A month and three days have come to pass since then.

Muffled voices ring around the restaurant. The booths are full of people, who are talking in hurried, hushed conversations. The sounds of clinking glassware and rustling metal plates accompanies their discussions. The room, the restaurant, feels very much alive tonight. The space is awash in the orange glow of the rekindled lanterns, hung from the ceiling.

Except for one, which seems to have died out unusually early. How annoying.

Hineni walks through the room, coming from upstairs.

“Did you hear about the south?”

“Yeah!” replies an excited woman, leaning in. “I heard t-”

Her voice is cut off as Hineni makes his way through, towards the front desk.

The war is the talk of the town. The south’s secession from the rest of the continent has been officially declared. The elves of the deep-forest, striving to break free from the rest of the cities, have declared a peaceful departure. However, as was predicted, the powers that be will not let this go peacefully.

Hineni turns his head, looking at the large, quiet man, standing by the door with crossed arms. He seems as much a part of the structure as any of the pillars or the new flooring, already stained with drops of liquor and sauces.

He is one of the twenty-seven, who had been gifted a dagger and, after his third offering of tribute to Obscura, has been offered a position here by Hineni as their doorman. There has been little need of him yet, as the thieves’ guild, skulking around in the shadows around their home and neighborhood, take care of most of that stuff. But it helps him feel better to have someone here, just in case anybody causes trouble while he isn’t around. Sockel can handle herself, of course, but she’s just one person and even with the new waitress, the dark-elf, another pair of hands isn’t bad to have.

Besides, the man is quiet and stays out of the way. Hineni appreciates that. He nods, the man nods back.

“Anything?” asks Hineni.

“Same as yesterday and the day before,” replies the tired elf, not looking up from her paperwork. A familiar tinge of purple hangs beneath her eyes.

Hineni’s eyes wander down towards the desk, covered in messily laid out maps and papers, plans and books on geography, history, mythology all line the counter, outnumbering and outweighing any official papers of their work or business. “…Right,” says Hineni, turning back away to look out over the room. The waitress runs around, doing her best to keep up by herself with the nine tables, full of people. A tall order. She’s certainly earning her keep.

“Shouldn’t you be in the forge?” asks Sockel, still not looking up from the papers that she’s digging through.

“Right…” repeats Hineni, walking that way. Leaving Sockel to her work, Hineni heads past the kitchen, looking inside at the two cooks at work. “How’s it looking?” he asks her as she walks by into the kitchen.

The dark-elf lifts her lips and blows a strand of hair out her face. “Busy,” she replies, seeming more annoyed at his asking than anything. She hustles into the kitchen, grabbing another tray that the cooks have prepared, busy at their tasks as well.

Today is one of those days that Hineni can’t help but feel, oddly enough, that he is in the way. Despite the fact that this is his home, that this is his operation, that these are his people. He sighs and heads to the forge, where he indeed should be.

“Rhine. Give me some good news,” says Hineni, stepping into the forge.

“Everything’s fucked!” exclaims Rhine, tossing a lump of clay down to the ground in frustration. It breaks apart.

Hineni blinks. “Boy. Since when did you start talking like a sailor?” He looks around the forge that they’re indeed falling behind on. They’ve been so busy with repairs, that they’ve barely had time to make any new weapons. The molds have been a great help, but they’re running out of good clay. As for the swearing, that must be from all of the adventurers. They’re a bad influence on him.

“Sorry…” relents Rhine. “I’m just really stressing out, you know?”

Hineni shrugs, stepping inside and grabbing his hammer. “We’re going to be fine, Rhine,” he says. “We’re nowhere near the south.”

“I know, but…” Rhine looks around. “Lately it’s like we’re cursed, you know?” he asks, wiping a strand of hair out of his eyes. “The river is running out of clay,” he says. “It’s never run out of clay.” He grasps his head. “I didn’t even know that could happen.”

“Well, we’ve been taking it every day,” says Hineni. “Of course your spot was going to run dry eventually.”

“That’s just it!” exclaims Rhine. “I walked along the river for an hour and I just… can’t find anything.”

“Rivers are long,” says Hineni. “Worst case, we’ll buy some.”

Rhine sighs, lowering his head. “That ruins the point. It was supposed to be my thing, you know?” he asks. “It’s how I was useful. Without the river, I’m just…”

“- Rhine,” finishes Hineni. “We just have a dry spell,” explains the man, grabbing the first item of the day to repair. “The restaurant and the repairs will keep us going until we get our footing again.”

“Yeah…” sighs the boy, lowering his eyes.

For about a month now, things have been very troublesome in a lot of ways. But only ever just in indescribable, little, annoying ways. There haven’t been any major disasters, but all of the little things keep going wrong.

The kitchen runs out of salt during the busiest hours, despite Sockel being sure that she had bought some. The river has run out of clay, during their busiest peak yet. The water in the bath had stopped getting hot during the coldest day of the year, only for it to literally start working the hour after Hineni had refunded all of the payments to use it for the day. Just all sorts of odds and ends that, while certainly frustrating on their own, are really coming together to drive them all to their wits end.

Hineni grabs a starter, getting ready to light the forge.

- But the charcoal doesn’t take the spark.

He does his best to compose himself, so that he doesn’t start swearing in front of Rhine.

After all, what would the boy’s mother think?

The man blinks.

What an odd thought.

“Obscura apologizes!” hoots the owl-god, clearly upset as she tries to grab after him, clicking and hissing with her mouth in feverish excitement.

(Hineni) suffers {2} DMG [Bleeding{2}] [HP: 34/39]

Hineni winces, hobbling over to the dresser as he works through a familiar pain. “It’s okay,” he says, waving her off, his hand on his wet side, where she had accidentally cut him with her talon while they were being intimate. “Ah…” he looks down at it. “That really stings.”

“She will get the sock-elf!”

“It’s fine,” says Hineni, grabbing an old shirt from the drawer and pressing it against the wound. “It’s nostalgic,” he jokes. “Like when we first met.”

The owl-god hisses. “Accident! Sharp!” she lifts her hands, displaying her talon. “Sharp!”

“I know. Sharp,” says Hineni, saying it a third time. “It’s fine. It’ll stop in a minute,” he says, looking down at the shirt.

(Hineni) suffers {2} DMG [Bleeding{2}] [HP: 32/39]

“Ah, damn it…” he says, realizing.

This was his favorite shirt.

“I can’t stand it! I hate it! I hate it here!” yells Eilig, her small fists slamming against the ice. Water droplets splash out, striking against his face. “My ice! My beautiful ice!” protests the fairy, gesturing all around them to the basement that is unusually glossy and slick today. “It’s all melting!”

Hineni looks around the basement, seeing that this indeed seems to be the case. But why? It is certainly unusual for magical ice to melt. Maybe the kitchen just above is too hot, now that it’s being used regularly? Or maybe when the water-workers looked at the bath, some hot-water mechanism got pushed the wrong way? Or maybe the fairy is just ill and her magic isn’t working right?

“Are you feeling well, Eilig?” he asks. “You’re not getting sick, are you?”

“Oh?! What?! So now it’s my fault?!” snaps the fairy. “My ice isn’t melting because of me, dummy!”

Hineni looks at the fairy, lifting a hand to stop her from exploding. He winces, as he feels the sharp pain on his side from his cut. “Come on. You know that I’m trying to solve the problem,” he says. “Work with me here, okay?”

The fairy sighs. “Look. It’s ice. It’s melting,” she says. “It wasn’t melting before. That’s all I know,” explains the fairy. “Are you going to do something about it or not?”

Hineni rubs the bridge of his nose, thinking. They need the ice-cellar. If it thaws out, a full month’s worth of provisions for the kitchen will spoil and go to waste. That’s ignoring the flooding issue in his home. “I promise that I’ll look into it right now,” says Hineni, turning back to climb up the ladder.

He grabs it, stepping up once and then slipping, as his hand slides off of the wet rung. The man falls onto his bottom, wincing as the cut on his side presses together from the impact of the fall.

Eilig meanwhile, laughs.

What rotten luck.

Hineni walks up to the attic.

Honestly, he doesn’t know what else to do at this point. He’s checked every room, knocked on every wall, but he can’t find any reason for the ice in the cellar to be melting.

His last idea is to look in the heating shaft, but that wouldn’t make much sense either. The shaft being blocked up here wouldn’t really affect the ice in the cellar, would it? However, at this point, he’s desperate. The universe’s decision to give them a death by a thousand cuts is tiresome and annoying. Surely this all can’t just be a coincidence?

A smell comes to drift against him as he heads up the small staircase. It stinks. Hineni recoils. It smells like a rat died up here. He recognizes the oddly sour smell from the orphanage. Dead animals like that weren’t uncommon in that old building. Hell, that place was probably more rats than wood.

- Do they have rats?

This is the last thing they need. If their newly refurbished structure has a rat infestation, they’re done for. The city is going to close them down and that’s before the customers all throw up everything they’ve eaten in disgust and then, worse, ask for their money back.

Hineni follows the smell, pulling open the heating shaft and looking down into it.

- There’s nothing there.

In fact, the air down inside of it is oddly fresh. He closes the hatch and stands back upright, looking around the room. There’s only one door left, the one to his parents’ old bedroom. He jiggles the door and then pulls it open, recoiling in disgust, as he stares at the body of a dead bird, placed on top of the old mattress, its wings spread out wide.

The carcass of an owl lays there, decayed and rotten from perhaps days of festering.