"And don't forget to note it on their tabs." Zokar calls over.
Jewel heats the water and smiles at Clara. "Tarjun is tending the bar. So maybe if we take care of the dishes we can get a meal. I'm still wondering how we can get home. Our folks are probably worried about us!"
Once the water is hot she starts washing dishes.
"Yes, we better prepare a good excuse for being away, or we're grounded for a month." Clara replies with a worried face. "Do you know the stars? Mom told that people travelling on ships use them to navigate. Because on sea you can see only water which doesn't help any when trying to find your way."
Clara grabs a towel and dries the dishes Jewel cleaned.
"You don't knwo our names, how do you put it on the right tab? I don't want to pay for the next guy's beer."
"It wouldn't kill you to pay me a beer every now and then. It for sure wouldn't hit a poor guy." another one replies.
"You're one to tell. Remind me when you payed a round for the house. Never?"
While Jewel washes the dishes she considers what she knows about stars....
"That makes sense. But I wasn't really paying attention to the sky. We'll have to wait for night time and see if we can recognize anything. Tarjun would probably be better...." She looks over at her and frowns. "Excuse? What's wrong with just telling the truth? We didn't deliberately teleport into Dvalinn's prison and then here. I can't deliberately teleport anywhere, and still don't understand how it all happened. If I could I'd teleport us all back home!"
"Well, til we close of course."
The men make a joke out of it to try to get Tarjun to write the drinks on someone else's tab. By telling wrong names. And the ones who'd be wrongly charged get loud. It almost breaks out into a bar fight.
"What is the truth?"
"We sat around the well and poof, we were in a dark hole with a drawf and his treassure. Took us a while to get back to Oaksteadt, sorry for being late for dinner?"
"Doesn't sound believable to me. Might work if Dvalinn comes along."
"Just put a beer on every tab and bring those who hadn't one since your shift started another one." Zokar orders.
Jewel scowls as she thinks about Clara's words. It did sound unbelievable, and they'd actually lived it! "I don't know. Erastil teaches that you should tell the truth. And Dad says that when you lie you have to remember what you said. And any questions that you didn't think of make you lie more to answer them, making more that you have to try and remember. Telling the truth is not just right, it's easier."
She bites her lip concentrating on what they'd actually been through. "I'm worried we'll be more than just late for dinner. Nobody around here has even heard of Oakstead. How are we going to find our way home? I can prepare a spell tomorrow to give me the direction, but even that won't give me distance. Do we just start walking? Hope that we don't run into anything too dangerous?" She imagines other dangers, deep rivers or canyons to cross, but doesn't want to mention them. She doesn't want to sound panicked....
"We are danger." Clara objects in deep voice making claws with her hands.
"I could tell mom that we were on an adventure. And that I don't have to tell her where I go. She probably would even agree. And then kick me out of the house. Because she doesn't have to give me food and shelter." So that would backfire. "You know, the perks of personal freedom and not caring about others."
We could try the crying "I'm so glad we found back. Maybe then we get enough time to tell the truth, before we get grounded for a year."
Jewel stares at Clara, face showing disbelief. "We are danger!?! What if we encounter a war party of goblins? Or something stronger? A dragon!?! We are kids! We just have powers that very few kids anywhere have."
"But, we don't need to figure that out now. We worked to earn food and a place to rest. Let's go and ask for something to eat." She walks out and asks, "Ah. We've cleaned up. Can we get something to eat?"
"Serving stuff is the job of the nice boy behind the counter." Zokar points out.
"The pot with stew is in the kitchen." Clara tells pointing with her thumb behind her. "We also have clean bowls there. Which we then have to clean again."
Jewel looks around the room. "Well, Tarjun doesn't do so well carrying trays with food. How many bowls of the stew should we get, counting for us as well? Tarjun? A bowl for you as well?"
She glances over to Clara and nods, "I'll clean the bowls myself once I've had a bowl."
"Yes, you can eat too. Don't want you to faint like a girl behind the counter."
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"'Cause fainting's only for girls, right boss? Well known fact," Tarjun discretely rolls his eyes. He thinks about bringing up the local baron crumpling to the floor like a sack of potatoes, but wisely decides against it.
"That'd be three bowls of stew then." While he helps Clara and Jewel with serving the food, he takes this opportunity to converse with them in a very low voice. "So I've been thinking about something. We don't know where else to sleep, right? But we don't know whether Mr MacGrumpyFace is still looking for us or not. What if he checks the inn?"
Sitting down with a bowl of stew Jewel thinks about Tarjun's concern. "If he does come looking it'll probably be tomorrow. We'll be gone. I can't tell distance, but Erastil will give me the direction that we need to go." She eats slowly, thinking, wondering where they were.
Once she finishes with the meal she gets up and gathers the empty bowls, taking them back to the kitchen to clean them.
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"Well, that's reassuring," Tarjun lets only the lightest of sarcasm slip out.
It's not that he doesn't have faith in his sister's gift -Erastil or not, she got them out of quite a fair deal of problems-, but even he, with his limited knowledge of geography, knows having no clue how far they are from Oakstead is far from being good news.
Still, with no other solution in sight... He goes back behind the bar. "Hey, boss. Do you know where we could get a map of this place? I mean the whole region, not just the town?"
"Who would need a map around here? I mean besides you. And I don't think you could afford one either."
Jewel thinks about a map for a moment. "We wouldn't need to buy a map. Just look at one."
"But Tarjun, what would we look for? I mean, our home town is too small to be on a map unless it was drawn by someone in our town. And we've never been more that a few hours walk away. I don't know the name of any other towns near us, or names of anything that would be on a map, forests, mountains, rivers...."
"We've gotta get home. We're going to miss the barbecue. And Mrs Johnson was going to bake apple cakes everyday for a week for us digging that well! Her voice trails off....
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"Who would need a map around here? I mean besides you. And I don't think you could afford one either."
"Point taken," Tarjun begrudgingly concedes. "What- no one ever leaves this town? Ever?"
""But Tarjun, what would we look for? I mean, our home town is too small to be on a map unless it was drawn by someone in our town. And we've never been more that a few hours walk away. I don't know the name of any other towns near us, or names of anything that would be on a map, forests, mountains, rivers...."
Tarjun racks his brain for any landmarks his parents or Oakstead inhabitants could have mentioned, even in passing.
"But if you know in which direction to go, maybe it can show us what lies ahead?" He desperately argues -but even to his own ears, it sounds far-fetched.
Jewel nods to Tarjun. "True. It would be good to know if there were a river to be crossed, or mountains, or a desert...."
"At least the sky looks basically the same."
Chirp sticks her head out from her perch just inside of Jewel's collar and chirps several high pitched sounds. "Chirp says the trees are different. And the air smells different too. I think the cut trees release a smell that she's used to. Or she might just like Paddington."
Pausing a moment she gets an alarmed look on her face. "The trees! If we're gone much longer the lumberjacks won't have the trees marked. And they'll deliberately turn to the trees that I've steered them around. I deliberately left trees standing in the area they were cutting so it wouldn't be clear cut! We've got to get back before they mess everything up!"
"Some of them are stupid. Most are not. And Bruihu is still around." Clara tries to calm Jewel.
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"We can't watch over them all the time! It's their job, and they're grown-ups. B'sises, if people noticed we've disappeared, don't you think they'll know we couldn't mark the trees properly? They'll figure something out. "
Sense Motive DC 23:
Tarjun is trying to reassure Jewel to the best of his ability - but clearly the prospect of having all the trees cut down is alarming him as well.
"How do you know the direction home?" Clara inquires, now that she realizes what Jewel said.
Jewel thinks about Clara and Tarjun's words. She hopes that they're right. The lumberjacks had been just clear cutting and not caring about the damage they were causing to the area....
"Well. It's not really that simple, or perfect direction sense. It's a spell from Erastil that lasts for a few hours. All it really does is help me to know what direction I need to go to get home, or to the last place that I crafted something. Since I've never created anything away from home they're pretty much the same thing. Once the spell runs out we'd have to count on Tarjun's skills to keep us on track. And we will probably have to hunt for some food and sleep on the ground?"
"Perfect. Then it will be a piece of cake to get home. Let's go to bed."
Tarjun has still two hours til the last guests leave and then all have to help cleaning up the place. Washing the mugs, putting the chairs up and sweeping the room with a broom.
Then it is sleeping time in a large room with some old straw to lie on.
Jewel shrugs at Clara's comment. She didn't think it would be easy, but didn't want to disagree. She hoped it would be easier than she thought it would be....
She stays in the room then helping Tarjun serving the mugs of ale. He could keep track of billing though since he seemed to have figured it out.
The short night's sleep gets ended by the crow of the rooster as the first rays of the sun shine over the hills.
Jewel wakes up and starts her daily rituals. Prayers to Erastil and communing with her Patron. She wonders about spells other than the holy guidance that she hopes will get them heading home....
Once she has completed her efforts she shakes Tarjun. "OK. You've had you five more minutes, and then some. Let's see if we can beg a little food before we get moving." Then she checks on Clara.
Once they are all up she heads for the kitchen to see if they can get something for breakfast.
"Breakfast is available after weeding the garden and harvesting the vegetables for todays stew." Zokar offers.
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Tarjun rubs his eyes. "Is it a small garden? Can't we just ask nicely for stuff?" He asks hopefully.
At least, he never really expected it to work. "It's a bit like home, right?" he says conversationally to Jewel and Clara, a few minutes later, while unrooting weeds. "Only missing Paddington to eat whatever we pull off the ground."
Jewel considers the offer but really wants to get going if possible. She calls on her witch powers and politely asks, "But sir, we really need to get home to our parents. I'm sure they are upset since we didn't get home to them last night. They don't know where we are. We don't really know where we are! Maybe we could get the vegetables for you. But we really need to be going. Please!?!"