WOMAN: COMMON DIALOGUE #1
Locklear tapped the woman's shoulder.
Slowly she turned to look at him, but rather than greeting him with a smile, in her gaze was a look he had thought reserved only for things that crawled on the ground or lapped up table leavings in the door yard. "What do you want?"
"I was hoping perhaps we could talk," Locklear ventured. "Pass the time with a little conversation."
"Why?" she said curtly.
Opening his mouth to reply but suddenly finding himself bereft of adequate speech, he made a small sound which he was certain sounded quite unmanly.
Stabbing him with her exquisitely beautiful stare, she smiled. "I thought as much. Good bye, sir. I am sure you have a brilliant oratory career before you."
WOMAN: COMMON DIALOGUE #2
The question had been innocent enough.
While he had meant nothing by asking the woman what she was doing in the tavern, Locklear found he was suddenly at the mercy of a rather pathetic street hawker.
"I'm trying to sell these," the woman said. She opened up a ruck sack and drew out a handful of cracked seashells, handing them over to Locklear to examine.
"Have you tried to sell them to a merchant somewhere?" Locklear asked.
"A few places, but I've found they won't buy anything they don't already have on their shelves. Why do they just need more of what they already have? I would think they would jump at the chance to stock items they don't have around."
Locklear shrugged and handed the shells back. "I'm no merchant, but it might be a matter of knowing what your regular buyers come after. If you never have anyone asking for shells, it probably doesn't make sense for you to waste your money trying to buy them."
WOMAN: COMMON DIALOGUE #3
Locklear babbled.
Unthinking, he'd initiated the conversation without knowing what he was going to say and felt the heat of embarrassment rising in his cheeks. Casting about for some topic of common interest, he was fortuitously saved when the woman held up a book which she had been holding.
"Do you read much?" she asked.
Locklear shrugged. "Can't say that I do. My responsibilities don't give me much time for stories."
"Who said anything about stories?" the woman asked, turning it up so Locklear could read the words stamped on the binding, Thiful's Bird Migrations.
"Bird migrations?" Locklear said, a puzzled look on his face. "You'll pardon me, but it doesn’t sound very interesting."
"If the book had confined itself to the subject of birds, I believe I would have been inclined to agree," the woman said with a nod. "Fortunately, he isn't very good about sticking to the subject and he covers more territory than the birds he writes about. I've learned some miraculous things about trading with shopkeepers and playing the lute -- I would highly recommend you find the time to read more."
"You sound like a brother of Ishap," Locklear said.
Mocking a look of horror, the woman gasped. "Ishap forfend! My reputation is ruined. I shall have to make amends. Barkeep, another keg of ale in, if you please!"
WOMAN: COMMON DIALOGUE #4
Owyn coughed.
"You should see a priest about that," the woman said. "How long have you been afflicted with it?"
"Only just now. I have a small problem with smoke." Owyn replied, gesturing to the corner of the tavern where a wood fire was burning in the hearth. "I doubt the brothers of Sung would be much interested."
She nodded, staring down into the dregs of her winecup. "Unless you've a mortal wound or a plague or you've been stupid enough to fall prey to poison, I've never found that priests are of much use other than to babble on about the trivial."
WOMAN: RARE DIALOGUE (only in Silden?)
The woman talked.
Brushing away the hair that was dangling in her eyes, she talked long and passionately about the affairs of the common folk of Midkemia.
"You talk of children as if they were nothing more than pieces on a chessboard," Locklear said with a frown.
"Forgive me, sire, but I was lowborn," she replied. "When a farmer has no one to push his plow for him and cannot hire a strong back, he and his wife conceive a child! When a noble is endangered by ships off his coast, but has a daughter in swaddling that coos in her bassinet, he promises her hand in marriage to the invading lord to save his gold! It is the nature of your Great Freedom..."
Stunned by the flare of rage, Locklear was uncertain how to answer the peasant woman's vehemence. "It is not my plan, miss," he replied pointedly. "And I don't think it was engineered to enslave children, however good your point may be. Yes, many people are forced to do much against their will, but how eager do you think the soldiers have been that have gone down to their deaths to defend those principles? There are prices to be paid on all sides."
"Yes, there are," she said. "But some of us seem to be paying more than others."