Topic: Habits.

Prikaza

Date: 2016-01-27 01:56 EST
A knife is a good friend to have, especially when you have no friends at all.

That was a lesson that the old man had taught him, that his life had taught him. A sharp blade could keep a man a lot longer than food, than water, than anything in this world. At least, that was Prikaza's opinion, and on terms of opinions that he found relevant, his own ranked up there highly. His knife, his brother, it remained concealed at his side, because why show the world that you had a weapon' Posturing, that was for those that lacked skill and needed to compensate. He had no need for compensation, just the knife, and the bottle of booze in front of him. After all, what good was coin if you didn't use it in a tavern properly' You wasted it otherwise.

Maybe that's why he sat in the very back, at the corner, where he could back to the wall and watch the rest of the tavern in silence. Maybe it was because it made it easy to prevent someone from getting the drop on him, or maybe it was simply because he liked playing up the stereotype of the mercenary brooding in the corner. The truth was" It was neither. He wasn't a man who knew how to interact well with other people. He might have, in a different time, in a different life, when he was nothing but a boy, but that wasn't a life he remembered. It wasn't a world he knew. He knew pain, he knew violence, and he knew how to revel in both like a mad man but interacting with people outside of business"

He hadn't a clue.

So, he sat there in his silence, that flask he was fond of using in front of him. Always, he ordered an unopened bottle. Always, he used his own flask. Tricks he learned early on in this profession. Ill will" He bore none. it was business, sometimes those that you tried to kill never took well to your attempt. Sometimes a professional found it necessary to remove you, to get to their target. Death wasn't something he was horribly afraid of, but it wasn't something he welcomed either.

Awkward" Maybe, not to him, but he didn't exactly do social graces. He was content to watch people, to do his people watching. The interactions within a tavern, the strange sense of familiarity people had among themselves, the camaraderie, the atmosphere...It was familiar, and alien, all at once and in its own very way' Brought a sense of peace to him, an almost zen to his spirit despite the fact that so very little of it made sense to him.

People had their vices. Prikaza had his booze, and his people watching.