Private Tales Differences Big And Small

Poke, poke, poke, Ispir was a funny drunk, so Ruka's thoughts went. Thinking it all adorable, she watched as he rubbed his nose and fixed his cap and poked her arm and half-hugged himself. The raki was already warming his belly very well! Good for him! Ruka knew well it took a lot of raki (and a lot of silver!) for her to become fun drunk; ogre-made swill got her drunker faster, and cost less, but had an awful taste.

"Do not fearing! I do go with you; I am wanting to see, but also to keeping you safe if the musicing is not enough. And I can putting you on my shoulders too, if we are needing to."

Ruka's eyes glittered with wonder. She took hold of the near-finished bottle of raki and half-lifted it, saying before she would drink the rest, "Imagining if it is true, if beasts can be soothing with lyre or flute or drum! Maybe it is not true all the time, but even some of the time being...wow! Very amazing! Music can do what muscle cannot! I am very curious to see!"

Ispir Sione

Ruka would have stood at Ispir's prompting, but instead she gasped, and she reflexively wrenched her hands (even as Ispir was holding and tugging at one of them) to her chest, clapping them to the brass torque she wore in a grand gesture of wonder.

"You can playing me out of my socks!?"

A pause, and her smile and genial added in some informative tone, and she answered:

"Oh yes! I am wearing socks!"



Ispir Sione

"Oops!" said Ruka, truly noticing Ispir's plight after mentioning that she was wearing socks. "I was not meaning to do that!"

She stood up. "But you are okay, and that is being good! Let me fixing the mess I have making!"

Ruka squatted down and clutched his sides and with an excess of ease lifted him and set him on his feet once more. "Very good. Come, Ispir! I must going to my home, and fetching my battleaxe, and other things we will be needing for some travel."

The best place to go looking for bears would be to the north, in the forested foothills of the spine. Most of the times bears were a big surprise, showing up when one was not looking for nor wanting to see them; funnily, even if she and Ispir were looking for them, they might not be lucky in the first days. Food and snacks would be needed! And other things. But food and snacks! Ogres were nothing if not possessed of mighty stomachs.

Ispir Sione

"I am liking your spirit, Ispir!" said Ruka, and off they went.

Gild, by and large, had a unified look to it, the work of many skilled masons—humans, dwarves, and, yes, even ogres too—over the course of its long history. Tall buildings with tall doors, colors of white and beige and stonegray all in accordance with the local building materials, rooves of red tile topping many of the constructions.

But in Ogre Row things were different, and intentionally so. Ruka herself told the story to Ispir: that some years after the Mountain Ogres, under King Andreas Gildal's mercy, joined the Jemaat, Chief Holghguun struck a deal with the King, that his ogres be given a plot within the city to live in memory of their ancestral ways, if they so wished to live as such. With some stipulations, King Andreas consented, and thus the colloquially named Ogre Row was made.

Here instead of permanent fixtures, those houses and shops of mostly human and dwarven make, huge semi-permanent yurts filled the Row, great tents made from great beasts felled by mighty ogre hands, leather and bone testifying to these deeds both ancient and recent. The low rumble of heavy footfalls of plentiful ogres made for a chorus either soothing or frightening—Ruka herself didn't even notice it anymore, if ever she did. Fires crackled in the centers of great circles of yurts, their smoke rising and riding the breeze above the sea of tents, and ogres roasted fresh meat from their hunters and their herders over these blazes. Yet, even for all the immensity of the residents and their constructions, still there were a few barren plots here and there, places were a yurt once was.

And Ruka mentioned this as they walked: "But some ogres now are becoming like city-folk. Many are preferring to worshipping Big Man Regel over Big Man Threshkuul. I am told my ancestors were nomading, but we who are Gildan ogres are not nomading, not anymore. Things change! But I am having two hearts about this. One is happy, one is sad." She looked as though she might have confused herself, and so she asked, "Do you know what I am saying, Ispir?"

Ispir Sione