The Tavern

[Outisakanobody]

Tazia took a step away from the pooch as well, thinking Tilly knew something that she did not. As she was not the current center of attention, she would let the man tell his story, if he so chose.

[relentless]

Duval nodded toward Wynne and Jeanne, a humoured cackle slipping out of his mouth, arms crossed and his figure made relatively small.
"Oh aye, it was a bit cramped... and that 'Tazia' lass was coming onto me a biiiit too strongly."
Duval agreed indefinitely, kicking his heel on and off the top step, before he waggled his finger at Wynne.

"So! How are we going to celebrate now? I got... some bottles of rum, a fine brew? Oh, and I could break out something more... interesting."
Duval proposed with a wry smirk, raising his eyebrows at both of them with the smirk becoming partially toothy.

[porkylabrador]

Stafford raised his hand to the person who walked passed in vague recognition. "Yeah, the stairs are good fun as well..." He muttered under his breath as the opportunity to make further new friends in this specific moment slipped through his digits.

"Us mudddy-footed larks had a good trade back then and that's the truth!" The fellow was a loud personality even if he wasn't an influential one.

His face darkened noticeably for a moment. "Mud-larking is as good a-reason to meet anyone I should hope!"

[black379]

Jeanne Luc watched Winifred expectantly. Whether they were off to bed, or if that was just a ruse to escape the overwhelming company, the boy would follow her. He continued to chew on his lip while he eyed Duval from the corner of his vision. She wondered why he was there, what he knew about Jack.

"I'v'ad plenty to drink already." Jeanne spoke up, pointing a smirk at the rogue. "But I ain't done yet."

[Vanitypirate]

"'Course, 'course! Nothing wrong with it." Tilly agreed, rubbing her hands together. Perhaps a touch too enthusiastically, detecting a rather serious turn of the conversation, which was beyond what she intended. She'd had enough stringent seriousness to last a lifetime.

She kept a watchful eye on the tavern window, for either Lekalis or Florence...

"But, really, how'd you meet Victoria?"

[Outisakanobody]

"You may be fine at drawing, sir, but you're story telling needs some work. Without beimg too critical, they generally have a beginning, middle, and an end." Tazia says with a small laugh. She hoped her man would not hurt the man too much, but she couldn't help herself.

She looked at the dog again, then at the drawings, then finally at the man himself, wondering if he would actually spill the beans. She couldn't understand why he would be shy about explaining how he came to own a dog. Well, maybe she could.

[porkylabrador]

Stafford pursed his lips a moment, there was a lot of recollection he'd keep from strangers upon considering how he and Victoria had met and even more items-of-thought he'd rather not bring up even to himself.

With his right hand he lifted a cigarette to his lips that he might smoke, with his left hand he lift his hat that he might fan excess smoke away. "My story telling ability is without parallel." He staged a very cocksure and convincing wink towards his compatriots. "I simply choose to pause for dramatic effect, how else will I keep the public interested, what's an artist without an air of mystery..? Ugh, a celebrity I s'pose." He couldn't stifle a small dry-heave.

[Vanitypirate]

"I'll die of old age before you finish with your... dramatic pause." Tilly yawned, exaggeratedly, leaning upon the bar table. With her elbow, she supported herself upright at a comfortable distance away from the dog.

He was obviously stalling, she figured; and while people tended to withhold only their most interesting stories, having to pry it from the speaker made it less worth her while.
So she shrugged, eyeing the window, still,

"You don't have to say, if you don't want to. I'll just assume the worst." She jested, pointing an accusatory finger at the artist, "You stole Victoria as a puppy from a sickly orphan child, didn't you? And then kicked sand in both their eyes for good measure, I understand."

[Outisakanobody]

"Now you've gone and done it. You've hyped us too much now. You couldn't possibly live up to it now." Tazia says, leaning onto the table and giving the dog owner a small look at her cleavage from down her shirt and vest.

[hopper]

Winnifred squeezed Jeanne’s hand approvingly, pleased by his bold response. She supposed Griswold would be less pleased by this turn of events but that was fine, he could be as displeased as he liked and it didn’t change terribly much unless he acted on it, which she doubted he would, he didn't seem the type headstrong enough to do something like that. At least, she hoped that was correct or else it could spell a rather messy end for her. Pushing the rather less cheery thought down into her head, she perked up at the mention of ‘interesting’.

She was of course, accustomed to the various exotic substances that passed through the circus camp, everything from Spanish tobacco to English opium had passed through her lips and down her throat. She’d spent evenings lying on the hills of Ulster, passing a wrap between herself and a few others, playing cards or just watching the stars. She smiled at the man.
“Interesting?”
She raised a single thin eyebrow.
“What sort of interesting?”
She herself possessed something ‘interesting’, sitting in a small silk tea bag wrapped in leather and tied to her upper left arm. She raised her hand to check it was there until she realized it was still holding Jeanne Luc’s hand, both hands were raised to almost shoulder level with Winifred staring at them, almost mystified, until it occurred to her to put their arms down. With a sheepish giggle, she lowered their arms and looked to the floor a tad bashfully, face slightly flush, both with drink and embarrassment.

[porkylabrador]

"I've gone and done it have I?" Stafford couldn't help but let out a sigh, he didn't particularly want to share the story and it was evident on his face he was serious about withholding information. "I'm thinking you ladies may have set yourselves up for an anticlimax."

The Houndmaster pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed his eyes shut a moment as if to quell the throb of some looming headache lurking just on the horizon. "However disappointingly, no orphans were blinded in the making of this tale of tails..." He chuckled mournfully whilst striking a long match and lighting a cigarette to his bruised lips.

"Let's just say, certain circles find merriment in watching old Towsers batter and bloody each other." His non-cigarette holding hand slowly slapped against the tabletop his digits flexed and whitened at the knuckles that sat above them. "I find no such enjoyment in the so called 'sport'." He practically sprinted through the sentence before moving on to to hastily glug the tiniest thimble of liquor left in his mug.

"Anticlimactic, no?"

[Vanitypirate]

"Ah, maybe a bit..." Tilly agreed, rubbing her jaw in thought.
She still found him rather withholding, all things considered; artists rarely gave the brief rundown of a story...
She supposed she could truly pry some other day, and explore the given story tonight.

"Must've been some risky business, that." She eyed Victoria, as though to gauge whether she looked the part of a pit-dog, but her knowledge of dogs in general was almost entirely all guesswork.
"Those folk don't take too kindly to those that make off with their dogs."

[Outisakanobody]

"Master storyteller indeed. I'd advise you stick to puppy wrangling and picture scribbling." Tazia says, affecting a haughty tone and demeanor. "Though the silence is telling in its own way..." she added more lowly, perhaps more to Tilly than the man himself.

[relentless]

Duval chuckled at Jeannes ambition, finding the 'lads' upbeatness quite amusing, among other things that dawdled in the back of Duvals mind. Managing a smirk, he swayed his head toward Wynne in response to her question.

"Oh you know, the type of interesting that gets you to some high places."
Duval hummed, passing a playful and exaggerated wink to Wynne, before he clapped his hands and rubbed them quickly together.
"So! Ladies and... gentleman! I think it's about time we cut to the chase and truly celebrate our youth, not to mention our whiskey distiller!"
Duval announced, giving a pat on his side where the liver would be located, before looking down the hallway, then looking back at the two and jutting a thumb back.

"Might wanna get there first though, so I can nip to my place down the hall and get some booze n shite, yeah?"

[porkylabrador]

"I guessed it was an anticlimax, I warned you of such in my way, Madams!" Stafford exhaled, his tone was joking but there was a subtle defence to his words for those perceptive enough to pick up on it, one that said he had genuinely divulged personal information and didn't want to take this conversation much further.

"Besides, I'd shudder to think of the stories that brought people such as yourselves to this place and even more... the ones that kept you here." The Houndmaster shifted in his seat, as much as the weight of Victoria's head upon his feet would allow him anyway. "The Coachmaster spins a curious set of yarns, 'trottered demons' and 'queens in scaled tails.'" He couldn't help but audibly laugh at the notion. "What are your stories?" He couldn't help but a cock an eyebrow, in his experience people were all-too-wanton when it came to someone gifting their past and all too hording when it kept to keeping the secrets of theirs.