated to tell her. We didn't know each other long enough, and I had no idea what she thought of King Rondor and Nivella in general. Judging by her appearance, she was either a noblewoman, which would place her firmly in the "loyal to the king" category, or at least a pretty wealthy merchant. In that case she would have no reason to turn on a regent whose lands made her prosperous life possible.

"We're... on a quest." I tried to keep it as vague as possible. "Pretty dangerous."

"Can't be that dangerous if he lets you tag along." Could she be even more condescending? I began to think that I liked her better with a gag in her mouth. Her next words however surprised me: "What if I joined you and helped you on your quest?"

"You?" Too late I noticed that I was now the one sounding condescending. "I mean... what can you do to help?"

She gave me a nod to come closer. I approached her cautiously, and when I saw her pull out a piece of rope from... somewhere, I got a very bad feeling about this all. She handed me the rope and turned her back on me, with her hands readily placed behind them. "Just tie my hands! And don't hold back! Think of it as payback for the slap I gave you."

I couldn't help but feel wrong about all of this. Whatever she wanted to show me, I hoped that she knew what she was doing. So I did my best and tied her hands on her back. When I was finished, she turned around again and gave me a slight knowing, almost sinister smile.

"Now try to kiss me!"

I didn't even have to think about it twice. "The hell I will," I grumbled. "I learned my lesson from last time."

"Oh, too bad." One second later she had her hands free again and in front of her. The rope which had tied her wrists dropped to the ground. First thought that came to my mind was that I made the right choice not trying to kiss her, and my other cheek would have agreed to that. The second thought...

"What the hell?" I could just utter.

She grinned. "Don't feel bad, bard! You did a good job - but not good enough to hold me."

The rope was still thorougly knotted, but it looked like it slipped off her hands like nothing. "Could you... have gotten out of those ropes in the bandit camp like this?"

She shrugged. "Sure. Would have just taken a little longer." She held an item in her hand which she threw me. "Anyway... here."

I caught it. It was apparently a little bag with some coins in it. "What's that for?"

"It's yours." She grinned. "I took it from you while you were tying me up."

The bag did look awfully familiar. I put it back on my belt, hopefully looking not too foolish. But she wasn't finished. "And this one, too." She threw me a ring. As I caught it, I recognized the Ring of Seeing What Cannot Be Seen. Apparently she had slipped it off my fingers without me noticing. I looked at my hands. The other one was gone, too.

That was the one she was holding up to look at. "That one is pretty. What does it do?"

"Makes other people trust you," I answered as she put it on her finger to examine it. "I would like it back, please."

"Oh, I don't know..." She moved her finger in the sunlight, watching the reflections on the ruby and the golden circlet which made the delicate inscription sparkle. "I like this one pretty much." But finally, without any prompting, she took it off and gave it back. "Good enough for you, Reinhardt?"

"You make it sound like it is my decision," I commented dryly with a side glance to Garbus who was still sleeping. The sun was already halfway over the horizon, so he would wake up any second. "I don't call the shots around here. I'm just here because I know stuff."

"But he listens to you. If you know stuff, as you say, then you might convince him to take me with you," she suggested. And she had a point... though she made it sound much easier than it actually was. After all, the only reason we were on this insane quest in the first place was the fact that he didn't listen to me.

"I will see what I can do," I answered, deliberately not making any promises. "But if you want him convinced, you might start showing that we can trust you and that you can be of help. I don't think stealing stuff will cut it." I looked in the direction of our travels, trying to remember the distance to the nearest town... and what town that actually was. We were still deep inside Nivella, and our journey was supposed to take us to the next kingdom, but that would take a few more days at least.

Again I apparently said something wrong. Her eyes flashed with anger. "Well, what do you expect? Shall I cook, wash dishes and sew your torn clothes, or what?"

I had put the ring back on my finger. But apparently Garbus had been right all along - it didn't work. "Can you fight? I mean... with weapons?"

"I don't fight." The answer came so quick, it felt like a reflex.

My left cheek begged to differ. "No problem, I can show you a few..."

She interrupted me with a gloomy glare. "You misunderstand. I can handle a weapon. But I don't fight." As she saw my perplexed look, she elaborated: "Anyone who has ever tried to clean blood splatters out of a silk dress will understand that."

I raised an eyebrow. "There are ways to avoid blood splatters, you know... like archery. Magic. Or maybe not wearing a silk dress into battle."

"Or not going into battle at all," she responded bluntly. "Listen, Reinhardt, you obviously don't get it. I don't fight. Out of principle. If I fought my way out of trouble... then nobody would have to rescue me."

"I fail to see the downside of that..."

Elynea scoffed. "Of course you do. You're a guy."

Suddenly I had no further desire to talk to her. I focused on preparing breakfast... with a double-sized portion for Garbus. That man was eating through our supplies like a starved-out pack of wolves.