Chapter 9: 11. Chatting About the Weather

Rorri

 

A week later, Rorri sat alone in the kitchen, staring intently at the deep gash in the kitchen table, fighting the early sleep smothering his eyes. Always the tired sort, he found himself craving the little white flower’s wind, though he’d only tried it twice. He didn’t want to bother his human housemate too much. They’d only just become acquainted, after all.

“Where does he get it?” he mused to the kitchen air, rubbing his eyes.

“Get what?”

Rorri started, nearly falling from his chair.

“You scared the shit out of me,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Why are you so quiet?”

Adar shrugged. “Just the way I am. Peanut?”

“Yeah, sure,” Rorri said, plucking one out of Adar’s outstretched palm. They each listened to the other’s chewing in otherwise perfect silence. Rorri stared blankly at the wall, his eyelids half-shut.

“…So?” Adar finally prodded.

“Hm?”

Adar blinked. “So where does who get what?”

“Oh. Right.” Rorri stifled a yawn. “I was wondering where Bilge gets Snow.”

“Ah.” Adar leaned back in his chair and cracked open another peanut, passing it to Rorri, before cracking one for himself. “You’ve taken quite a liking to that stuff, huh?”

“Yes, well… It’s nice not being tired all the time,” Rorri said with a wistful sigh. “So do you know where he gets it?”

Adar shrugged. “Probably some shady person in some shady alley in some shady part of town.”

Rorri nodded his head slowly. “So it is illegal, then?” Adar glanced at Rorri, his gaze lingering, then looked down, fiddling with an empty shell.

“Do they have laws in Belethlian?” he asked, failing to mimic a casual tone.

“Not exactly. Some things are forbidden,” Rorri said, scratching his head. “But I was told about society before I came here—”

“And who told you about society?” Adar interrupted.

Rorri sighed heavily. “We’re not savages, you know,” he said, spitting out a shell fragment. It hit the edge of the table and fell to the floor with a soft tap. “And I don’t like the way you keep probing me about it.”

“Sorry,” Adar murmured in earnest. “I’ve just never met a forest elf before.” He meekly offered up the last peanut, which Rorri stared at, hesitant to take, but his stomach won out over his pride.

“So…” Rorri said with his head lowered, turning the peanut over slowly. “What do they say about us, anyway?”

“They?”

“You know, like… people,” he mumbled, gesturing vaguely.

Adar hummed. “Well… ‘They’ don’t say much, honestly. There’s this idea of warm-colored elves that live in trees and don’t have houses or technology, probably sitting around a fire pit, singing and banging on drums and, I don’t know, eating squirrels and things like that…”

Rorri gave him a long, hard, incredulous look, of which Adar appeared unaware.

“All I remember from my Cultures class is that forest elves are tribal nomads, and something about how you can read minds. You… like, as in, ‘your people’—”

“Yes, I get it,” Rorri said, holding his hand out to stop him.

“Right,” Adar said, heeding Rorri’s plea for silence, but not for long enough.

“I also heard that the Duén torched Belethlian.”

Rorri froze with the last peanut on his tongue, his face darkened by a distant memory’s shadow. He chewed through the peanut slowly, though it had lost its flavor. Adar tilted his head, watching the forest elf closely.

“So… is it true?” Adar asked. Rorri squeezed his eyes shut, fist trembling in his lap. “That your people can read minds, I mean.”

Rorri glanced at him, then slowly spilled his handful of cracked peanut shells onto the table. “You’re the worst,” he grumbled, watching the shells knock into each other.

“Sorry,” Adar said, lowering his eyes.

Rorri inhaled sharply. “But,” he said, “to answer your question, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“…Right.”

Rorri shrugged and quietly paced to the window, folding his arms on the windowsill to rest his chin. Arbiter’s Way ran perpendicular to the Portal – the huge, circular road that covered the length of Iridan’s inner perimeter, flush with the Wall – and its traffic was audible from inside the house, even with the windows and door shut.

“So…” Rorri turned to Adar.

“Hm?”

He paused, watching Adar stack peanut shells on the table. “So do you know any shady alleys?”

“Several,” Adar said.

“Any occupied by shady people?”

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“Probably,” he said as the stack toppled. He tried again, deeply invested. Rorri withheld a sigh, not wanting to seem impatient.

“Any who might be selling shady substances?”

“They’ve got a whole cant that I don’t understand or care for,” Adar said. “Just ask Bilge when he gets home. It’s never been my thing.”

“Fair enough,” Rorri said. “Are you going anywhere today?”

“I don’t have any plans.” Adar hesitated to place another piece of the peanut tower.

“Could you wake me when Bilge gets home, then?”

“No promises,” Adar said as the tower crumbled again, unable to bear the weight of the eleventh shell. “Why do you have a box of dirt in your room, by the way?”

“Oh,” Rorri yawned, already shuffling to his room. “It’s for making paints.”

“Huh. Neat.”

Rorri disappeared across the hall, shut his bedroom door, and flopped onto the thin straw mattress he’d purchased with his earnings from his first ‘job’. He had to cover his head to smother the noise from the street, but sleep still refused him. Perhaps it was for the best. At least he’d be awake when Bilge returned.

 

*******

 

Bilge sat opposite to Rorri at the Brewery, legs sprawled and taking up the entire seat. They each had a beer; Rorri’s was half-full, while Bilge’s was empty except for the warm swill at the bottom of the glass. Still, he held it up and swirled it around as if perpetually preparing to take a sip.

“I don’t understand why you can’t just introduce me to your ‘guy’,” Rorri scowled.

“Look, kid, I won’t be ‘round forevah, ay?” He belched loudly and leaned back. “Ya gots to learn how to make yer own way, else ye’ll be cursin’ my grave fer not teachin’ ya. Start from the top, then, ay?”

Rorri sighed and rubbed his eyes. He would have left the pub already, but he really wanted some Snow, and – though he hated to admit it – Bilge was right. He needed to make his own way.

“Okay,” Rorri mumbled. He cleared his throat and switched to Human, his tongue tiptoeing around each word as if any one of them could be set behind a tripwire.

“Uh… wot eez se wezzher… tumarroh?”

“Nice, nice,” Bilge said. “Clear skies, mate, that’s what I’m told.”

Rorri’s eyes drifted as he calculated the meaning of each sound. ‘Clear skies’ represented an abundance… but the rest was still foreign, all the more incomprehensible by the symbolism of the scoundrel’s cant. It didn’t help that Bilge insisted on changing up his dialogue ‘for the sake of realism’.

“Ehm…” Rorri exhaled sharply. “Whuen… eez…et... to snoh?” Bilge feigned as if he were just clearing his throat, but Rorri knew he was snickering. He glared at the human, clenching his fist until a knuckle popped.

“Easy there,” Bilge said in Elvish with a mocking grin, then switched back to Human. “Heard they got a few inches in the mountains, already.”

Rorri closed his eyes, focusing on the words that stuck out. “Ow mahnee inchehz?” he replied with a pinch of confidence. Bilge nodded, an almost-prideful glint in his eye.

“I’d reckon about two,” he said. “Maybe five in the foothills.”

“...Shit,” Rorri grumbled in Elvish. “I know the numbers are two and five…” He combed his fingers through his hair and dropped his head.

Bilge sighed. “When y’ask how many inches, yer askin’ how many buds he’s got on hand, yeah?”

Rorri looked up wearily and grunted.

“So,” Bilge continued, “ya got the high shelf an’ the bottom shelf, mountains ‘n foothills. Two buds a’ the good shite, five a’ the cheap. Then, y’gotta find out how much it’ll cost ya.”

“Okay…” Rorri sank back into his seat. “Erm… wot… tai-em? Se snoh… falls?”

“Six o’clock today, two o’clock tomorrow.”

“Six…” Rorri tapped the table in time with his foot’s bounce, then switched to Elvish. “So, it’s six pennies for the good stuff, then?”

“Haha!” Bilge slammed his glass down. “If only, mate…”

Rorri cursed loudly, burying his face in his hands. Every correction gutted him. The shame stuck like burs in his clothes, constantly pricking and stinging. How much time would he waste floundering with those silly words, only to fail and be ridiculed?

Rorri flinched as Bilge seized his hand, halting its incessant tapping. He glanced up to meet the human’s intense stare, an unsettling pall having darkened his face.

“It’s an expensive habit, kid,” Bilge said in a hushed voice, raising the fine hairs on Rorri’s neck. “In more ways than one, ay? D’ya understand wot I’m tellin’ ya?”

Bilge’s gaze did not waver as he relaxed his grip and leaned back. A cold silence passed. Rorri wasn’t naive enough to think the Snow came without consequence – he’d already experienced some of those on the chamber pot – but he was so tired of being tired. Without it, he only ruminated on the things he wanted to do, but he never did anything, as if his body were a stubborn child, disobeying his mind. The Snow provided his first and only respite from his sleepy prison… and for that, he’d pay any price.

“Yes,” Rorri finally conceded, breaking eye contact. “I think so, yes.”

“Good!” Bilge bellowed and slapped the table, clattering their glasses. “Right then, wot say we give this a rest an’ go practice yer lockpickin’, ay?”

Rorri sighed, but Bilge was already marching to the door with a noticeable sway in his step. He had no choice but to follow. He certainly couldn’t stay at the Brewery alone, the only elf in the whole taproom.

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