vagabond battleborn

If Kaskara could read is thoughts, she would have laughed. She had never considered herself beautiful, though her brothers and family often gave her compliments stating such. She was simply Kaskara, the dark coated woman who could nearly topple any man and usually hung with the men. She had plenty of female friends - Bazi, Falwasi, Paarthurnax, Junior - but she sometimes preferred male company over female. It was less stressful and more straightforward. Not every friendship she had with another woman was like that, but she remembered some petty and vindictive females from her youth, and didn't wish to relive that.

So if she had been able to hear that he thought she was beautiful, or any semblance of it, she would have laughed at the notion. Instead, she simply nodded and confirmed his spoken words. "That much is clear," she said kindly. He was strong and proud, and not arrogant or foolish like younger men could be. "It appears your youth has taught you well." He could take that how he wished, of course, but she studied him closer as he spoke of how trespassers would be treated in his homeland.

With a grin, Kaskara remembered the brutal ways Dal Riata had dealt with trespassers and traitors of their own. "The same in mine as well. However, these lands are much too weak to understand what true brutality is. We maim them, teach them a lesson, and drive them off." His next words had her shaking her head. "That's too bad, stranger. We could use a hardened man such as yourself as an ally." She could see, quite plainly, that his life had not been an easy one, and that he understood what it meant to be brutal when others expected you to be kind.