[IC] In the starving time

Ulfheddin gets a solid grip on a person he can't see.

The person bites him very hard on the chin.

squirmy, squirmy, squeak-grunt.

The smaller man struggles ineffectually in Ulfheddin's mighty arms, knees the big man in the upper thigh and feebly kicks his shins. Be he wizard or whatever, he's still invisible, but it avails him naught.

"LEt go of mee!" squawks the unseen man in a high-pitched tenor voice. He squirms under Ulf's grip.

"Can't." Grunt, squirm. "Can't unspell without my body's free. Need my breathing room to do the work, folks."

"Maya confound you," answers the wizard with a very rueful tone. He snaps his fingers - and appears, his bathrobe much rumpled and indelicately disarrayed. He leans on his elbows, scrawny grey-haired chest on full display. You notice the satin bathrobe used to be some kind of imperial purple color, maybe, but has faded to lavender through repeated washings. It has some frayed parts.

"I assume you're refugees?" he asks. "That was a nasty trick you played on my chimney." You notice smoke hanging in the open door of his turf-house. The bacon smell has gone decidedly to burnt.

"Charming," says the wizard. "Come in, enjoy the smoke." He enters the turf-house. You notice that he easily fits under the lintel, but each of you will need to duck.

There are two steps down into the house. Do you take them?

Detecting neither traps nor magical wards, you enter the turf-house. Inside the air is smoky and the light is dim and directionless. You guess that it comes from shafts angled through the ceiling or walls of the room. It appears that this wizard dwells in something close to squalor, the single room although moderately large contains all accoutrements of life from mattress and blankets to thunderpot and cooking hearth. It smells a bit like unwashed bedding, under the overwhelming odor of burnt bacon. There is a large ornate wardrobe in the far left corner and a writing desk in the far right corner. The writing desk is slightly better lit than the rest of the room.

"It's tomorrow that I go down to the village to trade," says the wizard with no evidence of enmity or resentment for Ulfheddin's rough treatment. "So there's not much to offer you guests. Still ... porridge? Tea?" he gestures to a silver pot, its handle wrapped with a thickly quilted rag that once was part of something finer. The pot is one of those that has a whistle valve over the spout. Fancy stuff, for a man who lives under the grass.