All in all, it was closer to mid-morning by the time they were ready to get together and figure anything out, insofar as clothes and supplies were concerned.  Leeteuk went and found Gairen so they could enlist his aid in going to see the tailors and he was only too happy to make sure they had proper footwear and decent overcoats before ushering them through the snow covered ground and icy cold air to a building cattycorner to his.  “This here’s the Cross Stitch,” he remarked, holding the front door open while he ushered them inside.

           The group huddled together in the immediate doorway, barely leaving room for him to slide around while he chuckled as they shivered and chafed cold hands and arms.  “Drell!  Vayna!” he called out loudly, surprising the group with the sound.

           “Gairen?  Is that you, lad?” an older sounding woman asked, coming from a back room to the left.  She was as tall as Kyuhyun when she stepped out to appraise her visitors and she looked at them critically, clearly disapproving the clothes they wore at present.  “And what’s this?” she demanded, her voice still vibrant despite the years she apparently wore.  Vayna was an older woman with brownish blonde hair, liberally streaked with grays that she kept mostly hidden under a bright red kerchief that covered the top of her ears.  She had pale brown eyes that were uncomfortably sharp and a complexion less wrinkled than they would have imagined.  It didn’t help she was an intimidating woman with a physique closer to Siwon’s…

           “Come now, Vayna.  Is that any way to treat customers?” Gairen asked jovially as he stepped around and clapped her on the shoulder forcefully.

           She grinned at his comment and the smile transformed her face from severe to charming in an instant.  Immediately, the group felt themselves relax when she lost the annoyed expression and regarded them anew.  “Well, obviously.  With those clothes, they’d have to be.”  Meticulously, she ticked them off one at a time and then looked around behind her.  “Drell.  Drell!  Get your arse out here!” she snapped, tapping her foot impatiently.

           “Hold your horses, Vayna,” a considerably gentler voice sounded from the back.  From the same door she had appeared from, a man of comparable age and physique stepped through, though he was completely bereft of hair.  He wiped his permanently stained hands on the dirty apron he wore and came around to the front, his demeanor calm and professional.  Competent dark brown eyes looked them over succinctly and then met Gairen’s.  “Good to see you again,” he smiled broadly, giving the other man a firm handshake.

           “And you as well,” Gairen laughed, gesturing at his guests.  “The young folks need new gear for the rest of their trip down the mountain,” he explained.  At the curious expression Drell gave him, he elaborated further, “They had a tough time coming down from the monastery.”

           Drell nodded knowingly and then looked over at Vayna.  “I suppose those furs aren’t going anywhere today, aye?”

           Vayna laughed, a sharp but amused sound.  “I think they’ll last.”  Almost gleefully, she removed the measuring tape she had draped around her shoulders and gestured at the girls.  “You three follow me,” she stated, all business as she headed for the back room to the right.

           Uncertainly, Kharin, Summer and Eleanara exchanged glances with each other and then with the guys.  Drell chuckled at their nerves.  “Don’t worry.  She doesn’t bite.  Hard,” he couldn’t help adding with a sly wink.

           The three gulped but had no choice but to follow when they heard her voice floating from the back, “Are you comin or not?”  As a group, they made their way through the curious interior, decorated with the tools of their trade and covered with bolts and rolls of several different types and colors of fabrics.  One wall actually had a rack of preserved furs hanging on three tiers of shelves.

           Drell watched them leave and then eyed the rest of the group with a practiced expression.  “Let’s get started then,” he grinned, retrieving the measuring tape he carried in his apron pocket and motioning for them to precede him into the room he had come from.

           Gairen waved before he exited, calling out, “I’ll be back at the inn.  Just send em over when you’re done with them.”

           Drell waved but didn’t look back.  Over the next hour, each individual was measured no less than three times and tentatively fit for two pairs of pants, two shirts, new smallclothes, a pair of custom boots and a new coat that would be necessary for the rest of the journey through the snow covered areas.  By the time the men were finished, the girls looked as if they’d been done for a bit now and they were clustered in a small group with Vayna towering over them, a chiding yet maternal tone to her voice that tapered off when she heard the men returning.  Eleanara looked moderately embarrassed and the other two were a mixture of amused and thoughtful.

           “You must be getting old if it took you that long,” Vayna remarked to her significant other when they were close enough.

           “Or someone’s just growing younger,” he winked, leaning forward to kiss her quickly on the cheek.  They were all surprised when she flushed after the compliment and then retreated to her room to begin her work.  Drell addressed them with a happy smile.  “If all goes well, we should be able to have your order done by tomorrow.  Don’t worry about price now,” he declined, noticing Leeteuk reaching for the pouch he was carrying with him.  “We’ll settle that tomorrow when the clothes are finished.  The monastery will pick up most of it anyway,” he assured them with the practiced air of one that had been doing this for a while.  Confidently, he moved over to the door and waved them out.  “Now go on back to Gairen and he’ll take care of you from here.”

           The group sprinted back to the inn from the tailor’s, earning laughs and amused comments from some of the locals walking by.  Leeteuk held the door open for the others and then rushed inside, shaking one good time and laughing with the rest when they stumbled in.

           “How’d it go?” Gairen asked from the back, having heard the door open and close.

           “Very well,” Leeteuk responded, glancing at the others for confirmation.

           “They’re an interesting couple,” Kharin remarked while she stomped the rest of the snow off her feet.

           “It seems like they’ve been doing that for a long time,” Siwon remarked, taking a seat at their now customary table.

           Gairen laughed.  “They have been.  They’re getting closer to forty years now.  Working that is; and still the best in town,” he assured them as the number sank in.

           Eleanara shook her head.  “They certainly don’t act that old,” thinking back to some of their instructors and Yoogin in the monastery.

           “It’s the cold.  Keeps you young,” Gairen winked, disappearing into the back and then returning with a tray of mugs and a pitcher in the other hand.  “Here.  I’ll have lunch out in a minute.  Once you’re done eating we can go see Tierne,” he assured them.

           “Do you think that’ll take long?” Kyuhyun asked, apparently getting bored already, at which the others rolled their eyes but didn’t deign to respond.

           “Well that depends,” Gairen answered honestly.  “If he thinks you don’t deserve weapons, then it’ll be a short trip indeed.”

           It could have been an amusing statement but for the fact they could tell he was completely serious.  Comfortably, they spaced themselves out at the table, sipping the water and waiting for him to return with whatever lunch was going to be.  He surprised them all with hearty sandwiches filled with generous slices of some sort of roast and topped with a sharp yellow cheese.  Thick baked potato slices accompanied the main portion of the meal.

           Hungrily, the group dug in, most of them managing to polish off the entirety of the meal and leaving only a couple of the baked potato slices if anything.  Gairen left them to themselves for a bit, allowing the food to settle before he retrieved them to go and see the blacksmith.

           This time, the walk was a bit longer, two rows of houses past the tailor’s and near the outskirts of the village where the noise wouldn’t bother too many of them.  They were ushered in again and greeted by a wall of heat that was like a slap in the face and the loud ting of metal beating on metal.  Gairen motioned for them to wait where they were before he made his way through the house, similar in nature to the tailor’s only it had the heavier tools of a blacksmith.

           Curiously, they peered at the various types of weapons strewn about on the walls.  Some they had seen before and others were completely foreign.  Eunhyuk poked at a spear with a long curved blade on the end and Kyuhyun picked up what appeared to be an elongated spiked mace…

           “Put those down,” a deep voice rumbled, making the pair jump and Kyuhyun dropped the weapon immediately.  Eunhyuk jumped back to where he had been and Kharin caught his shoulder, the beginnings of a smile on her face.  “Children shouldn’t play with weapons they don’t understand,” the speaker went on as he came closer.

           Tierne was tall, like most of the persons they had seen here, standing even with Gairen but he had the thickest arms and barrel chest they had ever seen.  He had just enough coal black hair to pull back into a tiny pony-tail and he squinted constantly so that it was hard to see he had hazel brown eyes.  His skin was considerably weathered so they couldn’t tell how old he was but he certainly had the demeanor of a patronizing uncle…

           “You haven’t even given em a chance yet.  You know better than that,” Gairen chided, shaking a finger at him.  The gesture seemed misplaced but the blacksmith regarded him with an even gaze and then tipped his head.

           “Alright.  You can go on then,” he dismissed the innkeeper with a wave.  Gairen smiled ruefully and waved at the group, giving them a thumbs-up sign before he stepped out.  Tierne regarded the group with a heavy sigh.  “So.  What exactly do you think you can do with any of these?” he gestured to the wall of weapons he had.

           The group looked over the selection carefully and began to drift towards the weapons they were most familiar with.  Leeteuk reached over to the quarterstaff that was tipped on both ends by dull metal plating.  He hefted the weight experimentally and nodded, turning to watch the others.  Kyuhyun reached for a short sword near at hand while Eleanara chose a smaller dagger.  Siwon spied a finely crafted maul that would have seemed large for most of the others but appeared to fit his hands quite nicely.  Kharin looked through the weapons and took her time in finding a mace that seemed appropriate for her.  Both Eunhyuk and Summer took a bit longer to find what they were searching for and had almost given up before they spied the three pronged weapons they had frequently trained with in the monastery.  Of the three pairs of sais there, mostly hidden under the rest of the weaponry, they took two brightly polished with intricately wrapped handles.

           Tierne watched their selections carefully, matching the choices with the person and he was thoughtful more than anything else.  They were all young, but so were all the men and women who came to him for weapons initially.  His greatest worry had been assuaged already in that they were only pretending to have any knowledge of the weapons they were fascinated by.  What he saw now bespoke familiarity and practice.  “Come,” he gestured, leading them through a closed door in the back that led to a salle in the rear of the house that none of them had anticipated.  The blacksmith shop was considerably larger than they had thought.  He picked up a broadsword and swung it about experimentally before glancing at the group.  “Now.  Show me what you’ve learned.”

           As one, the group swallowed nervously and then looked at each other.  Uncertain but curious herself, Kharin shrugged and stepped forward, swinging the mace experimentally.  Tierne smiled and stepped forward to meet her.

           Their sparring with Tierne was mercifully short as he was an expert in weapons training and considerably better than any of them.  They did, however, manage to express their competency enough so that he actually nodded at them.  “So you’re not as hopeless as you look,” he grinned, shelving the broadsword again, barely winded.

           “We try,” Eunhyuk assured him, resting with the sais in his hands pressed against his knees.  He had been the final sparring partner and that had been a fascinating match, as he had the fastest footwork.

           It had been an uneven match to begin with but Tierne smiled.  “You can leave those here for now.  Come see me tomorrow and you’ll have something to take with you.  To protect and defend, mind you,” he eyed them carefully.  They nodded in tandem, relieved and excited.  As directed, they placed the weapons on the table nearby and let themselves out, sprinting for the inn again.

           Like before, more of the locals spied them and laughed or waved, as was their inclination.  Gairen was ready for them with mugs of warm cider instead of water.  It wasn’t nearly time enough to eat but they were grateful for the downtime.  Later in the afternoon, he approached them in their rooms with a suggested list of items they should take and advised them to let him know if they didn’t already have them.  The group thanked him and settled down again, thinking on the events that had recently transpired and the journey that was to come.  Their dinner and evening were a subdued affair and it was a relief for them to sleep so that the next day would arrive that much faster.