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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45783
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45783
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You could play them as opposites. He hardly talks at all, she talks enough for both of them!

She is not unaware or oblivious to him, but she just chatters along, asking him questions that he doesn't answer, making up her own answers, telling about her life and things that happened and her family and her neighbors and adventures she has had, or heard about. Just an endless stream of consciousness, filling the silence.

Every once in awhile, he will answer a question, and she listens.

And he doesn't like it, at first. But he's not going to complain, she saved his life. He's got a code, he thinks of this as fair payment. But after a while, he grows used to it. Then he starts to listen to her, and curiosity gets the better of him: He asks questions. She answers, and once in a while trades him an answer for an answer; so he is answering questions.

Make your barmaid smart and perceptive, she understands people. She knows when it is okay to push forward with him a little, and when she should leave him alone. She can read his feelings, and know when he's irritated, or a topic pains him, or embarrasses him, or when he is secretly humored by her stories.

Being an uncommunicative stoic is a recipe for isolation and loneliness. He may have become numb to that loneliness, and think of it as solitude. But **because** he is that way, she will soon be the person that "gets him" better than anybody else in the world. If you want him to love her, in either a romantic or platonic sense, this can be the recipe for that.

Original score: 7