“Pay not kindness with cruelty. Those who welcome you to their home and hearth even in times of hardship should be cherished, for it is in hardship that one’s true character is revealed for all to witness.” - Old folk saying.

“Sorry about the wait,” said Aida later that evening after the goods on the wagons were unloaded, unpacked, and thoroughly inspected by both her and the town’s Mayor. The process was rather laborious and took a while, but not so long that Aideen and her charges waited that long. “I already sent a runner to tell Yngva that we’ll have guests, so she should be preparing dinner by now.”

Aida brought the group to her house, which took the form of a long rectangular building that was mostly made out of wood. Most houses in the town share such a construction, typically built in the four cardinal directions from the town center outwards, while further out people also built more houses in the gaps between two houses, set diagonally between them, but with plenty of room to allow the passage of wagons and the like.

The town took a crude octagonal shape due to the housing arrangement, with the people of lower standing mostly living on the outskirts, whereas the more important ones lived closer to the town center, where it would be safest in times of danger. The town Mayor’s home was on the north side of the town center, while Aida’s abode was directly across the town square from it, to the south.

“Welcome, welcome!” greeted a matronly-looking middle aged woman who opened the door for them. The woman perhaps had some dwarven blood in her, considering her stocky build and how much wider she was at the shoulder compared to Aida, but not enough to grow a beard like many dwarven descendants do. “You must be the ones who helped Aida out on her trip! Please come in! Consider the house yours as well!”

“Yngva, my dearest lady wife,” introduced Aida after greeting the other woman with a warm hug and a kiss. She then gestured to invite the group into her house, and they followed to find that the longhouse was basically constructed as a single room, with a cooking area on one end and a desk that held various tools used for carving on the other. The middle area was dominated by a long table and a pair of benches of matching length.

“Those are our children, Mikkel, Valdis, and Leif,” she added as she gestured towards three children in their early to late teenage years who were setting up the table. None of the children bore much resemblance to either Aida or Yngva, so they were most likely adopted, which was common practice for such couples. “Where is that little rascal Gudrun? Why isn’t she home at this hour?”

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“I sent her to borrow some eggs from next door! We ran out!” replied Yngva from where she was by the stove. “Speak of the rascal, there she is.”

Just as she said those words, a young girl – probably barely ten or so – entered the longhouse, accompanied by a pair of wolves. The wolves were no odd sight, as they seemed to be what the Vinjaun locals favored as domesticated animals went. Both wolves sniffed around Aideen’s group for a bit with obvious curiosity, but did not bother them any further, while the girl went off to where Yngva was cooking.

“Here ya go, ma, ol’ Erik gave us half a dozen eggs,” said the girl as she handed a pouch of eggs over to Yngva. “Said to send him some good grub if ya made extra,” she added.

“Heh, good old Erik, never asked for much, that old man,” noted Aida at the table. “He’s one of our neighbors, one of the oldest people in town, too. Used to be a representative like me when he was younger, though since he grew older he’s mostly helped teach the youngsters in town instead.”

“I’ll bake him a pie tomorrow. I think we still got a bunch of those berries Valdis and Mikkel picked yesterday,” said Yngva with a smile from where she was by the stove. “Old man loves his sweets, and they’re pretty rare treats around here, so I like to make him some when we happen to run into some berries while hunting.”

“She might not look it, but Yngva here’s one of the town’s best hunters, and she’s been taking our older kids on hunts with her as well,” explained Aida, though some like Aideen had guessed as much, given the positively monstrous crossbow that hung on one of the longhouse’s walls. The crossbow was definitely too heavy for a human to use, but someone with dwarven heritage might be able to make good use of it.

Aideen also saw the bolts lined up neatly on a rack beside the crossbow itself. There were a few large bolts, easily as thick as two fingers put together and likely capable of causing fatal injuries even to larger beasts like bears and the like, but also other bolts that were more like a collection of smaller, regular-sized bolts loosely bound together.

Given the monstrous size of the crossbow, even with the force distributed between so many bolts, each would likely still hit with more than enough power to go straight through most game beasts, and the spread of the shots would also allow taking down two or more targets at once, with some luck.

“Come on now, Aida, you’re going to bore them with all the hunting talk,” said Yngva as she carried a large pot over to the long table. Her older two kids – the aforementioned Mikkel and Valdis – also helped her carry other smaller pots, while the younger two already sat at their places at the table, clearly enthusiastic for the meal they were about to have. “Let’s put those aside for a while and enjoy a good meal first, shall we? All of you have been outside all day, must be cold. This will warm you right back up or my name ain’t Yngva anymore!”