Joli's mouth works silently as she falters at finding a casual, dismissive phrase to offer-- Lon seems nice enough, so why should she be so diffident about having a conversation as to make up excuses not to?  "No, no, it's fine-- I mean, you won't do anything terrible, I'm sure, so nothing to worry over..." without missing a beat as she lifts her spoon, she continues.<br/><br/>"He wouldn't regale you, I'm afraid..."  she looks a little ashamed, perhaps for trying to stir his sense of caution, then consequently almost driving him away.  "Not because of you-- no, I mean, he's not much of a regaler.  I mean, not much of a talker."  She lifts her spoon to her mouth, smiling abashedly between cooling puffs over the hot stew.  "He's mute, I mean.  Lost his voice killing ogres.  Well... I mean, not with his voice, but while killing thirty or forty of..."<br/><br/>Seeming to realize, suddenly, that rather than constraining her mouth she's actually let it completely run rampant, she stuffs her spoon into it.  "Ah, good food."  And by the moon and stars, it really<i>is</i>good.  She realizes just how hungry she is; a day on the road without food is very little to some, but she's not so familiar with hunger, and finds it quite mollifying of her nerves to have a decent meal before her.  "I ah, I apologize.  I'm terribly rude."  She becomes more demure, her young face seeming to soften as her features relax with embarrassment.  She pauses, attempts to do as he suggested, to act normal...<br/><br/>For a moment, she catches a glimpse of the other interesting characters in the room-- Balfor, whose name she'd managed to overhear, not surprisingly reminds her a bit of her uncle so far with his boisterous confidence and rakish smile. She notices he is speaking to the tall gentleman-- Alchfrid, did he say?  Perhaps it was a trick of the light or the angle of her viewing that made him seem so gigantic before; although he certainly<i>is</i>tall, he's not some giant as she first assumed.  The hard-eyed, armored woman among the merchants seemed to have made note of Joli too-- Joli casually wonders if she's imagining it, or is the young woman seeming a bit protective?<i>She certainly looks tough, </i>Joli thinks, feeling a little surge of admiration,<i>but she's pretty, too.  I wish I could do that...</i><br/><br/>She locks eyes with Lon again, smiling very sweetly, like some of that ludicrous fear is dissipating.  "So, Lon... Have you stayed here long?  And what do you do?  Are you..." she really doesn't know how to phrase it without sounding like a child, "... a, um, adventurer of some kind?"  She keeps his gaze for a moment longer, fills her spoon with stew again, and eats while she listens.