This Used To Be About Dungeons

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The Fig and Gristle was the smaller of the two taverns in Pucklechurch, a squat place braced by thick beams, but it had the better music by far. Alfric hadn’t come for the poached figs, though he was sure they were delicious. He hadn’t come for the music either, though it was a caliber of melody he had only heard before in Dondrian and not the kind of thing he would have ordinarily expected from a small town like this. No, he had come for the bard, who was hunched over a small stool, strumming her six-stringed lute with her eyes closed, her words barely audible over the sound of her instrument.

The effect of the music was subtle but complex, with more points of enhancement than were obvious at first glance. Alfric ordered the herbed chicken and garlic potatoes, with a cup of honeyed tea, and the flavors of each were heightened by the melody, the tea sweeter but not cloying, the chicken richer and more flavorful. All that was par for the course from a tavern bard, but the girl was weaving in other aspects, subtle enough that you could miss them, emotional components. Alfric wasn’t a naturally anxious person, but his worries had their edge taken from them, reduced down a fraction, and when he tried to focus on old sources of sadness, he found that those, too, were blunted. The inverse seemed true as well, the jokes he overheard were much funnier than they should have been, and the cozy warmth of the tavern much cozier.

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