Finkler was seated at a small table on a terrace together with an old shrunken elf. The sun had long fallen from its crest and in a few hours more, it would sink into the sea. Nonetheless, he would prefer a big umbrella to block out the sun. The old elf would have none of it.

“Come, have some tea and biscuits. The sun is good for you,” the old elf said.

Finkler chuckled.

“Hehehe, you used to like the biscuits so much.”

“I still like them.” Finkler peered through his little oval glasses at the old elf, his wrinkled face and sunken eyes. He was wearing a straw hat and white suits. Although quite diminished from the stature of his younger days, he still possessed a stately outlook. His thin lips revealed a smile that came sincerely from his heart.

In front of them, a small rounded table was covered with foods: two cups of tea steaming hot, a porcelain teapot, some sugar and milk, some biscuits and jam, some bread and butter, some slices of raw fish, chunks of crab meat and bowls of dressings and fish roes and crab roes.

“Are these what you have for tea time here?”

“Yeah, we’re next to the sea, aren’t we?”

Next to the table was a balustrade separating them from a short fall to the brick road below, and looking out over them was the vast open blue sea. They were in one of the most scenic coastal cities there were, the Cairns. The sound of waves rushing in and crashing on the cliff way down below was violent but yet calming. Above them and throughout the bight, sea birds flew around in flocks, chattering among themselves as they glided on the air currents in search of their bounties from the sea. Across the bight, a breeze was blowing gently through carrying foreign smell from the ships and unknown lands. Who knew how far these smells had travelled before they went into the nose of this old elf, faint as they were, the keen experienced nostrils of this old elf could still distinguish some of them.

“How do you like it here?”

“I like it fine. I like it fine. I like the sea and the birds. Sometimes, they shit on you, the fucking bird. But it’s alright. It’s not that they do it on purpose. You got to go, you got to go. But what brings you here. This is the first time you visit me in a century.”

The old elf watched Finkler steadily with his old pair of eyes. They had lost the sparkle that they used to have. He continued,

“What happened you? You look old.” His eyes were half closed due to the weight of his great age, but his gaze was still fierce and sharp as a hawk and evidently paternal.

“I am old.”

“Not that old. I’m not senile. You’re only half my age. Take care of yourself. I didn’t lose a hand for nothing.”

The old elf’s left forearm abruptly terminated halfway between the wrist and the elbow. What was in place was a metal gadget modified from the elves’ Utility Gauntlet. Instead of the armoured fingers and palm, it ended with a three prong claw hand that now extended out of his sleeve. The claws were closed and resembled a gigantic rose bud. Within the bud at the receptacle, there was a flat base with eight little holes arranged in a circle. These holes were connected to a firing mechanism installed within the gauntlet, where the hand should be. It could fire one hundred and twenty bursts of Thorn Tip, a small armour piercing arrow, shaped like a citrus thorn, the tip of which was made of Vithril, a lightweight high-hardness metal alloy formulated by the elves some five hundred years ago as an alternative to the Mithril alloy.

Finkler could only smile. “How odd. A café in the middle of a row of houses.” He said it even though the food in front of them was brought over from the café quite some time ago.

“They’re called huts. They’re not built like a house. They’re simpler in style, squarish, cubic mostly. And once you bought them, you can do whatever fucking thing you want with them. That one was converted to café. We all need to eat, don’t we. There are many huts now that have been converted to other shops and many businesses are operating out of these huts all over the cliff. It’s cheaper to run a business here.”

These huts were actually built on the cliff. First, a terrace was built by cutting into the cliff. Then a row of huts was then built on it and where it was possible, a few more huts were built on top of the ones on the terrace in a series of cascade with little hidden paths leading up to them. Then, the building process was repeated all the way down creating an impression of an immensely wide staircase with irregular steps. From afar, it looked as if these huts were stacking among themselves. Brick roads were then added to link discontinuous clusters of huts and also the main ones that led to the city at the top. When the huts were first built, it was to address the problem of housing shortages. As it went on, these huts became the most iconic structures of the coast.

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“Interesting. How long have you been staying in this small hut?”

“Oh, quite some time now. Ever since I came back, I’ve been here. I like it here. More than I like the top. Too packed. Too many rascals.” The old elf looked around. He looked at his hut in front of which they were seated. It was actually a two-storey with a nice balcony at the front of the first floor. The others were a mixture of single storey, double storeys or triple storeys even, depending on the permissibility of the cliff wall. The huts were mostly the same with minor variations in constructions and all of them throughout the cliff were painted white as required by Laws of the City of Cairns. He continued,

“It’s nice here. I used all your money to buy this and a few more upstairs and another a few more at the top. So, come and visit more often. They’re yours anyway. And don’t send those black bugs. I hate them.”

“It’s for your safety.”

“I know, I know. You have a lot of enemies. And that bag of fire too. Don’t I? If they were all here, they could form a queue from here all the way to the top. But, don’t worry too much. I’m getting there on my own. I could feel it. I’m already seven hundreds and counting. I’m so old that I don’t even know how old I am. Elf isn’t supposed to live this long. I guess the Health Potion that you sent really works. Not even an ache or a creaking joint. Speaking of that bag of fire, how is he?”

Finkler just smiled. “He’s fine. Still the same.”

“Hehe, he’s a character.”

Looking out, Finkler saw a myriad of ships dotted the sea. They were sailing in from afar and also from the coasts. The furthest ones sailed from the Land-Beyond-The-Sea to berth at her harbour. The Cairns was an open port, which meant that any ship from any origin could make berth at her docks, as long as they paid the docking fee, and they could store their goods in the warehouses by paying the storage fees, and they could sell their goods, here on the spot provided they paid the sales taxes and duties. There was a whole list of fees, duties, taxes and charges for each of the services rendered, properly printed and handed-out, and they had the best rates in the whole coast. The harbourmaster and his crew were very accommodating and business friendly and could be exceedingly friendlier when a few gold coins went their way. Thus, even pirates docked at the Cairns now, in a less conspicuous area of course and sold their plunders in the open market. All these businesses made her one of the largest and richest cities in a string of cities along the southern coast of the Great Plains.

“Business is good.”

“Yeah,” the old elf replied while sipping his tea. “The new administration is a bunch crooks, leechens, vampires and money-grabbers. Liberating the ports, my ass. You know who did I see just the other day. I saw Grunthall. Can you imagine? A hardcore pirate like Grunthall, here, among the law abiding citizens.” He winked. “In another fifty years, the Cairns will be full of thugs and pirates.”

“Isn’t everywhere else?”

“You got a fucking point. The business now is all guns and powders. The dwarves are making a killing these last few years. And so are the orcs. They, meaning the orcs, are making good powders nowadays. They called it Smokey. Ironically, they have far less smoke than the Blaster.”

“Are they any good?”

“They said that they don’t explode that well. But it’s cheap. Far cheaper than Blaster. The dwarves had to lower its price in order to compete. And they are coming out with TrailBlaster III just to get back at the old price. New formula, they said. A load of crap. I think it’s just packaging.” The old elf took another sip. “Drink your tea. It’s getting cold.”

Finkler obligingly took up his cup and drank half of it. “You sold any steels lately.”

“Steels? Steels like swords and sabres, bows and arrows, pikes and spears. Yeah, some. But they are getting out of fashion. Not a whole damn lot want them now. It’s just way easier to point and shoot. And at today’s rate, you can trade in half a dozen of crappy rusty old blades for a new Trumpet Gun. It comes with a starter pack now. Two dozen shots with powder. And the orcs top that up with fifty shots and powder. Cut-throat business, this is what it is. They are all looking for blood. This is the new war and there’s no blood. And the elves, they are just standing there and watch, as if there are nothing they could do. A bunch of retards.”

“They have their Zithril.”

“Yeah, but they’re so fucking expensive. For one shot of Zit, you can get five from the dwarves and one shot from the dwarves you can get three from the orcs. That’s the going rate. Even in steels, the dwarves’ have displaced the elves’ and the orcs’ are displacing the dwarves’. This is how competitive it has become. The elves can’t keep up with the pace of business. They’re being muscled out.”

“Have they come to see you recently?”

“Yeah, they come, every now and then, they come. Come asking for my health, my advice, the dumb ass. All they ever want is for me to help them to sell some silly old steels that nobody wants. Especially the dwarf-made batch. They couldn’t sell it. There’re still warehouses of them left.”

Finkler was familiar the story. Some arms traders told him long ago about the crafty elves who hired the dwarves to make the weapons according to their designs, hauled them back and tried to sell them as their own make. So, it was an elfish price for a dwarfish wage. Without lifting a finger, the elves thought they could make a hefty profit.

“They thought they were so clever. No one bought it. The traders were not stupid. At one look, they knew the craftsmanship was dwarfish. Why would they pay an elfish price for a dwarfish piece of work. Why would they? Fuck the design. If they want dwarves’ weapons, they could just buy dwarves, at a quarter of the price.” The old elf looked away and cast a disgusted look the beautiful sea. He continued,

“It’s already twenty years, and they still couldn’t sell. And they won’t lower the price. Bad investment, they said. They will make a loss, a hole in the book. All the hauling, storage, locked-up funds, maintenance and this and that…. I told them this, if you’re so fucking good in calculating, why didn’t you calculate out that there aren’t any dupes out there. What! You think everybody is a pushover.”