Copyright J.B. Norman
Pela Strahlend sits with the other five members of the Lyte Brigade around her parents’ dining room table. The others — Nolan, Matilda, Falcata, Amara, and Tancred — all gaze expectantly at her.
“Thanks for helping with this, guys,” she tells them. “I’m sure my dad is really going to appreciate this.”
“Happy to be here,” Tancred answers.
To be perfectly honest, while he is glad to help a guildmate, he isn’t exactly happy to be here, specifically.
The five taller, larger members of the Lyte Brigade are making a valiant, though not entirely successful, attempt to fit around a dining room table intended to sit neither a group of such number nor such stature. The Strahlend family home is perfectly-sized and its furniture perfectly-proportioned for a Dwarf chef, his Goblin wife and their daughter. Less so for that daughter’s substantially larger, taller companions.
For her part, Pela is not exactly enjoying her guildmates’ discomfort per se, though she can’t help but feel a brief, fleeting moment of satisfaction at this sudden turnabout. Back at the Lyte Brigade’s usual meeting spot, Pela is the only one who doesn’t fit at the table, struggling to see over the edge of a table not designed for the short. Sitting comfortably is a welcome change of pace.
Falcata is in particularly dire straights. The towering Amazon has to hug her knees nearly to her chest to be able to fit at the table. She has almost hit her forehead against the house’s doorjambs more times than she would care to admit. However, she bears it all with her typical disciplined, uncomplaining stoicism.
“What exactly are we supposed to be helping with, Pela?” Matilda asks.
“The Prince’s younger sister is getting married soon,” Pela explains. “Dad’s been hired to cook for the wedding. He has some new recipes he wants to try. And I, uh, volunteered.”
“Volunteered us, you mean,” Amara notes.
“Well, yeah,” Pela admits. “But, hey, guilds have to stick together, right? Anyway, Dad’s going to cook for us.” She points to the corner of the dining room. “And Mom’s going to take notes.”
The Goblin woman in the corner of the room looks over the rims of her glasses to the members of the Lyte Brigade. “It’s nice to finally meet you all,” she tells them. “Pela’s said all sort of good things about you.”
Pela’s father, a middle-aged Dwarf whose hair seems to have all migrated to his chin and arms comes into dining room, carrying a large casserole. He sets down the dish and cuts a serving for each of the six members of the Lyte Brigade.
“Well?” he asks anxiously as the Lyte Brigade eats. “How is it? You can really taste the moose tongue, right?”
Nolan’s fork falters midway to his mouth. His hand begins to tremble as he looks down at the morsel speared on its tines. “The what now?”
“I’m kidding,” Pela’s father assures them.
Nolan frowns. “That’s not funny.”
“It’s ox tongue.”
“That’s not funny!”
“It’s so good!”
The sudden, unexpected exclamation catches the Lyte Brigade by surprise. Five pairs of eyes drift in the direction of the speaker.
“What?” Matilda asks defensively.
“A-are you really enjoying this, Miss Matilda?” Tancred asks, turning almost as green as Pela.
She nods. “It’s delicious! I’ve never had tongue this tender! ” She stuffs another forkful into her mouth. “And these spices! It’s like a Wintermorn festival in my mouth!”
She frowns at her guildmates as they continue to regard her like a woman gone mad.
“It’s not my fault you’re a bunch of cowards,” she mutters. “Live a little, guys.”
She vanquishes her serving with the ruthless, ravenous speed of a Turboshark in a feeding frenzy — a sight which does no favours for the already-dubious appetites of the others and holds up her plate.
“Is there more?”
Follow me here:
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
And check out my full-length stories here:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
