I’ve spent a few days talking stress, so I should note at least I have moved one major stressor off my plate: toddled off to my first vaccination appointment this morning, with my partner off to get theirs in about twenty-four hours.
I seem to be one of the folks showing side-effects after the first jab, with my joints doing a low-key ache and my neck doing a not-so-low-key hurt. Both incredibly preferable to Covid, though, and I’m off to take a panadol and lie down for the afternoon.
In place of a real post, here’s a little glimpse at a novella in progress, where even my attempts to write secondary-world D&D-esque fantasy show signs of venting my spleen at certain members of our society who are proving to be remarkably pigheaded.
It had been three days since the caravan from Ironhall had failed to arrive at Zalanka, and the town was rife with theories about why they’d been delayed. Half the marketplace buzzed with rumour the dwarves had been caught by the Nine Red Feathers, shot with arrows and left for dead while the bandits retreated into the depths of the Orkessa Forest. Others theorised they had struck a deal in secret, that the dwarves had pledged allegiance Baroness d’Ettiene after years of dealing with the Marquis of Zalanka, and the town’s supply of ore and dwarf-forged blades were already heading West. A scattered few—the foolish and the deeply stupid, if you asked Kai—proposed a theory that the greed of the dwarves had gotten the best of them, and the guards tasked with transporting the caravan had abandoned their people and absconded with their supplies.
The loudest proponent of the latter theory had been a blacksmith propping up the end of the bar in The Last Bear, just beside the Red Gate. A hulking monster of a man, shoulders chorded with muscle and a chin shaved scrupulously clean, his thinning pate covered in wispy, straw-coloured hair that would soon recede for good. The man was several flagons of ale over the edge, and had Kai not been almost as drunk, they might have avoided an incident.
Alas, that was not the case, and Kai had taken offense at the blacksmith’s belligerent theories and expressed his displeasure with a punch to the mouth.