“Hi Ho! Hi Ho! Off to work I go!

It’s the only words of the song I know!

But I’m having fun, sooooo!

Hi! Ho! Hi! Ho! Hi! H…”

“What the hell are you caterwauling about you damn fool man?!” A woman’s sharp voice echoed over the clanging of the hammer and the unorthodox singing Drun was doing, startling him so bad that he spun and flung his hammer across the room at whoever was yelling at him. With a loud “BLANG!”, the hammer stuck the wall a few feet away from a stocky female dwarf and fell to the ground to clatter several times on the stone floor.

“You. Did. Not. Just. Throw. That. At. Me.” With a look that made his heart tighten and want to hide, the woman slowly stomped across the floor. Storming to a stop a few feet in front of him, the female dwarf – Drun assumed she was female because she had a curve for large boobs under her tunic, but he wasn’t one hundred percent positive as she had a beard almost as long as his – reached over, grabbed his beard in her right hand, and tugged him forward until he thought he might topple completely over. Leaning up, she planted a deep passionate kiss on him before letting go. Dazed and befuddled – it was the first time he’d ever kissed anyone like that in his entire life – Drun staggered a step back and then sat firmly on his ass.

“Stupid man.” Sighing, the woman reached down and grabbed him by each shoulder and then pulled him back up to his feet. “What’s wrong with you today? Act like you’ve never kissed your wife before. Or ever tossed a hammer at my head either! HA!” Barking a loud laugh, she looked around and shook her head at the mess the smithy was in.

“I was wondering why the sign said closed when I got her.” Sighing, she walked over and slid a pair of the thick fire-resistant mittens on her hands. “Looks like you have so confounded idea for something new again. Am I right?” Picking up a twisted and mangled piece of metal, she sniffed at it lightly, wrinkled her nose, and then tossed it into a huge cauldron sitting under the workbench. “I can smell the passion, but see the suck in that one. Didn’t do right at all, did it?” Walking over, she picked up another of the failed pieces of metal that Drun had tried to create something with and wrinkled her nose at it again.

“Damn man. When you ever going to learn to pick up after yourself. Think just ‘cause you got a little talent, you can make all the damn mess you want, and then leave it to me and the kids to pick up?” Turning, she shook the twisted and warped metal slab in her hands at him. “Me and the kids aren’t gonna take it, and you know that!”

“Married?” Drun blinked stupidly and looked around left and right to see if someone was recording the scene as some sort of prank. “Kids?”

“Drunella and Cedrine, you foolish old fart!” Tossing the twisted metal into the same huge cauldron, the dwarf woman put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot at him. “And don’t you even pretend not to know who they are! Cedrine has enough to put up with, with all the other fool folks looking at her funny for having magic – don’t you dare try and do it too!”

“I… I wouldn’t!” Startled, Drun blinked a few times and then shook his head vehemently in denial, swaying his long beard back and forth across the top of his chest. “I wouldn’t make fun of anyone – whether they have magic or not!”

“Well good. You better not forget that!” Mumbling to herself, the dwarf woman – his wife?? – slowly walked around and continued to pick up the discarded failures that Drun had tossed so carelessly aside in trying to figure out the proper steps to making something.

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From what Drun had learned with his own experimentation before his wife… The odd woman claiming to be his wife – he still had trouble trying to accept that it wasn’t an odd prank of some sort… What he’d learned before SHE had come in, was that he had an incredible skill in smithing. Try as he might, he couldn’t actually get a ‘full failure’ to happen for him. Sure, he’d failed at all sorts of things, but he’d always managed to salvage something back from the attempt, and that usually turned into the twisted, worthless, lumps of junk metal that SHE was collecting and tossing into a series of different pots stored under the worktable.

“Why’s it so blasted damn hot in here?” Grumbling something about stupid men trying to melt something off the something, the dwarf woman stopped cleaning up long enough to take the mittens back off, toss them on the ground, and then pull her tunic over her head and throw it unceremoniously onto to workbench. Chest bare, with her beard braided neatly between the large mounds of her exposed breasts, she picked the mittens back up and started back to work on her cleaning.

“Don’t just stand there and ogle me like it’s our honeymoon!” Shaking a fist at Drun, she motioned around the room. “Help me clean this mess up so we can get back and put supper on the table! The young ‘uns will be home soon from the academy!”

“Uh…” Blushing, Drun turned his back and scurried over to pick up the nearest piece of junk behind her.

Wife? Kids? Breasts? Drun didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on, but glancing over his shoulder at the muscular woman with the large breasts bouncing free, it put a large grin on his face! No wonder ‘Winter’s Tale’ was rated for adults only – you could start off and see boobs right from the very beginning!

Whistling lightly to himself the whole time, Drun puttered about trying to steal glances whenever the woman – He didn’t even know her name yet! – wasn’t looking. It was odd seeing a woman with a braided beard hanging down her chest, but watching it sway from side to side was almost mesmerizing in its own way.

So what if she was a little different and had a beard? Shrugging slightly, Drun laughed and then walked over, wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her tightly up against him. Laughing, the woman wrapped her arms tight around him in return, and then leaned forward and kissed him passionately. When she finally released the kiss, she suddenly stomped down hard on his foot, making Drun hop a few steps back and fall on his ass again.

“Quit that!” She demanded, placing her hands wide on her hips and giving Drun a perfect view of her front. “I done told you we got to get back for supper and the kids! They’ll be time enough for that tonight, you horny old dwarf,” she promised, giving a wink and a half wiggle before she went back to her cleaning.

“Tonight?” Looking at his game timer, Drun almost felt like crying. He’d been in the game so long, trying to sort out the proper order how to make things out of steel, that it was almost time for him to log out. He didn’t know what might happen in game, but he wasn’t going to be around to get to experience it.

“Log out, Winter’s Tale,” he mumbled regretfully. “Power off, sleep mode.”