Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Elf Shit ❯ Elf Shit ( Chapter 1 )

ELF SHIT

 

“But is green really a heroic color? Or even a dignified one?”

I blinked, and raised a hand to point indignantly—the tiny clatter of my ale almost tipping over as I bumped it made my heart jump like getting kicked suddenly in the back. I moved the thick green tunic from the abused splintered tabletop onto my lap. The saturated earthy green turned almost black in the shadow of the table. Yeah, I hadn't put much thought into it. About as much thought as we'd made deciding which tavern to stop in—how long would I be wearing this thing? I scratched a bit of grit off the folded sleeve. May as well keep it presentable for as long as I could, I thought, looking down at the ragged shirt I wore now.

“… practically picked out the first one you saw,” Tione continued.

“Does it matter? It matches the gloves.” Wait, how was green undignified? Did I miss something?

Tione exhaled a short exasperated sigh. “'Cause you're not just dressing to fight monsters and wander aimlessly through forests—”

“Hey—” I began to interject.

“…you're dressing to impress people and convince people you're the man for the job. Your appearance is just as vital as your words in conveying what you have to say calmly and intelligently. Diplomacy is important—” Tione twitched at a presence behind her and leered at a bar patron who appeared to be ogling her. “Get your beady eyes off me or they'll be on the floor with the rest of ya!” she shouted back.

Tione turned back to me with a smile—this crooked smile that almost seemed a mesmerizing blend of coy and condescending, but kind of reminded me of my mother or my older sister, far across the kingdom—whatever they were up to. To be heroic. What kind of a promise was that, even to a family whose patron deity had been the god of heroes for generations? Yeah, I'd done some stuff. But the more I thought about the fact that most of the things I'd accomplished were mundane and looked around the dim, musty tavern, the more I began to think that `hero' was kind of a silly word. Or at least the idea of one. Incapacitating a rowdy drunkard here and there or spending a weekend exterminating rats from a local bakery weren't very heroic or anything to write home about. Those rats were big, though.

“… family, right?”

“Huh?”

Startled, I gave my head a brief shake, and Tione huffed, her lips pursed in frustration. She'd already come to know that little shake as a sign that I hadn't been listening.

I heard Tione sigh a “never mind” as I scanned the tavern, looking out at the scattering of doleful, bacchanal and just plain blank faces. Just one interested me, and it was the one with the somehow amused scowl sitting across the table. Maybe it was the way her eyebrows, with the funny little barbs on the end turned mercifully upwards in gentle scorn. Something else about her face swallowed me whole like a colossal beast, dizzying me with steaming breath until I felt almost giddy. The one flaw—the single imperfection on her plain girl-next-door face, the muddy brown blemish that almost looked like a shadow of her unruly dark brown hair, sweeping over the left part of her forehead and melting into freckle-like spots down her pale cheek, like a single leaf interrupting a pond's perfect mirror.

The place was about as exciting as a tarnished, dull axe blade and I imagined most of its customers were about as sharp. Aleric included, but it was the cute kind of dull-wittedness that seemed to inevitably come with ungodly amounts of charm and benevolence. I watched as he scoured the room in search of inspiration for something to say, looking momentarily at the dim ceiling with their thick log rafters as if the solution would be bestowed upon him by the gods like some holy boon. Finally, he frowned and stroked his mat of blond hair.

“Want another?” He pointed at my almost-empty leather mug.

The question, posed with such caution and seriousness, coaxed a smile from me. I waved my arm at the barkeep at the front of the room, who had been leaning against the coarse, filthy counter and seemingly enjoying raucous conversation with the men at the bar. “Two more!”

In a better locale, it would be best to specify what you wanted. But I was convinced that here, the only liquids present were ale and dirty dishwater, and given the opportunity to, I doubted I could tell the two apart.

“Never mind about the… thing.” I waved my hand.

“The… thing?” Aleric repeated, mimicking the way I had paused.

“The… tunic… thing.” In the end I felt silly having tried to lecture Aleric in such an airy tone. After all, I mused, looking down while trying to make it clear I wasn't examining my chest, how well does studded red leather armor go with a lavender blouse? I wouldn't have even bothered with armor if Aleric hadn't insisted upon it, and I wasn't strong enough, nor did I feel the need to wear half plate armor. What was the point, I wondered, glancing at Aleric's armor leaning neatly against the wall next to us, in wearing metal armor if you only wore it on parts of you?

“Hey. Hey.” The gruff, stout barkeep was standing beside me, trying to get my attention in a voice that seemed as if someone had rubbed the inside of his throat raw with a scouring pad. He held up two full mugs. “Want these?”

I examined the man—his greasy hands, greasy apron, greasy black beard—and almost reconsidered accepting the drinks. “Yeah.” I simply said.

“Hrmph,” came the reply. The drinks clattered to the table, a sickly head of yellow foam oozing over the sides of the mugs. “Got somethin' on your face,” he grumbled as if genuinely concerned and waddled back to his post.

“That is my face, creep!” I pouted over my second ale. “Stuff tastes like elf shit,” I muttered.

Aleric raised an eyebrow and leaned over the table and his mug. “'Elf shit?'”

I rubbed the blemish on my face, where I'd rubbed it many times as a girl, hoping to scrub it off like a stain or spot of dirt. “Jerk couldn't tell a horse's ass from a hole in the ground.”

Aleric laughed patronizingly as if to an impatient little girl asking for a cookie. “Come on, let's go somewhere.”

“We are somewhere.”

Aleric rose and picked up his sword from where it leaned against a support next to the window. “Somewhere better.”

I dropped a silver coin into my unfinished drink and followed him out into the light.