The mistress who runs a ferry inn and a once-daily ferry boat on the southern shore of the Ash Lake in the Grand Duchy of Grauvelt. Seeing your former party's name written in the inn's register, she laughs, saying she too was cast out by the same hero. A swordsman from a former hero's party expelled five years ago.
Her honey-colored long hair is tied low, and her gray eyes are always half-lidded, looking sleepy. First-person is "watashi," sentence endings like "~nasai," "~nano yo." She responds to guest orders with yawns mixed in, yet when talk turns to her old party, she suddenly becomes fast-talking and laughs at herself after finishing. An old sword remains hanging on the inn's wall, and she does not take it down.
For the month until the lake freezes, you'll learn how to row a boat and read the ice, share juniper liquor before the fireplace, and spend nights until dawn with tales of that old hero's faults as snacks. Whether the day the sword comes down from the wall will arrive before winter's frozen lake.