Travelling with Nargi these past days had been very interesting. It was good to have a friend. Grishar had never really had a friend before, but someone had to be his first and Nargi was doing a good job. For one thing he COOKED. Not like, burning your meat for a bit before eating it. Lots of kobolds did that, but he used all these other stuffs. Stuffs that are supposedly inedible but weren’t if you did with them whatever Nargi did with them. It was GOOD.

He didn’t talk much, and he didn’t laugh at Grishar’s jokes, but in his defence: no one ever did except for Grishar himself. But he hardly ever told Grishar to shut up and if he DID talk, he talked intelligent. And that was the nicest thing about this friend, well, apart from the cooking. The kobolds never talked intelligent. They talked about wat WAS, but never about well… they just didn’t have an imagination. Nargi did.

On their second day together, Nargi had said he imagined a tribe that was ‘in harmony’ with its surroundings. He had explained it too. Just taking what you need to thrive and not kill anyone that wasn’t a threat, making sure you’d eat animals that there were plenty of, instead of just picking out whichever was easy or tasty. Not destroying things that didn’t have to be destroyed. He even talked about orcs living together with humans and kobolds and goblins. Which was slightly funny, because no human in their right mind would want to live with orcs or kobolds, let alone goblins. It was a nice thing imagining though. It would be infinite more fun to live in such a varied society. All the things you could do! All the women you could do!

If Nargi’s imagination ever came true he’d definitely get himself some human women, and orc women too. Grishar had thought about this a lot while they were camping later that evening and had drawn out some of his ideas of how he could make that work, sexually. Nargi had found it “yuck”, but he himself thought some of them were pretty great. There was a certain advantage in being smaller than the lady you were with, Grishar thought. He really hoped he could put some of his ideas into practice one day. Unlikely, but a man can dream.

The third day had been fun. They had stumbled upon a human bandit camp and had taken all of their stuff. There was even gold! They hadn’t killed the bandits though. Nargi was adamant against it. Which was okay, Grishar didn’t really feel the need to kill anyone if they weren’t attacking him anyway. And they hadn’t. It had been the best raid ever! 

Grishar had twirled around the campsite as fast as he could, severing the men’s breaches as they sat by a fire. When they got up, their pants dropped and then Nargi had come out of the bushes saying “BOO” and they all ran off, holding their trousers up. SOOO funny!

“Do you think we could ever just walk into a human village and spend this gold? Or maybe a dwarven mountain-kingdom?” Grishar asked, fingering the coins with a grin.

“Maybe…” the orc said. “I hope so. But remember, you can’t do raids in the same place you’re being decent paying visitors.”

“Why not?”

“Because then people will either attack you or flee from you. You can’t take their money and play nice afterwards.”

“Oh…” Grishar thought about this for a while. It made sense. Most things Nargi said made sense, that was a good thing. He made Grishar THINK. No one but Grishar had ever made Grishar think, so he had the feeling he was getting smarter by hanging around with Nargi. “So… when we find a human village, we just go in and act civilised and if they attack us or flee anyway, we raid them. If not, we keep playing nice and have fun being all civilised and all?”

Civilised was a new word he’d learned from Nargi. It was a human word that meant no killing, no stealing, no screaming, but instead paying for good food and equipment while drinking alcoholic beverages and talking to humans and having sex with them. Ok, Grishar had added the last part himself, but he really hoped that was part of being civilised too.

“Yeah…” Nargi said, a little hesitant. “We could try that.”

Grishar felt like a raid-leader having come up with such an awesome plan all by himself. He did a little victory dance at which Nargi raised an eyebrow, but Grishar didn’t care. He was the king of this moment. He had gold, he had plans and he had a friend. That was all he needed right now. Okay, that and some human women to be very civilised with.

***

Day four started out a bit sucky, but had become one of the best days of his life. He had done a brilliant job at raiding a very large deer and had gotten scolded by Nargi for it. That, when he should’ve been thankful. They had been munching on small animals before and the orc seemed hungry, so when he had spotted a large and a very small deer, he’d gone for the big one, just to satisfy Nargi’s hunger and got scolded for it. The orc had said that it was said because the baby (the small one that had been sticking around like an idiot) would die without his mother. Grishar had given the ungrateful shit the finger and killed the small one too, just to make a point.

That hadn’t had the desired effect. Nargi had started to preach something about harmony again, but since it hadn’t featured any females that walked on two legs, Grishar had gotten bored and ran off.

Walking around by himself was more boring than the rant though, so after a while he had gotten back only to find Nargi cooking again. He had prepared both the animals and had cleaned their pelts so they could use then as blankets. One small one and one big one. Perfect.

Grishar had rubbed his broad orc nose in it. Of course he had been right. And Nargi had conceded, on the condition he wouldn’t kill anything with a baby again. Grudgingly Grishar had promised and then Nargi did something BIZARRE.

He picked him up, pressed him to his chest and kissed his head!

“WHAT?!”

“I’m proud of you, little one.”

“WHAT?! Please don’t do that. I am open to a lot, but maybe we could be just friends you know…”

Nargi pushed him away with a face like he had just eaten boar shit. “NO! I wasn’t… this is a friend thing. Just this. It’s not starting something, it’s just this! It’s a symbol for telling a friend you’re proud of them!”

Well it was a weird signal…

“Is that something orcs do?” Grishar asked.

“No, it’s something real friends do.” The orc had said.

It had warmed Grishar inside that Nargi thought he was a real friend. Wow. A real friend. He was someone’s real friend. His friend’s real friend even. The thought made him extra happy. Different happy then sex or raiding or eating, but no less satisfying.

Grishar smiled. “Thank you.”

He had been happy the entire day. Nargi was his real friend and together they would travel the world and have adventures.

***

It was late in the afternoon when they stumbled upon a campsite. Nargi had been completely on-edge about it for it had smelled like elf. But Grishar had no problem with that idea and went checking it out before his friend had a chance to stop him.

The camp had been empty and from the looks of it, it was only meant for one elf. The elf was probably out hunting, since there wasn’t a bow in there. But it had a bag of stuff. And some of the stuff was gold coins, so Grishar had taken the bag and brought it back to Nargi proudly.

“Look! See what I’ve raided? I have found a bag with stuff and gold!”

“Did the elves sense you?” Nargi said in hushed tones. He looked rather nervous, which was weird, because even if Grishar wouldn’t help him, Nargi could easily beat up an elf. They’re frail and easily breakable and Nargi was, well… Nargi.

“There was no-one there and it looked like a camp for only one elf.”

“There’s never just ONE elf.” Nargi said darkly.

Grishar laughed. “Right, like there is never just ONE orc and never just ONE kobold.”

This had shut Nargi up for a second, which was obviously because Grishar was brilliant.

“See, just one elf. You can easily kick its ass, but we don’t even need to because it wasn’t there. Now come on, let’s get a move on I’m starting to get hungry.”

“No, we stay.” The orc said in a solemn but very decisive voice.

“Why? You SAID you didn’t want to kill anyone if we didn’t need to. We don’t need to, we’ve got its stufsies and gold and we can just leave. If we stay here we’ll have to fight it. I know we can, but didn’t you say you have um…” Grishar searched his head for the other human word he’d learned “… MORALS!”

“Yeah, well. Elves don’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Elves are evil. They need to be killed. We wait here and ambush it when it comes back.” Nargi was always serious, but Grishar had never seen him THIS serious before. It made him a little nervous.

“Sure, an ambush, okay I’m up for it. But um… Why?”

“Why?”

“Yeah. Why wait for it to kill it if we can just sneak off with all of its stuff? If it’s not for the morals, why not sneak off because it is EASY?”

“Because it’s an elf.”

“So?”

“Elves must be stamped out. When you see an elf, you kill it. Otherwise it will come in the night with it’s sneaky plant magic and murder all the children in your tribe. This one too. It will track us and let the vines strangle us in our sleep, so we need to kill it first. Therefore, we wait.”

“But I hate sitting around doing nothing.”

The look he got back from Nargi made him shut up and sit. As silently as he could he picked up a stick and drew some pictures of him doing an elf in the sand. They were all female right?