It charges you from the around the next corner...
Aennin stumbled into work that afternoon a little slowly, still groggy from the effects of his mother's bogwine. It didn't take long for Landah and Katim to notice that he wasn't his usual self. The latter grasped him roughly by the collar and looked him deeply in the eyes. After a moment of searching, he shoved him roughly onto a barstool and vaulted over the bar.
"You're lucky I don't have anything for you to do right now," Katim growled as he slammed three glasses down on the bar. "Landah, is Remiel taken care of?"
Landah sat down on the stool next to Aennin with a nod. "Yeah, he's not going to be giving us any more trouble for a while."
"How long's a while?" Katim asked as he withdrew a bottle of amber-colored liquor from behind the bar.
Landah glanced at Aennin, who had put his head down on the bar. "Are you sure you want to talk about this in front of the kid?"
Katim rolled his eyes and chuckled. "He doesn't look like much of a kid to me anymore. I'm not even sure he's taking any of this in."
Landah nudged Aennin, who grumbled incomprehensibly in response. With raised eyebrows, he responded. "You have a point. Well, by a while, I mean at least a week. Maybe longer depending on how much attention he gets from the healers."
Aennin was scared to hear what he was hearing, but under the drink's influence, he felt a desire to relax and found it easy to follow it. On the plus side, Katim didn't seem to be interested in punishing his ill-chosen decision to walk into the pub while drunk. On the contrary, he felt himself jumping as Katim shoved one of the glasses at him. He took the glass in hand and stared at it. The liquid within had a very strong scent that seemed to inflame his brain with a single whiff.
"Drink," Katim commanded casually. "If you want to get sloshed, you're going to do it right instead of slowly drowning yourself with that piss your parents used to drink."
"What is it?" Aennin asked blearily.
"It's called flux whiskey," Katim said as he poured a glass each for himself. "It's only made in Heron, but it's legal to buy and sell here as long as it passes through the hands of a Restan or Galean trader first."
Landah frowned as he took his drink. "You're cruel, Katim. You know this shit always fucks me up!"
Katim laughed and took a joyous gulp of his own whiskey. "Suck it up! You know full well the strength of every glass is basically random! You'll feel like a fool for complaining if you don't even get a buzz!"
Aennin raised his eyebrows while continuing to examine his glass. "How can it be random?"
"They say the Heronites have to brew their whiskey in the wilderness to skirt the law," Landah explained, then took a gulp from his own glass. "If they don't keep it hidden enough, nymphs get into the stills and--"
"Piss in them!" Katim exclaimed with a chuckle.
Aennin had just taken his first sip when he heard this last part. As a result, he ended up spraying the bar with the fluid that he had in his mouth. Katim and Landah laughed while the former tossed a rag at him.
"Clean that shit up and finish your drink," the boss said cheerfully.
"How can you drink this if--"
"He was joking!" Landah said with some difficulty thanks to the laughter. "Nobody really knows what the nymphs do to the whiskey, but whatever it does makes it completely different from any other liquor. Part of the fun is seeing how it affects you from glass to glass. Drink it slowly, just in case, though."
Katim nodded in agreement. "You really will want to pace yourself. I was going to give you the day off before you decided to show up with a buzz. Now it's your responsibility to keep me amused and passing out won't get you out of it."
So, Aennin cleaned up the mess he had made over the bar with the rag he had been supplied with and continued to make conversation with the other elves. At the end of the day, he had been relieved to discover that he had gotten some of the lighter servings of the strange liquor. Even with the flux whiskey combined with the effects of Anera's bogwine, Aennin was still able to leave under his own power while Katim had passed out and Landah was left complaining that he couldn't even catch a buzz.
The walk back to the apartment was slowed down both by intoxication and a flurry of thoughts. Spending the day socializing with Katim was among the last things he ever expected to come out of this day, but it felt right. Morrin's dying wish to see this thug dead would only come to pass if Aennin could get closer to him. This alone would have made everything he experienced that day worth it, but he couldn't say he didn't enjoy himself nonetheless.
Next
Next
No comments:
Post a Comment