Orianna’s Encounter

(Approximate story word count: 1800 words. Estimated reading time: 18 minutes.)

As becoming of the City of Skilled Hands, the markets of Neverwinter were bustling. Traders from all over the Sword Coast had gathered to sell their wares, adventurers haggled for gear to take on their next great mission, and dwarves & gnomes partook in friendly arguments over who had made the best esoteric inventions.

In amongst all the chaos, Orianna du Fior was elegantly dancing her way through the crowd. Despite wearing heels her agility was not impacted, effortlessly sidestepping her way past crafters and consumers alike, her layered skirt rustling gently with each hop.

She had a goal in mind, and she was not going to be held up by anyone. A few weeks back she had requested a custom dress made by one of the finest elven tailors in the land, and today was the pickup day.

Farandar’s Fine Fashions had set up shop opposite a jewellery stand, and the eponymous tailor had put Orianna’s new dress on display on a mannequin directly adjacent to their table, with an expertly painted sign reading “bespoke order – inquire today about getting yours!”, making some minor finishing touches to the lace work.

“Goooooooood morning Farandar I hope you’re doing well today it is so busy today so I hope you are getting good business outside of me!”, Orianna said, as usual, barely taking a moment to breathe whilst she spoke.

Farandar looked up, completely unfazed by the motor mouth tendencies of the young girl before him, greeting his regular customer with a smile. “Good afternoon Miss Orianna,” he said before walking round to face her properly, “as you can see, your new garment is ready and made to your exact specification.”

The elf then moved back to behind his table and gestured towards the mannequin, “of course, feel free to inspect my craftsmanship!”.

Orianna obliged, sending her eye over the outfit. The brief she had given was for something with flashy details but in an elegant black colour, the theme was completely left up to Farandar.

The dress itself was of similar length to all of Orianna’s dresses, reaching down to just about her knees, but with plenty of material to wear a petticoat beneath to give the appropriate amount of volume. Across the full circumference of the skirt fabric were sewn in constellations, small clear gems shaped into stars and an enchanted thread linking them together to form the images.

“This thread is-”, Farandar began, before duly being interrupted by Orianna.

“Oh I know what this thread is I’ve seen it before in other shops it’s enchanted to respond to my movement so if I do a skirt swish or spin the constellations are gonna glow really bright?”

The merchant quickly raised a finger with his mouth open, before lowering the former and closing the latter. Orianna began looking over the dress in more detail, taking in one sharp inhale ready to go over everything in one go with Farandar bracing himself.

“Okay the bows on the hemline are really super duper cute and will look great in addition to the constellation effect I love the bow on the front of the waist with the stars on the side and then the stars going up the bodice almost like buttons is a surprisingly cute detail plus the back bow with extra constellations is even better and finally I love the ruffles on the straps they’re just a great topper to an amazing as usual dress!”

(Author’s note: I spoke this sentence after I wrote it to ensure I would have been able to say it in character. I can… just.)

She inhaled again after that before smiling sweetly at her tailor, handing over a bag of gold to complete the transaction, a little more than had been asked for but Orianna was always happy to pay for fine art. Farandar took the money, giving a slight bow before taking the dress behind his booth to box it up.

“Excuse me,” a soft voice spoke up behind Orianna. Her rapid talking about her dress had attracted the attention of another elven crafter who had been standing at the jewellery stand opposite, who was now very intrigued by Orianna’s detail oriented nature.

“Oh hi how can I help you-”, she said, turning around to face the source of the voice before quickly realising that it was a very cute high elf that was wanting to talk to her, which invariably caused her to become flustered, “oh my you are extremely pretty miss hi what do you want from me wow you look great.”

The crafter laughed in response to this girl getting incredibly flustered, smiling warmly at her, saying, “I heard you talking about your dress and wanted to see who exactly was picking it up. Looks like it is someone as gorgeous as it is,” punctuating that last statement with a wink.

Said wink caused Orianna to turn as red as her hair and go from rapid talking to rapid noise making. The elf stroked her cheek gently, shushing her softly. “Probably should not have opened with flirting given your initial response,” she said, keeping up her soft, welcoming smile, “my name is Eirina, Eirina Yalanek, nice to meet you…?”

“Uhm uhm uhm uhmynameisOriannaduFioritisnicetomeetyouEirina,” Orianna rapidly said, continuing to be flustered even as the girl talking to her tried to take a softer approach. 

Seeing that she was not going to calm down any time soon, Eirina took Orianna’s hand and guided her into the tent behind the stand was working at. Both of them sitting down on a bench, Eirina reached for a waterskin around her waist before searching deep in her bag for two granite mugs, filling both up with cool, refreshing water.

“Drink up,” she said, handing one over to Orianna, “you spoke a lot and got quite red in the face out there.”

Actually quite needing hydration right about now, Orianna polished off the mug before placing it down, saying, “yeah no sorry about that I kind of just really love girls and seeing someone as cute and beautiful as you caught me off guard.”

Eirina pushed some flowing auburn hair behind her elegant ears as softly in response to the compliment, “you are really sweet… Orianna was it? I sort of heard that when you spoke but you did say a lot.”

“Yeah my name is Orianna du Fior I got your name it’s Eirina Yalanek which is a very beautiful name I must say very fancy.”

“You really do not stop with being lovely do you?”, Eirina said, feeling an intense warmth on her cheeks radiating outwards, “I guess I am not all that used to personal compliments.”

Orianna’s mouth opened wide upon hearing Eirina say this, making random “wah” and “buh” noises as she tried to comprehend why this amazing person would not be showered with praise and affection near constantly.

“Let me explain,” Eirina said, taking a small sip of her water before speaking further, “I have worked adjacent to artisans a lot, and I feel I am pretty good at it. But the dwarves and elves I sell my work to are often complimenting the work more than they are complimenting me… to hear someone compliment who I am so sincerely, it feels… it feels nice.”

The elf reached her hand over to Orianna’s, wanting to hold it as they talked further. She took a moment of pause however, knowing that such an action could cause another flustered episode, so instead decided to ask, “may I hold your hand please?”

Unsurprisingly, such a question did still trigger Orianna to become slightly flustered, but she was so infatuated in this moment that she nodded, becoming ever so slightly giddy once their hands touched. “These are nice gloves,” Eirina said, running her hand over the stitching, “is everything you wear so fine?”

“Pretty much yeah,” Orianna said, somehow managing to not stumble over her words in spite feeling very nervous and fluttery right now, “I definitely like the finer things in life which certainly includes all of the clothes I like to wear and accessorising with my outfits is one of my favourite pastimes.”

“Honestly that is kind of why I wanted to talk to you, never heard someone outside of artisan circles talk in so much detail about an outfit… it was both endearing and intriguing.”

“Oh everything I wear is very detailed it helps me stand out in various scenarios and I grew up in a house that was very “seen and not heard” so making myself known by having the best look among others is fun you should come to my room sometime to see the rest of my-”.

Orianna quickly realised what she was proposing to this person she had just met and developed an intense blush incredibly fast, looking away from them and stammering out the word “sorry” a lot. In response, Eirina cupped Orianna’s cheek gently to pull her face back around, giving her an enthusiastic smile and a soft nod.

“I would love to see the clothes and accessories you have Orianna, maybe you could come to my place a couple days later to try some of my cooking too.”

Stammering was replaced with a prolonged gasp, holding her hands to her mouth and looking up and down rapidly before she grabbed both of Eirina’s hands and said, “Oh my gosh that sounds absolutely amazing I’d love to do that with you!”.

Eirina laughed before standing up to go over to one of her merchandise cases, tracing her fingers over various pieces of jewellery, grabbing a pair of earrings. “You can have these too,” she said, revealing them to Orianna, “I think they will go great with your new outfit”. The main body of the earring was in the shape of a four pointed star, dangling from a short chain on the hook itself with a blue teardrop-shaped gem hanging from the bottom of the star.

Moved by this gesture, Orianna came close to tears, but was able to compose herself long enough to give her thanks for the beautiful, hand-crafted jewellery and give Eirina the details of where she needed to go for them to meet up whilst she put the earrings into a decorative box.

The pair hugged. Orianna left the tent with a skip and a smile as she went back over to Farandar to collect her boxed up outfit, moving away a bit further from Eirina’s tent in order to have a freakout.

“OH MY GOD I HAVE A DATE WITH A CUTE GIRL!”

Inspiration

So after the last Orianna story, I wanted to write something a bit softer. Bit more slice of life to play into the more chaotic/personal elements of Orianna’s character, so I decided to envision what the meeting between Eirina and Orianna would look like. I have to admit I find it fairly cute…

…y’know, if I hadn’t already written the story where their relationship breakdown is the main narrative framing device.

Regardless I wanted to give context to how these two met initially, and give more context on who Eirina is. After the initial Orianna story came out my DM wanted to know what race and class the ex-girlfriend had, presumably just for context and to potentially use her. I gave it as high elf and cleric respectively, and over time I started thinking more about who Eirina is as a character.

She’s a Life Domain Cleric specifically, mainly because she is my backup character for the unlikely event Orianna dies cause I like playing Clerics to give more context to her healing Orianna when she came back from particularly nasty pit fights, but that is not her full class make up.

I see her as having taken one of the Auxiliary Levels from Valda’s Spire of Secrets by Mage Hand Press, specifically the “Expert” level. It would make sense that an expert artisan would be drawn to someone who enjoys bespoke products with large amounts of detail… plus I didn’t want to have her behind on Spellcasting levels and this specifically gives that.

I realise that writing all of this down is just giving my DM even more fuel for when they eventually decide to deploy Eirina against me, but oh well, it’ll be fun roleplaying out the sheer awkwardness of these two reuniting in less than ideal circumstances.