A Drinking Story
Prompted to write a short story by a conversation with a friend on twitter back in winter.
Played with settings and ideas for our guild, about a group of wayward cartographers finding themselves on front lines in danger, and creating a ruckus for themselves in Stormwind when they weren’t.
Nameless NPC narrator, fickle dialogue. I played with a couple of tricks and ideas for this, not sure I like them, but I was glad to try!
It's not as though we had expected to see a drinking contest between a night elf and a draenei, so as you would imagine: nobody had given the Princess any kind of chance. I don't even think she's actually a princess. But every one in the Waypoint offices call her that. So maybe she is? Or she has a good sense of humor about it. Meanwhile Ilaniel, every one had heard rumors of her skipping out on the Cenarion Circle - people get nervous around her, because sometimes she got this look in her eye like a wild animal, and you'd never know if she was all about business and you just crossed it, or if she was too far gone like one of those druids who give up on being people and run off to crap in the woods for the rest of their lives. Anyway, it's a busy night, the map makers came back from the Other Draenor. They left and the guild hall was a burned out husk, came back and it's all nice and fancy and because The Boss wants us to have a place to crash in Stormwind, it's next to an inn. Or in an inn. I'm not sure of that sometimes. Anyway, there's a dwarf bartender, there's food and drink, there's a room to pass out in. Sweet gig, if you can get it, right? So, the night's busy, and Ilaniel's gettin' rowdy and the others are keeping up and some others are getting rowdy and it looks like it's about to be the kind of night that ends in a few of us in the drunk tank, you know? So the dwarf, he's got this thick brogue going on and we're pretty far gone so we don't know what he's saying but we KNOW what he's saying, you know? And he's up in arms and he's standing on the bar and yelling at us and then he points at us - our table, I mean, the one with Ilaniel - and he says, "THEM'S THE ONES!" And the crowd gets quiet, weird and quiet the kind of quiet that usually follows when The Boss shows up, but it's not The Boss, it's just The Princess and her buddy Quaras, so we're thinking, "Oh whatever, this won't be so bad, what could she possibly do?" And we laugh it off and she's smiling and she laughs and Ilaniel laughs and it's kind of weird but we don't even know what to do besides laugh so that's what we do, swear on the Light! So the Princess, she speaks and she speaks softly but if there's anything we know from The Boss, if someone speaks softly it usually means there's about to be busted furniture but she speaks softly and she looks Ilaniel dead in the eye, and says, "I trust this means your reports are done, and I will see them in the morning?" She doesn't even flinch she just smiles this little smile and everyone's laughter kinda trails off as we remember our paperwork ain't done either but not Ilaniel, nah, our buddy just grins right back at Karanina and its a toothy kinda grin and she changes the subject like, "You know, I saw this thing in Shattrath City that said you were singing! But here, none of us has ever seen you sing a note!" I mean, she didn't say that word for word, but you know, it's what she said. And Karanina nods, just once, and her smile don't move or budge or change, and Ilaniel's grin starts bearing teeth and she keeps going, "Maybe if you sang for us, we'd feel a bit more motivated to write!" And we cheer because we're drunk and we're being encouraged to cheer and we're nothin' if not agreeable. And the Princess, she's all, "Oh I couldn't possibly, I haven't sang for years" and Ilaniel's all, "Other Karanina sang like shit I bet you suck at it too" and then the whole hall kind of sucked in breath because we were pretty sure we was gonna see a murder happen. The Princess, she narrows her eyes and gets the same look in her eyes that The Boss does when shits about to go down, and she's all "is that so" and Ilaniel's like "yeah!" And Quaras is like "oh no" and she's trying to talk Karanina out of whatever it is she's doing but it's too far gone and Karanina speaks up again, "out drink me, and I'll sing, right here, right now" and Ilaniel's all "pfft whatever, you'd be drinking to catch up" and Karanina looks aside to Quaras, who pulls a chair up for The Princess to sit in, and I SHIT YOU NOT first thing she does is take Ilaniel's mug and downs it in a few gulps, finishes it out. EMPTIED IT! Swear on the Light, she did! So Ilaniel's treating it like a race and Karanina's knocking drinks back leisurely and stopping to talk with people and smiling and having a good ol' time and Ilaniel's still racing and we notice that Karanina's catching up because the elf is slowing down and Karanina pauses and starts talking with Ilaniel about the work she done. And Ilaniel's kinda unnerved, right? She's like, "what the hell, what's going on even what is this" and Karanina stays quiet and softy spoken and you can see Ilaniel flinching and kinda gritting her teeth and Karanina looks Ilaniel in the eye - RIGHT IN THE EYE - one eye, Ilaniel's hair fell in her face and she never took a moment to fix it you see and Karanina spoke loudly for every one to hear, "So, I'll be in the office early tomorrow, bring the coffee won't you?" And that's the moment we realize that SOMEHOW she caught up to Ilaniel and we're all hooting and hollering and there's dwarves fainting every where and then this bear comes out of nowhere to start bussing tables and people were CLAPPING oh, you'd never seen anything like it in your- what? What's that look on your face? Of COURSE it happened! Wait hey, where are you going?
