Deepwood Weald A bar song (tipsy).

Dutch showed Towhee the size and color he was looking for and began to pick among the rocks once more. She spoke aloud to him, and he wondered again at how strange it must be to live without hearing, but he responded in kind all the same.

-"I used to do a lot of traveling. Wandering, more like. I spent my younger years as a bard and a sellsword. A bounty hunter."- He did not know all the signs for these words, so he substituted the one that Towhee Junior had showed him: warrior. -"These days, it is not so. I am stuck at home, minding the borders. I think I will prefer it this way. For a season, at least. Long enough to see the children grown."-

He might as well be sporting a bumper-sticker: Ask me about my unborn kids.

It was that or ingenious — a word at which Dutch preened like a proud tom cat, though he was, for once, too good to make any cheeky comment about it.