“A drink?” he asked upon her entrance. He was standing behind the bar in the only way he was ever found, cleaning a glass. His well-known manner caught her off guard in its normality, its unchanged decorum, its unflinching friendliness in the face of utter ruin. That was, of course, how he was designed. “For your future travels?”
She remembered hearing those words for the first time. She had come into the tavern with a party, her brother had brought her, and there he was to greet them all, polishing a glass. “A drink?” he had asked them. “For your future travels?”
It was always the same with him, reliable.
She saddled up to the bar and said, “I wish I could take you with me?”
“I’m just a humble barkeep,” he said.
“My adventuring days are over,” they said in unison. She felt she could quote most of his lines at this point.
Tale Told 