InsaneJournal

“Just make sure you hit the ground on your feet,” my Dad used to say.  “So long as you land upright, you’ll do fine.  Land on your back and there’ll be trouble coming to you.”

I was never really sure just what he meant by that but I figured I’d do my best to live to it.  And I’ve tried my hardest but…

Landing on your feet, though, is a lot harder than he made it sound.

Sighing, I ran a restless hand back through my hair, mussing it more than it already was.  Then I laid my head down on the bar and tried to sink behind the fuzziness of exhaustion and alcohol.  But be damned if there was a pub in the area that served good dwarven beer you could really get drunk off of.  The kind of drunk that made you seriously thinking about stopping drinking but never really pushed you to it.

Instead I had weak human beer and that fruity stuff the elves drink but doesn’t have more’n’a spoonful of alcohol.  Insults to the real stuff…

“Hey, Ziggy, you okay?”

Shifting, I lay my cheek against the cool surface of the bar and glared at the fuzzy outline next to me.  Yes, the crap beer worked, mind you, but I’m used to tougher stuff what with being a dwarf and all.  It was annoying that to get drunk I had to go through enough alcohol to make others wince and threaten to take me to the hospital.  I could even talk without slurring, which made my brain hurt.

“No,” I growled in response.  “I can still see you.  Fucking human beer.”

“Hey,” exclaimed the fuzzy outline, which was my co-worker and fellow medic, Eric Wilkins.  He was human through and through but somewhat more likeable than the rest of them.  “I like our beer.”

For one, he didn’t make it out like I was something of a lesser being.  Most humans I’ve met have, so I’m a bit biased even though I’ve been told they aren’t all like that.

“You ever had any of dwarven make?” I asked, shifting around where I leaned on the bar so my head was pillowed in my arms.

Erik shrugged and replied, “Can’t say that I have.”

“It’d knock you on your pretty little ass, then.”

“You’ve been admiring my ass?  Isn’t that against some sort of dwarven law?”

I grinned at that and reached out for my glass, which had been refilled.  Toasting him, I quipped, “Never any harm in looking.”  Choking as I knocked the drink back, I groaned and lay back down on the bar.  “Moradin save us if we ever have a day like this again.”

Eric frowned and murmured, “It wasn’t really that bad a day, Zig.”

“You were hauling people to the hospital,” I snapped.  “I was there in the actual ER trying to save lives.  And we lost too damn many of ‘em.  Just too damn many.”

“So what…you’re gonna quit?”

I snorted at that and glared at the empty glass sitting in front of me instead of replying.  Quit?  Just up and quit being a medic, the job I worked my bleeding ass off to get?  And do what?  Go back to being what I was before I’d been handed everything – back to being nothing more than some other being on the streets where the only way to survive was with smarts and a gun?

Like hell I was giving up and going back to that.

Dad told me before he died to make sure my feet hit the ground.  I’d taken a bit of a stumble recently but I wasn’t about to let them fall out from under me without a fight.

“Pff,” I hissed, “quit?  You ever known me to just up and quit anything, Eric?”

“Never since I met you, Ziggy.”

“Then you damn well better take that back or I’ll make you eat those words.  Two feet of height on me or not!”

Eric chuckled at that and nodded, lifting his large glass of beer in a toast to me.  He’d seen the aftermath of fights with dwarves from being a medic himself – and from hanging around me.  I’ve gotten into more than a few scuffles that’ll probably one day cost me my job but you don’t insult any dwarf’s family and get away with it.

“Ziggy,” said the bartender suddenly in his gravely voice.  The big gnoll leaned towards me and I met his amber gaze levelly then followed it towards the door of the pub.  There stood a stick of a human in a smart suit and he was wearing a badge for the hospital.  “Trouble?” he queried, nodding at the man.

“Nothing for you to worry out, Gry,” I replied.  Spinning on my stool, I leaned back against the bar and grinned across the room at the fellow.  “I’m guessing you’re here after me?”  I called, voice ringing clearly across the smoky room.

The human minced delicately across the floor, eying the patrons of the pub warily as he came.  Gry catered to everyone but humans weren’t often the sort of patrons that came in even though all he served was their alcohol.  They didn’t like the atmosphere or something.

Watery blue eyes glanced towards Eric, who had started up an amicable conversation with a female – at least it seemed so – mummy who’d taken the stool on his other side.  Then they darted back towards me and he nervously pushed his glasses farther up his nose.  “You…you’re Carina Redhammer?”

I sneered as a few patrons snickered and said stonily, “Folks call me Ziggy usually.  So…what trouble’s coming to me now?”

He blinked then reached into his suit, pulling out a sheaf of folded papers, holding them out to me.  I gingerly took them and eyed him as I unfolded them then skimmed over the topmost page.  When I got to the second paragraph, I looked up at him in surprise and anger.

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me.”

Eric turned away from his conversation at that and asked, “What is it, Zig?”

“I’m afraid no one is ‘kidding you’, Miss Redhammer,” stated the suited human nervously.  He pushed his glasses up again and continued, “Those documents are very real.”

“Moradin forbid!”

“Zig?” queried Eric again, leaning towards me.  I grunted and shoved the papers at him for him to read himself.  He blinked and stared at them for a long moment before gasping, “You’re being ordered to join up with a police unit?  Why?  What the hell would they need a medic for?”

The suited human seemed to gain a little confidence at a question from one of his own and smiled smugly.  “Perhaps they find they have more need of her other skills than her medical ones.”  A very obvious hint about my past that would get any friends of mine angry – how cliché and villainous.

Eric fixed him with a glare like a blade point and snapped, “If you’re gonna insult her, why don’t you go for the whole shebang?  I mean, why hold the past against her when you can hold her whole race, eh?”

“Leave it, Eric,” I hissed.  Sliding down from the stool, I tilted my head slightly back and made it look like I was glaring down at the suit even though he had a good few inches on me.  “Now shoo.  You gave me what you needed to so why don’t you run out of here like you so want to.”

The suited human frowned at me then sniffed and turned, mincing his way back towards the door.  As soon as it closed behind him, Eric was standing next to me, leaning over with the papers clutched in his hands.

“Zig, you really gonna do this?”

“Check that third paragraph, Eric,” I stated with a scowl.  “If I don’t do what they want, everything I ever worked for gets taken away from me.”

“Shit.  Guess that means you gotta do it.”

“Seems so.”

“Damn,” he stated, rubbing the back of his neck.  Nervously he handed me the papers, which I stuffed inside my jacket, and muttered, “I’ll miss yah, Ziggy.”

Snorting, I elbowed him in the thigh then started for the door with him at my heels.  “Shut up,” I grumbled as he opened it for me.  “It won’t be that bad without me.”

“Huh.  You seem happy about this.”

“I wore out my welcome around here.  New place to go…heh, time to see if I hit the ground on my feet or my back.”

“Wha?” he asked.

“Just something my Dad once told me,” I replied, shoving my hands into the pockets of my coat.  “So, you want to come over tomorrow night?  If I want to make it there to meet up in time, I’ll have to start packing now and be gone by day after then.”

Eric frowned then nodded, asking, “What’ll we do?”

I grinned and replied, “I’ll break open the last bottle of good dwarven stout I had stored for a rainy day and we’ll order pizza.  Watch a few movies maybe while we get so drunk we can’t see straight.”

“So basically a good dwarven send-off?”

“Well a modern dwarven send-off.  You up for it?”

“For my best friend who’s leaving me?” he asked, grinning down at me.  “You know it.”

I smiled and rapped my knuckles against his hip in a goodbye as I turned to head towards home.  “I’ll see you then,” I called over my shoulder, earning a grunt in response.  Then I walked on down the street, smiling a little.

I’d worn out my welcome around here.

Maybe in Anvrilry I’d hit the ground on my feet.

And if the damn town didn’t have a dwarven-run pub with a name like that, I was gonna be really pissed.