Blacklake-Book4-1 Three Cousins

Chapter 5
~

On the bright side, Thomas didn’t vomit once last night. He even had a bit of color in his cheeks this morning. On the irritatin’ side, he was wanderin’ around the office botherin’ all our team members. He stared at the trolls too hard, drawin’ more than a couple growls. And they’re not as easily riled as us ogres. Thomas was peculiarly curious about our couple of orc partners. He’d never seen an orc before, he mumbled for about the fifth time.

Then his wanderin’ went too far for Ezo.

“That’s a lot of computers,” Thomas mumbled, eyes bouncin’ along the tops of the racks ten feet up, as I grabbed him at the shoulder of his jacket and dragged him out of the server room.

“How’d ya get in here?” I growled.

“Followed that tall guy in,” he said, pointin’.

“She hear ya callin’ her a guy, that hen will rip yar head off yar shoulders. She’s our lead hardware engineer.”

“She? A troll, right?”

He hadn’t wised up enough to distinguish trolls from ogres yet? May the gods protect us. Maybe Thomas needed more protectin’ than the rest of us. I growled at him to stay away from the servers.

I let go of him, maybe roughly, and he pulled his phone from a back pocket. “Ah. It’s Ezra.”

That pushed my irritation a bit louder in my brain, maybe ricochet a couple times against synapses I prolly really need. He repeated the word hike a couple times. I headed back to what we call the bull pen—a baseball reference, not a misogynist one. The technical staff, includin’ me, don’t have individual offices, except for Kriz, who needs silence to work—honestly, mostly to keep him away from everyone else. Lest they kill him.

This morning Kriz dropped in for a couple minutes, not to say hey to anyone, just to make sure the place hadn’t burned down while we’d been outa town. He’d be happily settled, workin’ in his home office now.

I sat and a line quickly queued up at my desk. Our folks aren’t used to havin’ access to either me or Kriz. Rely on texts that may or may not be answered within the next couple hours. So they’ve always been forced to work really independently, which has worked well for the company, but oddly when we’re in the Hamlet, they seem unable to get enough of us. Well, me. They prefer to text with Kriz.

Why do intelligent, professional folk who normally work exclusively from design documents and project plans flock to me just ’cause I’m not three hundred miles away?

I ignored Thomas shiftin’ his weight like a five-year-old who needed to pee. He had something to say, but couldn’t get around the throng of ogres and trolls surroundin’ my desk. Plus it was kind of easy hidin’ behind the three archin’, thirty-inch monitors that blocked me from one side.

Next thing, Thomas and Ezra were givin’ me a wave from the entrance. What? I checked my watch. It was a bit after eleven. Stink. Time flies. The word hike came to mind again. Surely she wasn’t takin’ him off hikin’. Surely. Like that wouldn’t raise a brow on anyone.

~ Ezra ~

The human had finally lost his chatty. Hardly shut his mouth last night. His hands sure moved about a lot—when he wasn’t warmin’ em between his legs. Makes sense it would take him a bit to acclimate to the cooler mountain air. I remember Ike complainin’ about the heat on the Plain. Like every time we spoke. Maybe the past couple years he’s acclimated some. I pulled into the trailhead parking and Thomas jerked. What was that about?

“Dark under these trees,” were his first words since I picked him up at Ogre Ware.

“Get darker as we climb deeper into the woods,” I said, gettin’ out of my truck and slammin’ the door behind me. He’d get the idea it was time to get out, right?

A second later he clamored out after me, and asked about wolves and bears. I told him there were millions up here. Think he about wet himself.

“They’ll leave us alone,” I rushed to say. Should I warn him the moose are a lot more dangerous? Cranky beasts. Hate everything—except the birds that eat the ticks off em. Thankfully they mostly stick around the swampy valleys, deeper in the Range.

I was already twenty feet up the trail before I realized he wasn’t followin’ me. I turned around. I clearly hadn’t wiped out his worry for wolves and bears. His eyes were huge. Good thing I didn’t mention the moose. Humans have very demonstrative features. I asked him what’s up.

“Why would wolves and bears leave us alone?” he asked.

I chortled, which maybe frightened him a bit. I guess he hasn’t learned about ogre chortles. And I thought he was one of Ike’s big basketball buddies. Well. Ike doesn’t chortle much.

“What’d I say,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say anything insulting.”

I explained that I had laughed. His face did that meltin’ thing I’ve heard Zarade describe as “completely adorable.” I asked if he’d never heard Ike laugh.

“Don’t think Ike has a funny bone.”

Funny bone. Never had heard that one before. Humans are odd. “Well, he doesn’t laugh much. Ogre bulls in general don’t entertain humor to a high degree.”

“Uh huh. So why aren’t you worried about wolves or bears, if there’re so many out here.?”

Really? I hung my head toward my shoulder for a second, to see if he’d figger it out. Waited a bit. Maybe he wasn’t gonna figger it out. So I stood erect and asked him, “Ya think a little ole grizzly would want a piece of me?”

His eyes flashed a bit more wide open for a half-second. Stink. Humans are able to move their faces around into so many different—expressions.

“So. You aren’t afraid of bears?” he asked.

I snorted. Should I explain that? He didn’t get my chortle. I sighed. Maybe that was condescendin’, but so be it. “No bear wants to be wrapped around a tree.”

“Really?” he asked.

I maybe wiped my hand down my face. “I’m no troll, but a bear would have to be awfully hungry, or drunk on fall apples, to give an ogre a piece of his mind.” Not like thousands of other tourists don’t wander all over these mountains.

“Oh,” he said.

“We gonna hike?” I asked. “About two miles from here this trail levels off onto a terrace with a killer view of the Lake.”

~