Éadrandr heard the snap of the door as it closed, from the other room where he sat by the hearth - though no fire burned. His eyesbrows burrowed their way up his forehead as panic and fight struck him, his gaze moving from one end of the room to other finding a place to hide the letters and notes within his increasingly sweaty grasp. At a loss he shoved them down the depths of his boot. Straightening himself up, clearling his throut and trying to bring himself to show a museful look upon his face as he looks into the hearth. Joy, carrying the day's buys from the market, entered the room and sat the items atop the table - which Éadrandr dutifully cleared of candles, books, a Northmannish trinket and lesser used acutriments of his trade.
"Hello my love, you know there is no flames in that hearth, yes?" Joy said after a long sigh, she indicated the canter of water by the window and Éadrandr leant over to take it - it's ciramic handle warm as the midday Sun's rays forced themselves into the room. The canter was adorned with acornes and other floral designed. It was of Joy's parent's house, but now Joy would use it in her own home.
"Good day, my dear. How was market?" Éadrandr replied pouring water into two, slightly worse-for-ware, mugs. These were of Northmannish designed, flora and fauna but they were older and less kept than 'The Canter' as the married couple came to call it. It was gifted to Éadrandr by a Skald he met in Dale. 'From the hoards of Dragon upon the Heath!!' He was told, though he did not believe it for a moment.
Joy paused her reply as she sipped from the mug given to her, she looked over the horizon of it's rim and out the window. "Busy and hot." Sweat gathered at her brow, she was hot and irritated. "A gathering of folk followed some minstrel around the market as he played and bellowed a tale about a Woodcutter and his fancy for woman with one leg - or some such... Caused a right niusance. I could barely reach the stalls at times. Next time you are coming with me, Drandr." He smiled. "Did you try that tunic on yet? The one I made you."
Éadrandr looked out the window pretending to have not heard her soft words."I may go out for a walk to-"
"You wont, you will try this on now! Before you go galavanting off with that horse of yours to the Inn most likely!" His wife retorted sternly and Éadrandr sighed. Raising a hand to his neck ties he untethered his shirt and it's bracers. Joy, placing her mug onto the table next to a ball of twine she had bought from a mysterious traveller at market, leant over and pulled the shirt off and away from her husband - she smirked.
Éadrandr gazed as his wife blankly. "What is it you find so humorous, Joy?" He watched her inaudible reply as she ran a finger along her neck and at her elbows. He looked down at his torso, paranoid, and smiled. His tan lines where as such like night and day, his torso pale and white but his forearms, neck and face darkly tanned. "You see as I am everyday, yet still you find it funny?".
"Tis odd is all! Though, yes it is a little funny..." Joy smiled, quickly saying. "I am sorry, I find it endearing. You are still handsome despite your multi-coloured skin!" The Bree-lander laughed and the Northman did not. "Come now, put this on. Arms up!" She said the last in such a fasion as to belie Éadrandr's age, making him seem a child - he dutiful did as he was told, despite.
"Does it... Fit?" He knew the answer, he could barely breath. The flanks of his body heaved as he tried to get air into it.
Joy stepped back and gave her craft a work-man's gaze, only prolonging her beloved husbands discomfort. "Well it isn't my stitch-work, my dear. You have gained weight." She raised her eyes from a seam that looked set to burst under the stress of her husband's large Northman's frame. He met her eyes with a distasteful look, clearly unimpressed with her implications. "You have. I have noticed it. You spend your days in the Inn drinking ale, eating and bantering with the patrons. You barely work anymore, Drandr my love. Not since-" She stopped, her dark eyes lower, his light one's falling instinctively to the floor. The hot air and now tension grew making the room almost unbareble
"I know!" He replied angerily though his tone soon dimished to a gentler one. "I know. I know also we'll soon not be able to afford the way we live currently." Éadrandr took off Joy's handiwork gingerly as to not break a seam - he was defeated. Several threads broke, the seam attaching the sleave to the rest of the tunic broke. "Sorry" he peeped.
Joy lunged at the tunic ripping it from her husbands hands, he recoiled. "You oaf! Be more careful will you!" The Sun glared heavily through the window and onto Éadrandr neck, he was used to it however but Joy sweeped a hand across her forehead. Taking up her mug once more she gluped at it's contents. The Northman looked down at his boots and sighed softly. Sweat trickled down from the dark of his neck to the light of his chest matting the hair down to his skin. The air was thick in the spare-room as it always was, it sat directly neathe the zenith of the Sun's daily course. The couple tried to avoid it as much as possible during these hours - especially Joy who was not as used to the beating Sun as her husband. Knowing this however, Éadrandr would pull a tactical move during these hours of late to read the letters he recieved and wished to keep from his wife.
After a moment Éadrandr said. "Let us go to the river..." As he always said at awkward moments between the two. She nodded her reply.
The hand's of Éadrandr deftly moved across the lyre strings as he played softly. His hands were thick, worn and leathery, riddled with scares. His left missing it's ring-finger due to supposed-harmless apprenticing with his father and the local drunk back home in Wilderland. Joy, as ever, sat quietly pondering? Musing over the blades of grass she had gathered in her hand? Listening the song? Éadrandr, as ever, doubted the latter despite her unbooted toes moving to the mellody. The chuckling river flowed by. They sat in unspoken silence to each other. Sparing only words for passerbyes and naighbours - who increasingly accepted Joy's 'Foreigner' choise as husband. The Bree-folk accept Éadrandr as they did most travellers and good-willed outsiders, but shocked all the same they were when the coupled wedded just over a Year ago.
Joy looked upon from her hoard of grass to her beloved. "I love you, Drandr." Éadrandr stopped his hand mid-song and smiled, his weathered face beaming.
"I love you too" He replied, his accent thicker than ever. "Have I ever told you tale of Fram and Scatha?"
"No" Joy lied and smiled.
