1
Fawn
“It won’t fit.”
“It will.”
“N-no, it’s too big,” the young woman gasped.
“Just try. You’ve got this,” the orc murmured, the words impossibly gentle through his tusks. “There. That’s my girl.”
Fawn’s face flushed possibly the deepest shade of red it had ever been. He called herhis girl. It sent a flush of warmth down her belly, making her all too aware of her body beneath her clothes.
“That’s right, just like that,” Erryc coaxed, his hand closing over the top of hers, and through their combined efforts, the misshapen cork finally squeezed into the mouth of the bottle.
Fawn breathed a sigh of relief. That had been an ordeal.
Erryc held the bottle overhead, signaling to the others in the Hammered N’Aled Tavern that the deed was done. A few good-humored patrons cheered on the triumph, others ignored it.
“Until you have to open that vintage again,” one at the table toasted him, raising his tankard of mead.
Erryc crossed over to their table, immediately drawn in by chatter and laughter. That was who he was, always starting another conversation with someone he just met. Not a moment later he clapped one of the patrons at the table on the back, laughing heartily, “My good man! You devil, you.”
Fawn, on the other hand, sank back into her seat at the corner table. Perhaps she’d been too excited over being called his girl, if it was a title so easily bestowed. She’d liked to havebelieved she was special to him, but he was just that way with everyone.
He was a sweetheart. Just not hers.
Even that little interaction had made her warm and a painfully obvious pink all over. It wasn’t a cute, cheeks-kissed-by-the-sun sort of pink. It was everywhere. Her forehead, her nose, her chin and upper lip all turned a concerning red that had multiple times prompted people to ask after her health.
With one hand, she gathered all her long brown hair up off the back of her neck in the hopes that it would cool her down faster, let some of her blush recede. It did nothing to settle the rousings between her thighs, though.
Most days like this, she would set up in the corner with a stein of mead, a lit pipe of dried ditchweed, and her bag of feathers and sticks as she watched the rest of the room, making new arrows to fill her quiver.
And many days like today, whenever Erryc decided she’d sat alone and unbothered for too long, he’d rustle up some odd task he needed her help with, like sticking an unusually sized cork back in a narrow bottleneck. He truly found the oddest of jobs.
Erryc had this way about him, that meant you couldn’t help but feel he was doing you the favor by askingyoufor assistance. Just last week, he had tasked Fawn to get a few silver coins to one of the tavern maids.
“She broke some plates last week and insists on paying for them, but I know she’s got kids at home and I budget expecting broken plates every month. She won’t take the money back, not from me,” he had lamented after everyone had gone home for the night, wiping down the bar.
“Say no more,” Fawn had replied, and he grinned in response, handing her the money.
The rush of sensation that filled her had been like nothing else Fawn had ever felt before. It couldn’t just be that his voice was deep and rumbly and warm when he said, “You’re amazing.”
Fawn wondered if he had known she would get along so well with the tavern maid, that they’d both had relatives in the city on the other side of the Chasm.
On many maps this area was marked as territory belonging to a nomadic camp of orcs following their herd of yakgoats around the split mountainsides. Those who preferred more permanent living quarters often moved to the village in the foothills. Everyone who lived near the Chasm had to travel the single road through the split mountain pass, and almost everyone who did stopped in at the Hammered N’Aled Tavern for a drink and a hot meal, sometimes to re-shoe a horse at the old anvil out back.
Her eye drew back to Erryc, finding with him a beautiful woman leaning over the bar, her bosom nearly tipping out of her dress, her cheek rosy as her lips and her long, long eyelashes batting.
The troupe of actors were only passing through, on their way to the next city over for a performance. Already Fawn couldn’t wait for them to leave.
“Wow, your hands are sooooo much bigger than mine,” the tipsy actress giggled, swinging her legs under the bar, as she snagged his free hand and spread her palm against his, half the size.
“Yeah, it makes cleaning up really easy,” he laughed, tugging his hand out of hers, and scooped up a number of empty tankards off the bar by their handles, as if to demonstrate.
The actress gave a little squeak of delight, even as he crossed down to the other side of the bar to fill another patron’s glass, away from her.
Fawn wasn’t surprised that yet another tavern patron was flirting with him, it was an almost hourly occurrence.
