Erryc was easily the most handsome orc on this side of the Chasm. Fawn knew this as fact, as she traveled several times a season up the mountain to the orc camp, where they herded their yakgoats, selling the spare rabbits and foxes she’d hunted. She always stopped at the Hammered N’Aled Tavern on her way back down the mountain trail, and was always reminded of how true her assertion was.
Like many of the orcs, he had shaved one of the sides of his head for a smattering of blue woad tattoos, a number of fine metal piercings decorated his long, pointed ears, and his complexion was a hearty sage green. His shoulders were broader than most doorways and he of course, had arms and legs thicker than some tree trunks.
But Erryc was the only orc whose smile could stop a village. One of his tusks was chipped, giving it a little bit of an unevenness, but who would notice that, or even think it was an imperfection when his smile crinkled his eyes.
But he never accepted anyone’s interest.
He would never outright say no, especially not to a customer, or a neighbor, or a stranger. Erryc was well practiced in the art of the side-step, the redirect, and the non-committal answer. Over the years, she had seen him gently refuse the affections of hundreds. She’d contented herself to merely looking on from her view in the corner.
And what a view it was. Just looking at the slope of his shoulders, his well muscled back, the way his loose shirt hung off of him and then tucked into the back of his pants, Fawn once again found herself biting her lower lip too hard.
Erryc was mercifully unaware of her oggling. Rather, whenever he caught her eye on him, he always raised a browat her and asked if she needed another drink. He was used to people looking at him, trying to get his attention at the bar.
Somehow he’d become callused against the same sharp edge of emotions that pierced her whenever she met someone’s gaze by accident. Fawn didn’t think she’d ever get used to it, but that was why she preferred the corner table, as it was shielded from the rest of the rowdy patronage and any eyes that might snag on her. If someone did notice her, they might be compelled to smile, ask her a question or two.
One such patron caught her eye, handsome young elf. Fawn’s heartbeat pricked in alarm.
“I’m just passing through. Is the local hunting any good?” he asked her with a gesture to her bow strung over the back of her chair, a charming smile at the ready to draw her out of the corner.
Fawn answered in depth about the wild rabbits in the foothills, but it came out so softly, he couldn’t hear her.
When his brow furrowed and lifted, she pinkened, and answered louder, yet still only barely audibly.
The conversation, or lack of one, almost always fell into the pattern of trying to answer loud enough to be heard, and shaking heads prompting her to try again, an endeavor that only ever made her shrink back in embarrassment.
“Fawn! Over here,” Erryc called, and waved the damp dishrag as if it were a flag, signaling her to cross the treacherous terrain of customers. Something more than butterfly wings twitched in Fawn’s stomach when his eyes met hers across the room, and Erryc’s smile widened just a bit more for her.
Fawn gave an apologetic look to the man, paired with a shrug as she quickly abandoned their silent awkwardness. She would not have left her preferred corner for just anyone.
She crossed to the bar, ready to pull up a stool, when Erryc shook his head and gestured to the back storage room. “Come around to the back, I need your help.”
“Did something get stuck under the shelf again?” she asked, rounding the end of the bar.
It did make her feel the tiniest bit special that of all the people in the bar with hands smaller than his, she was the only one (that she knew of) who he’d asked to reach under the dusty shelf. Perhaps because she was already dusty with all the bits of feathers and splinters from her fletching.
Erryc paused and raised a brow at her.
“The shelf,” she repeated, adding in a little hand gesture to mime slipping her hand in the narrow crevice.
“Oh, um, well, it’s a little more complicated,” he said, ushering her into the storeroom.
It was half the size of the tavern’s main room, and yet three times as cramped. Every available space had gone to stacking casks of mead, crates of fruits and vegetables laid on the shelves, the stove in the back that always had something simmering on it. There wasn’t even counter space, just a couple of cutting boards balanced on top of a few barrels.
When Erryc ducked inside and closed the door, the space became only all the more cramped. Fawn shuffled further in, leaning back against one of the shelves. There was barely room to breathe between them.
“I’m in a bit of a pickle,” he sighed, turning around to face her. “I know I just asked you for a favor last week, but I don’t know what else to do.”
He ran one of those massive, oft-compared hands through his hair, ruffling the dark waves that flopped back over his forehead, framing his soft brown eyes.
Fawn stared a moment, entranced purely by the effect. She blinked and stumbled to answer, “What’s the pickle? Bread and butter, or…”
“Bread,” he said with a short, tired laugh. His eyes moved to the door. Even though the door was heavy and the main room always filled with chatter, he dropped his voice to the same level as hers. “One of my vendors, the village baker–”
“Oona?”
“Oona. She’s been hinting for a while that she wants to set me up with her daughter,” he sighed again, putting his hands on his hips. “She’s been getting more insistent lately, too. Every time she comes in she starts lamenting about her neighbor’s new baby. She wants her own grandchildren.”
Fawn didn’t spend nearly the same amount of time talking to people and getting involved in their lives as Erryc did, but she wasn’t sure she saw the issue. Half the problems he found himself tangled in seemed like something better just left alone, with all parties involved a little disgruntled but willing to move past it eventually.
