The night of Secondday, most of the town had turned out to hear the minstrel play his final performance at the Lodge. It wasn’t that he was particularly great. In fact, there were at least two townspeople that could play the harp more beautifully and over a dozen that could put the visiting minstrel’s singing voice to shame. But, a visiting minstrel was new and exciting, and he even had some songs in his repertoire that no one had heard before.
Regardless of the quality of music or of the thrill that a visiting minstrel brought, the Lodge was generally the place that the townsfolk went to for every evening’s town-wide meal and socialization in any case. It was a cultural quirk of towns in the region, these gatherings every evening. Whether the other regions did the same was something that no one from Mintas could reliably say. The few travelers that came through didn’t think it odd, since it seemed that from their perspective the town had gathered specifically to see them. As well, the townsfolk refused to ask the travelers whether it was different in the other four regions of Eastern Tehyn since, if it was a completely odd tradition, they didn’t want it to be the weird thing that they were known for.
After taking the final bite of roasted potato from his plate, Kre waved his hand to ward off a third helping from a spoon wielded by Mrs. Koraski. The Koraski’s ran the Lodge, which also served as a traveler’s Inn and Pete Koraski, youngest son of the aforementioned potato-dishing chef, was one of Kre’s best friends.
“If you don’t eat it now,” Pete said with a wave of his own fork, “she’ll just send it home with you. She thinks you’re getting too skinny.”
“And you’re getting too fat,” Mrs. Koraski snapped back, sliding the plate full of Mrs. Hadam’s apple crisp farther away from her own son and closer to Kre. If it weren’t for the faint wink of her eye, Kre would have thought the movement of the plate to be unintentional. Regardless of intention, Kre dug into the dessert, fending off Pete’s fork with his own.
Despite the desire to finish off the crisp, Kre slid it back over to Pete when his mother wasn’t looking. “I really do have to go,” Kre told his friend. “I agreed to play Tehynji with Cooter.”
A larger, rounder youth sat down next to Pete and pulled the plate of apple crisp over. “You should hang out here with us,” the boy spat out along with more than a few crumbs. “The musician is going to play something livelier and I’m sure we can get the girls to dance with us.”
Gantry Hadam was another of Kre’s friends and he lived a life of relative ease. His parents managed most of the market trade in and out of Mintas and as such, he had never had to work a day in his life except out of curiosity, though none of those jobs never actually lasted a full day.
Pete, on the other hand, had worked every day of his life since he could first handle a horse. “Can’t tonight, I need to get the stables mucked out and get the carts in travel-worthy shape for the trade run to the city next week.”
“Doesn’t that take like a day? Two at the most?” Gantry shrugged.
“Not after you took the carts and horses out for your own personal race day. There’s a bent frame on one of the carts that will need at least two days to hammer back into shape. That’s not to mention the boards that need replacing and wheels that need to be realigned.”
“If I recall,” Gantry laughed, remembering the day of racing fondly, “it was Kre that caused the frame damage when he side-swiped his cart into the tree.”
“On that note,” Kre said with a wave of his hand, “I’m leaving. Besides, we have a lifetime here in this little town to dance with the same girls we’ve always danced with.”