| |
Facing outward from the bakery, the business to my right was a XrkXrk candle and lantern shop. The beetle people of XrkXrk lived in tunnels and cave systems on their home planet and were renowned for their exquisitely crafted lighting systems. The beetleman owner, Grakby, had been polite, if a little quiet, when I’d met him earlier today.
I hadn’t met my neighbours on the other side yet, but when my stomach rumbled insistently again, I realized I was about to. The shop to the left of my bakery was a pub, and a quick meal there sounded like just the ticket. I didn’t have the energy to cook or to go find somewhere else to eat right now, so the pub next door would be a perfect option for tonight. There was so much choice (and therefore competition) on Elora Station that every eatery was pretty much guaranteed to be good, otherwise, it wouldn’t survive. So I knew the meal would be decent.
I raised my personal data tablet and tapped it on the small lock screen built into the wall outside my bakery. Immediately, a shimmering forcefield rippled into existence, blocking off my store from the main station walkway. I nodded, satisfied that everything would remain secure while I was gone, then hustled over to the pub next door.
I stopped outside the pub, the late-night shoppers winding around me as I stared. I hadn’t had a good look at this place, yet. I hadn’t even gotten to visit my unit before I’d signed the lease agreement for my bakery. Units on Elora Station were snapped up too quickly for me to make the trek from Terratribe 1 to view it, so I’d signed the lease site unseen. The only thing I’d asked was about what kind of businesses were beside me so that I wasn’t leasing a bakery beside an already established competing sweets shop. So, I already knew about the XrkXrk lighting store on the one side and the pub on the other. But seeing the pub in person, up close for the first time, was a whole different story.
It was a whole different story and all I was seeing was the door.
There were no windows, no open space to allow glimpses into the pub from the outside. All you could see was a gigantic, ornate, perfectly circular door. It shone so pure and black I thought it was made of some kind of metal or smooth stone, only noticing upon closer inspection the subtle whorls that told me the door was actually made of dense, highly polished wood. Intricate images were carved into the door, rimming it like a wreath – little depictions of flowers and fearsome swords, berries and battleaxes. The unique combination of beautiful nature imagery and weaponry, combined with the unmistakable runic writing above the door, told me this had to be an orc-run pub. I wrinkled my nose in concentration, staring upward at the name of the establishment. Back at the shuttle factory in New Toronto, we’d had several suppliers sending us parts from Orc-Orok. I’d read enough supply lists and shipping notices in Orc-Orokish to have a rudimentary understanding of their alphabet and some vocabulary. I wasn’t sure what the name of the pub would translate to in Terratribe Standard, though. I spoke the name out loud, hoping my inner ear translator would be able to muddle through my terrible accent.
The translation echoed inside my head.
The Middle’s Guardian.
What the hell did that mean?
Either my accent truly was so bad that my translator couldn’t adequately translate the audio it had picked up, or it was a classic Orc-Orokish riddle. Orc-Orokish was a language known for its metaphors, imagery, and wordplay. Even advanced translators often failed to capture the actual meaning of Orc-Orokish phrases, instead translating the words literally, which is what I suspected had probably happened just now.
I’m too hungry to worry about this now. I’d never figure out the damn name of this place if I fainted in the middle of the station. Food first. Then riddles.
I grasped the golden doorknob at the right side of the circle door and tugged hard, assuming the huge door would be heavy and hard to budge. But it wasn’t, and I almost fell flat on my ass. Holding tight to the doorknob saved me. I regained my footing, breathing out harshly and tucking a kinky curl that had sprung loose from the bun on the top of my head back into its place.
I was almost immediately toppled again, though, by two different things.
The sounds.
And the smells.
I noticed the sounds first. Hearty guffaws, cheerful conversation, the clinking of glasses, and deep, resonating, yet somehow jovial music. The music reminded me of Old-Earth bagpipe music, but the sound was much deeper. It reverberated chaotically through the air, weaving a toe-tapping melody with its powerfully bellowed notes.
The music rumbled in my ribcage, making my breath catch. That’s when I smelled everything.
My mouth instantly began to water.
I recognized some of the fragrances. As this was a human-run station, with many of the tourists and customers being human, the first fragrances I detected were human in origin – garlic, butter, potatoes. Other scents were foreign, though. The scent of a type of charred meat I couldn’t quite place. Herbs that tracked bitter yet tantalizing ribbons through the air.
I stepped into the pub, letting the huge but light door close behind me. It did so soundlessly. Or maybe I just didn’t hear it over the jaunty din of the pub.
I felt a smile unfurling over my face as I took in the place. We had pubs in New Toronto, but not like this. They were usually grey, grungy little places you’d stop for a quick beer after pulling a 12-hour shift at the shuttle factory. The kind of place that provided only the cheapest alcohol, no atmosphere, and barely anything that passed for decent food.
I could already tell that The Middle’s Guardian was completely different from that.
The inside stretched outward and back from the door I’d come through – much larger than I’d anticipated. Two, no, three times the size of my unit. Probably even larger than that when you considered the kitchen at the back, which I assumed lay beyond the holoscreen door I could see.
To my right were tables and chairs clearly meant for orcs or other aliens of significant size. The tables stood high off the ground, and the red leather-looking armchairs had sturdy wide bases and tall, curving backs. I was already dying to sink into one of them, no matter how goofy I looked hauling my little human ass up there.
To the left were more tables, these ones set into the floor of the restaurant, with delightfully huge and squishy-looking pillows around them for sitting.
OK, screw climbing up an armchair mountain. I want one of those pillow seats.
I realized, rather quickly, that all the low tables with the pillow seats were taken. The clientele, like most of the station, was about 50% human, and they’d taken all the easy-to-get-into floor seats. Most of the tall tables and armchairs were taken by Orc-Orokish aliens – orcs for short – or other aliens of similar stature who sat easily upon the giant red chairs. A particularly rowdy group of orc men nearby broke into the kind of laughter that was so dizzyingly loud I couldn’t help but grin and wonder what was so funny. The warm amber light streaming down between black wooden beams that matched the pub’s door caught on the orcs’ tusks and turned their varying shades of green and grey skin golden. In the corner, beyond those tall tables and chairs, a young orc man created the music that flowed through the pub, his powerful chest heaving as he breathed into the large, barrel-shaped wind instrument he held in bulging arms.
A third seating option mercifully presented itself straight ahead, and I lunged forward, snagging a stool at the bar. I slid up onto the leathery stool easily, its comfy cushion fashioned from the same dark red material as the huge armchairs at the other tables. It wasn’t low to the ground like the cushions, and it wasn’t super high like the chairs. It was just right.
Some bit of ancient Earth lore tickled the back of my brain at that.
Something about golden keys. Goldy keys? Or locks?
Too hungry. Can’t think.
I placed my elbows on the counter, sighing and sagging forward. The countertop was gorgeous. Fashioned from the same black wood as the door and the ceiling’s beams. It reflected the pub’s golden light like a sea-wet gem. I ran a fingertip along its surface appreciatively, marvelling at the almost silken feel of it. There wasn’t a hint of stickiness or grime you might expect to find at a busy restaurant such as this. Whoever owns this place runs a pretty tight ship.
I was liking my neighbouring business more and more.
And I started to love it when an orc waitress plonked down a basket of bread in front of me, along with a gigantic glass of ice water.
“Here you are,” she said, smiling around tusks that looked too big in her dimpled face. Even though I knew she would tower beside me if I were to stand, there was something cute about her that made me think she was probably younger than I was. “Tap your tablet there for the menu,” she said, “and you can place your order as soon as you’re ready. If you need anything, flag me down.”
She careened away from me, snatching up two bottles of what looked like Exdrok liqueur from the shelves facing me behind the bar and carting them off to a table.
The “there” that she’d referred to was a tiny wireless data port, built into the countertop’s surface. It was so small that I’d almost missed it – a pearly white square smaller than my pinky fingernail. I tapped my tablet to it, and the pub’s menu immediately downloaded and opened. After inputting my language of choice – Terratribe Standard – I was able to read it with ease.
As I’d guessed from the combination of familiar and foreign scents wafting through the air, the menu had both human recipes, largely appearing Old-European and Old-British in origin, as well as dishes native to Orc-Orok. There were pies made with Terratribe 2 goat meat and topped with your choice of pastry or mashed potatoes. Daggerfish and tiger-clam chowder with Terratribe 1 seaweed. Winter rabbit stew with sage and dumplings. I smiled at the portion of the menu that listed the Christmas specials, which included human dishes like roasted Terratribe 2 turkey breast with goldenberry dressing and wild rice.
How can I resist a seasonal specialty like that?
Without bothering to look at the rest of the menu, I ordered the roast turkey dish. When I wasn’t starving half-to-death, I’d really take my time looking over the menu and maybe choose one of the orc dishes. But for now, something hearty and filling and familiar would be good.
I chugged some of the water, glad for the ice, not realizing before how warm it was in here. Then, I grabbed a chunk of the bread the young orc lady had left. The bread was Orc-Orokish in origin, but the butter was, thankfully, human-style. Not that I had anything against other species’ condiment choices. Far from it. But bread with Terratribe 2 butter, which this seemed to be, was hard to beat when you were hungry in a strange, new place.
I smeared the butter onto the bread. You could easily tell that the bread was Ork-Orokish because of its distinctive wine-red colour, due to the deep crimson hue of their planet’s native wheat plants. There was a salty, mineral tang to the bread that the butter softened nicely, and I chowed down, positively stuffing my face with the stuff. Even though I wasn’t used to Orc-Orokish bread, I could tell this was good stuff. Probably made in-house. I squinted down the bar, trying to get a glimpse of the kitchen through the shimmering texture of the holoscreen door.
Any chance I had at peeking into the kitchen was destroyed by a gigantic body emerging through the holoscreen door. His bulk took up the entire doorframe, blocking the view beyond. Easily seven feet tall and built like a fucking tank, the orc loomed like a giant green pillar. I stared – I couldn’t help it. The guy was eye-catching. Largely due to the fact that, for some unknown reason, he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that.
“Lost your shirt, have ya then, Archie?” called an inebriated-looking orc at one of the tables before he and his party erupted into booming laughter.
The orc in the doorway grinned, tipping his chin up and straightening his shoulders.
Holy hills of Terra...
This was possibly the finest-looking man, alien or human, I’d ever seen in all my 29 years.
The golden light of the pub dripped lovingly down his rich emerald-tinted skin. His hair was as black as the polished wood in this pub, and just as shiny, looking like it had been oiled with something before he’d tied it into the long, thick, glossy braid that hung like a rope over his muscled shoulder. The end of his braid landed where his abs upon abs began, his muscled torso tapering into a thick yet trim waist that disappeared, thankfully, into what looked like black leather pants.
Between my nearly dying of hunger earlier and the shock at the sight of him, a lack of pants to match his bare torso would have likely sent me right over the edge into babbling delirium. I gulped, realizing that the pants weren’t even helping that much. Their finger-twitchingly soft-looking fabric was stretched to the absolute limit over his thick thighs – thighs that promised to be as muscled as the chest and arms on full display.
I’d never been the type to pray. But I found myself praying in that moment. Praying that someone would drop something on the floor so that mister buff-as-fuck over there would have to bend over to pick it up.
No! Bad Maggie! You are a goddamned professional! You’re supposed to be meeting your new neighbours, not ogling them!
Right.
I took a deep breath, turning my gaze back behind the bar. I had worked too hard, sacrificed too much, to get distracted now. I had a business to build from the ground up – no easy feat. That was my priority. It had to be.
Maybe I need a drink to get my head on straight...
I surveyed the shelf upon shelf of alcohol before me. There were human drinks – large glass bottles of bubbling cider; scotch and whiskey made in the cold, ocean-battered highlands of Terratribe 1; wines made with all manner of fruit from the more temperate Terratribe 2. There were drinks from other alien worlds, too. The Exdrok liqueur I’d seen the waitress grab. Milky white XrkXrk whittlebone brandy. Hadorian moon wine. Fermented Etruvian honey ale so thick it was traditionally consumed with a spoon.
I went with a human meal, so I’ll choose an Orc-Orokish drink.
I scanned the bottles, leaning my elbows further forward on the bar. I gasped, flinching back when a deep, rumbling voice cut through the sounds of the pub and spoke from beside me. I whipped my head to the right, only to find that the giant, randomly shirtless orc was behind the bar, just a pace to the right of where I sat. He sidestepped until he was standing directly before me, the narrow board of the bar top the only thing between us.
I sucked in a breath, dragging my gaze up his carved torso to his face. The bar’s surface hit him right above the waist of his pants, so from here, he looked like he could be naked for all I knew. I tried not to focus on that fact as my gaze found his face. But his face was just as distracting, if not more so.
I’d thought he was super attractive from across the pub. But staring at him like this, seeing his face more clearly, I could tell that he was beautiful. His thick neck led up into a jaw so hard it would have seemed stony if not for the lopsided smile that greeted me there. Straight white teeth glinted between the two larger tusks that pierced upward out of his mouth. The tips of his tusks hit just below the cheeks bunching with his smile. His nose was high-bridged with a slightly crooked bump on one side that made me wonder if it had once been broken. Dark, heavy, yet elegant brows rested over shimmering eyes a few shades deeper green than his skin. Those eyes reminded me of Terratribe 1 moss, the velvety green carpet-like plant that showed up during New Toronto’s very short (and therefore very beloved) summer season.
His gaze narrowed slightly, a brow raising inquisitively, and I realized I’d completely forgotten he’d just spoken to me.
“Sorry!” I chirped awkwardly, sitting up straighter. “What was that?”
“Something to drink?” he asked, his smile widening as he cocked his head, that green gaze trailing over my rapidly heating face.
I cleared my throat, willing my awkwardness and embarrassment to subside. I was a grown-ass woman. A business owner. A professional. I had no reason to feel so freaking self-conscious right now. Even if this guy’s gaze left a path of heat across my cheeks and down my neck.
“Whatever you recommend. Something Orc-Orokish, if you please. I ordered the turkey dish if that helps.”
“Aye. I know what you ordered,” he said with a slight nod. He spun around to face the shelves of alcohol, the movement shockingly smooth and graceful for a brute his size.
My eyes practically bugged out of my head at the glorious expanse of smooth muscle that was his back. I curled my hands into fists on my lap, trying not to rue the fact that I had never touched an orc before and therefore couldn’t use any past experience to try to imagine what his skin would feel like under my fingertips.
The orc grasped a dark brown bottle and turned back to me.
For a brief moment, I thought he was going to raise the bottle to his mouth and pop the bottlecap off with one of his tusks. Bizarrely, I almost wanted him to. Wanted to see what that sharp, long tooth would do to the metal of the bottle’s lid.
But that would be absolutely absurd, considering this was a restaurant with a professional staff.
Instead of using his teeth, he popped the bottle cap off with the tip of his huge thumb, as easily as if he were flipping an Old-Earth coin. The bottle cap exploded into the air, and his free hand shot upward, catching it and making it disappear into his hammer-like fist. He dropped the bottle cap under the bar somewhere, then started pouring what looked to be ale into a glass. Like the bread, it was tinted a very deep red.
“There you are. Have a sip of that,” he said, flashing that lopsided grin my way once more.
Thank goodness he was handing me a drink because that smile had made my throat go suddenly dry and tight.
“Thanks,” I choked out before taking a sip. The orc watched me carefully, the smile belying the intensity of his gaze as he waited for my reaction.
“Good,” I said, nodding, before taking another sip. Like the bread, it had a slight mineral edge to the flavour that was not at all unpleasant.
I expected him to nod in return and walk off, but he didn’t. He grasped a rag from his back pocket and began polishing the counter, the tendons of his forearm jumping, veins running over the muscles that tensed with his practised movements.
“So,” I began after another sip, forcing my gaze up to his face again. “What’s the name of this place? I wasn’t sure if I got it right. The Middle’s Guardian?”
His green eyes locked onto mine as he continued to scrub at the shining bar.
“That’s right,” he said.
“And what exactly does that mean?” I asked, swirling my drink, starting to feel a little less weird. Maybe it was the ale hitting my system and loosening me up, or maybe I was just starting to feel like I was getting my footing back under me. Whatever it was, it made me lean forward slightly, more confident and ready to ask my questions. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. I half-wondered if my translator just didn’t get it right. Or, if the translation was right, I thought maybe it could be something metaphysical. The middle of a certain state of being. Or maybe the middle of the road, the middle of the night, the middle of the end...”
His dark brows rose, as if in appreciation for my philosophical musings.
“Ah, no. Nothing so, as you call it, metaphysical.” He straightened to his full height, slamming the fist that held the rag to the hard ridges of his abs
“The middle! We guard a man’s middle!”
My gaze tracked between his face and the fist that had pounded the spot just above his navel.
He chuckled, letting his hand fall. The sound of his laugh was even deeper than his speaking voice, rumbling down my spine and warming my chest with its smoke. Or maybe that was the ale, warming my chest. It was hard to say. Better have another sip to find out. Then, I’ll have to hear his laugh again, too. Just to compare.
“His stomach,” the orc clarified, eyes twinkling. “We’re guarding it against the sharp fangs of hunger. Though we do more than that. We guard a man’s head, too.”
“From what?” I asked.
“Sobriety.” His grin turned slightly devilish. “Too much sober thought is never good medicine.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And what about a woman’s middle and head? Don’t tell me this is some kind of exclusive boys’ club.” I could tell by the clientele it wasn’t – there were femme-presenting humans, orcs, and other aliens here, as well as people of other non-male identities present, all of them enjoying the food and atmosphere.
“We serve all species, genders, and identities,” the orc continued. His grin had softened slightly, but it still retained some of the wicked glint. “But in my experience, women take such good care of their affairs that they usually do not require such guardians the way men do. Thus, my choice of language.”
I snorted. Smooth talker, this one.
“Is all this flattery meant to get you good tips or something?” I asked, tilting my head slightly and giving him a mock look of suspicion.
“Tipping is not a custom we partake in on Orc-Orok, nor in this pub. We charge exactly what we mean to and require nothing more of our gold-guests.”
Guests who give gold... Customers? My translator had missed the nuance of the phrase, giving me the literal translation of the words. I made a mental note to tap into the translator app on my tablet later to update that and any other new phrases I learned.
“So. The Middle’s Guardian. Are you the owner then? The titular guardian?” It didn’t seem likely that a low-level employee would walk around this place with the grin and swagger this guy did. Especially considering the lack of clothing and the fact that he’d planted himself at my spot at the bar with the kind of confidence that meant no boss was about to come out from the kitchen and shoo him back to his duties.
“I am the hall-father, yes,” he confirmed.
I mentally translated hall-father to owner as he continued speaking.
“But the guardian is the pub itself, along with good food and better ale. I am but a humble loyal-fist.” Humble loyal-fist.... Humble servant?
I wasn’t so sure about the humble part. Every inch of this muscled, towering orc oozed confidence and charisma. His vibe wasn’t smarmy or obnoxious, though. His confidence felt... Earned. The kind of sincerely swaggering assuredness that someone only possessed after years of hard, dedicated work. The comfortable certainty of someone who had found his place in the universe. Or, if he hadn’t found it, he’d carved it out with his bare hands.
The charisma part though, I supposed, was likely something he’d been born with. There was no learning the curve of that blinding smile, made charmingly crooked by his tusks. There was no way to fake the quick wit that underpinned his breezy remarks. No way to practice the genuinely friendly rumble of his smoky voice or to falsely master the intelligent warmth of his moss-green eyes. Those things seemed unabashedly all his own.
“Well, that only leaves one question, then,” I said.
“Which is?”
“What’s your name?”
“Archibald.”
I choked on my next sip, coughing and fixing my watering eyes on him.
“Are you serious?” I wheezed, dragging the back of my hand over my mouth. I’d heard the other customer call him Archie, but I’d assumed that was some kind of joke. What was a giant, gorgeous, Orc-Orokish man doing with an old human name like Archibald?!
“I expected something like... Forwulf or Greymorrow or something,” I said, trying to explain my reaction. Luckily, he didn’t seem offended.
“Well, the Orc-Orokish pronunciation is Eorcanbald. But my grandmother was human, and the name was her father’s. And I’ve always been Archie to my friends.” He placed his elbows down on the bar, leaning closer. I sucked in the smoky, spicy scent of him as he said “So that makes me Archie to you, too, now.”
“Well, good. I’d hope so, considering I’m your new neighbour,” I said, trying to ignore the way my chest hitched at his nearness. I chugged my drink, heat simmering under my skin as those eyes bored into mine. The warmth there belied the probing intensity of his gaze. It drilled into me as if looking for something.
Wanting something.
“I know you’re my new neighbour,” he said, before straightening once more in a smooth movement.
“You do?” I asked, placing my now-empty glass down on the smooth bar. “My name’s Maggie, by the way.”
Archie (holy Terra, that name was going to take some getting used to) had gone back to polishing the bar, muscles leaping in his forearm and bicep as he did so. His eyes flicked to mine once more as he said, “I know that, too.”
I laughed. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
Now it was his turn to chuckle. The scotch-smoked sound of it warmed my chest once more. So it is the laugh. Not the ale.
“Ask Penny. If anyone is ready to list off my intellectual shortcomings, it’s her.”
He jerked his chin somewhere behind me. I swivelled on the stool, expecting to see a human woman, given the name. But I realized he was gesturing towards the young orc waitress weaving nimbly between tables.
“Penny. She’s ...” I began, turning forward once again. She’d seemed a little young to be a girlfriend or wife, but I certainly wasn’t an expert at judging orc ages or lifespans.
“My sister,” Archie said, a little too quickly, tucking the rag into his back pocket once more.
I bit down on my lips to keep from smiling in bizarre, stupid relief at the fact that the cute young waitress orc wasn’t a romantic attachment.
Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a wife somewhere, or a husband, or a... Someone else, I told myself sternly. There is no reason for you to be this giddy about some orc you just met. Focus!
Penny called over, then, as if Archie mentioning her had caught her attention, even though the music and din of the pub certainly would have drowned out our conversation.
“Are you going to stay planted in front of that beautiful gold-guest all night, Archie? Or are you going to dig deep down, call on some of your limb-hardness, and tear yourself away long enough to help your poor, beleaguered sister?”
I burst into laughter as Archie grinned, giving me a look that could only be described as expressing something akin to busted.
“I’ve not yet decided,” he said, crossing his arms leisurely. “For she is certainly more beautiful than you are beleaguered. Good conversation over here, too. I’m not sure your piteous claims are enough to tempt me away.”
I rolled my eyes. “Go help her, you ridiculous man,” I said, still laughing. “I’m going to have to leave an extra tip for Penny now, customary or not, just for her putting up with you as a co-worker tonight.” Even though I’d just met him, it felt like I could say something like that and get away with it. Archie’s warmth and flirtations invited a friendly intimacy.
“Alright, I will,” he said, the light catching on the tips of his tusks as he gave me another of his stomach-melting smiles. “But not before I’ve gotten you another drink.”
He popped the lid off another bottle of ale and filled my glass once more.
“This one’s on the house,” he said. He placed the glass before me. “Welcome to Elora Station.”