*because I'm soooooo sick and tired of rules-mongering*
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It is the deep of the night, after the first spring thunderstorm of the year. The fire in the hearth of Castle Gravesbane dips low, the shadows are lengthening, and everyone has gone to bed.
Well......almost everyone.
Suddenly there is a creak of hinges, and the door below the stairs, entryway to the basements, slowly opens, spilling soft light into the greatroom. Rhul, clad only in a belted robe, quietly comes into the room, scanning high and low for any of the normal denizens of the keep. Seeing noone, he looks back to the doorway and waves, a low and quick movement, accompanied by a nod to the kitchens.
An unknown woman- dressed only in her nightclothes, a commoner by the looks of her, enters the room in response to the scholarly man-beast's beckoning, padding quietly on the cold floor in her barefeet. As she passes Rhul, he moves to follow her, speeding her on her way with a toothy grin and a playful slap to her bottom.
"Hurry woman, before anyones's about!" he warns her quietly.
She looks back and points at him mockingly, still moving towards the kitchens.
"You, Mister Rhul... are a very bad man!" she says with a horribly thick cockney accent. "And all that body hair bloody tickles, it does!"
"I'm quite sure it does, but you've never had a problem with that before. Now just get the wine!" he tells her in a deep whisper, shooing her on with a finger to his lips to motion for quiet. "Back of the third shelf- the older run from before the Elven occupation; it's smoother!"
Upon reaching their kitchen goal, she grabs two bottles, and turns to make for the basement again. Rhul makes a stop at the shelves as well, grabbing a wheel of cheese and a loaf of bread under one great arm. After a pause, another, different bottle of wine, goes under the other, his eyebrows raising with the corners of his mouth and giving a deep approving "Hmm!" after a glance at the vintage. He's halfway out of the kitchen when he spots the cookies.......... another of Esmerelda and Fiona's recipes- and another delicious and rousing success.
He stops and squints slightly, thinking for a moment, and after some deliberation, gets the first finger and thumb free of the hand holding the wine and clamps them on the edge of the plate. He nearly manages to get the plate off the table and steady when one of the cookies falls. He looks around again, guiltily, and bends low to grab the cookie off the table with his teeth and heads back towards the door.
The unknown woman is there to hold the door for the huge man, waving him on like a racehorse. He makes it through, and after a scan of the room to reassure herself of the continued secrecy of their little midnight raiding mission, she follows him.
A single feminine giggle can be heard before the heavy door closes quietly, the thick oak blocking any further sound.