I staggered through the village gate, feet dragging through the mud. Which had swallowed one of my shoes a half league back. I kept walking even though I didn’t know where I was going. Everything that had happened for the past week seemed like it happened to someone else leaving the village being chased out of the human one. Even falling to my face feels like it is happening to an unfeeling puppet. It's actually kinda nice my face in the cool mud.
Until I felt a persistent jabbing in the middle of my back I turned over to shoo away the bird or deal with the person jabbing me. I looked directly into the face of an old orc, his face scrunched up like a wadded shirt or those dumplings they served at Old Moon festival. Shame birds were easier to deal with. I had to focus for a moment to make the words swimming through my head make sense.
“-eggars here nope we have no room for beggars the town is too small you’ll end up starving. You would do better in Sphill it’s across the swamp but you would do better there, no siree.”
With enormous effort I pushed myself to my feet. Do I really look like a beggar? Yes, I answered myself, you totally do.
My voice croaked out like a frog “Not a beggar, apprentice.”
He looked me over with disbelief. “Then you're the sorriest apprentice I have ever seen.”
“I know.” I said back with a great frog impression. “Work?”
He rubbed his bread “Hmm, I don’t know if the leather makers need another apprentice or the spinners or you could try Gruda…”
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“Gruda, who is that?”
He started chuckling a bit under his breath which transformed into a full on belly laugh his wrinkled face turned taut like a fishing line that suddenly caught something. I realized his face was so wrinkled because of smile lines, laugh lines? Is there a difference? He shook his head, mouth inflating like a pig's bladder as he tried to stop laughing, “I’m sorry my boy it's just obvious you have come a long way for work and the only one who needs is Gruda our carpenter who has turned away every apprentice for the last year the stubborn old git.”
I shook my head trying to clear the cobwebs and the mud from my head. “There is no one else that needs work? Not even the smithy?”
At home the smithy had always been busy spinning and repairing various things of different metals. We were too poor to have a smithy dedicated to just one type of metal. He chuckled and placed a hand on his mouth to keep from laughing,
“Look around Boy, only the richest villages in the swamp have a smithy and this isn’t Quirtnir!”
Instead of asking what the heck quirtnic was I wisely looked around. Instead of saplings tied together like home or those weird hay huts the humans had, the buildings here were all on large posts hammered into the muddy swamp ground. The buildings were all circular with weird smooth …tops? Instead of coming to a point like the huts he was familiar with.
“Alright lad we might as well try Gruda would be a shame if you had come all this way only to keep on walking.”
I only heard half of that because I was thinking about toes. Why did we let our hands do all the work when toes should be doing some too the lazy whelps maybe I should lash them to get moving.
We walked over to little hut in the back of the village which was riding a tree. What a great idea why shouldn’t I ride a tree? As the old orc knocked on the door the ground rushed up to meet me like a puppy. I like puppies and darkness.