Lunch at the Leaky Goblet, and a NEW PERSON, which is the best possible thing to find at a lunch.
Her name is Raptor. That is the name she gave for herself, which I asked about specifically because I have learned to. She is a scout. And I got the full four out of her, plus a great deal more, because she turned out to be one of those rare and wonderful interviewees who answers the question you asked and then keeps going.
Favourite colour: blue. Favourite snack: GOAT — and then, without being asked, the reason: “easy to catch.” I put my pen down. That is not a snack answer, that is a whole way of living, delivered as an aside.
Weapon: claws. I asked her to describe them. She said: “They are sharp.” I asked again, in a slightly different way, in case there was more. There was not more. They are sharp.
Superpower: she is extremely fast. The fastest of her flock, in fact, and I want that on the record because she said it plainly and without any of the throat-clearing most people do before a boast.
And then the FLOCK. Twenty to thirty raptors to a flock. They stalk sentient beings — she said this without any particular weight, the way one might mention a trade — and then, in the very next breath, that she is kind. I have written both down, side by side, exactly as they arrived, because I do not think she experiences those as being in tension and I am not going to tidy her into a contradiction she does not have.
She does not carry a weapon of her own. That, she explained, is precisely why she was so curious about all the weapons the rest of us are carrying about the place — which reframed the entire preceding hour, in which I had assumed she was making conversation and she had in fact been doing exactly what I do.
And finally, unprompted, offered as a gift: “I will say raptors are afraid of geese.”
GEESE.
I asked no follow-up question. Some findings should be allowed to stand alone.
I also learned, while we were all sat there, why nobody brings weapons into this tavern any more: the last set of orcs who walked in wearing them was shortly followed by another set who used theirs to kill people, and that second set met a quick death. It is a rule with a body count behind it, which is the only kind of rule anyone actually keeps.
When I offered Raptor the floor — anything she wished to ask me, anything at all — she asked nothing. I sat with my pen up for some time. I have decided this was contentment rather than an oversight.
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