“Long hair,” Himeko said.

“Brown clothes,” Peter added, “And wasn’t he supposed to have a green cloak?”

“I think so,” Cerys serious confirmed. “But it is much too hot to be wearing a cloak out here.”

“The men here don’t have terribly long hair,” Peter said. “Nothing better than a ponytail. James made it sound like this guy would have exceptionally long hair. I don’t see anyone like that here.”

They spoke a little bit longer. Peter gave the bag to Bayani, who was able to find James’s note with their guide’s symbol on it; the lightning-like letter N. It had been placed deep inside the bag, among several folded papers, as though he had wanted it to be difficult to find. There was only that symbol; the rest they had been expected to remember on their own, It seemed to make sense, though; if they were taken aside and searched, it was better that nobody knew for whom they were waiting.

They were in the middle of discussing going over to the other tavern, and getting ready to pay their bill at the current one, when the door opened once again. It didn’t seem that it should have mattered, because people have been coming in and out of the tavern ever since their arrival, but this time it seemed that someone interesting had walked through the door. Cerys half-expected everyone in the tavern to look over at him, or the room to fall silent like it sometimes did in fantasy movies. In the end, she supposed that it was better that nobody did. They did not want to be calling attention to themselves, after all.
Still, there were moments when Cerys noticed things that nobody else did, moments that she stole quietly for herself, looking away from the task that everybody else was focused on and gazing at the world around her. Usually, what she noticed was not worth mentioning to anyone else. This time, it was.

There was a man who walked from the entrance, smoothly, easily, across the floor and over to the bar. He took a seat pushed his hair out of his face, then spoke to the bartender for a moment. She could not quite make out what he had said, but she assumed that he had ordered something, because the bartender soon provided him with a glass. He filled it halfway with some sort of golden substance, took the man’s money, and turned over to his other customers with no further ceremony.

None of it seemed like a very big deal. Except, of course, that Cerys was quite taken by his appearance. He was tall– tall and lean, almost like bamboo growing in a forest, reaching up to the sun. His hair was like that self-same Sun, long like its rays, and the rest of him was as green as bamboo itself. But then she thought to herself, why was she thinking of bamboo in a setting like this?