12 [+1] days of Christmas. Day 12.

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It was late afternoon when they entered town, the sun setting just behind the woods off to the west. It was a rare sort of town, the sort populated by people who didn’t run screaming at the sight of a drow. If anything, they welcomed the travelers, a stranger pointing out the general stores, inns all through the hubbub of a small festival. Founding Day, apparently and Zakath and Aubrey were just time.

If anyone questioned their relationship, no one voiced it aloud. Aubrey didn’t care. There were magic items for sale, plenty of them He could feel their aura and concentrated, passing over weaker ones in favor to those that radiated magical strength. The tall silent drow beside him placed a bag on the booth and the jingle of coin within made the peddler’s eyes light. Aubrey leaned instinctively closer when he felt an arm wrap around him, and the whiteness of his clothes were swallowed up immediately by black. It made him smile.

While Aubrey perused, night fell, and it was only Zakath’s silvery hair that kept in visible in the growing darkness. That and Aubrey’s distraction had him nearly oblivious to Zakath’s purchase , until the drow lifted his face, almost gently, chin up, tilted towards him and slipped a delicately small pair of glasses onto his face, hooking them behind his ears. Aubrey opened his mouth in instant protest, but Zakath, expressionless, silenced him instantly with the first words he’d spoken since they entered the town. “They look good on you.”

And Aubrey couldn’t argue, because his vision was poor, and his vanity had been soothed, appeased by those five words. A black hand stroked over white hair, and Aubrey’s adorable pout was smoothed away to be replaced again by eager smile, when the peddler located a staff of frost.

The next time Zakath spoke was when he placed the new spectacles on the bedside with a quiet, “So they don’t break,” before he tied Aubrey to the bed.

Aubrey’s smile was bruised bloody, but wide the next morning. Visiting a town was nearly as much fun as destroying one.