Warrior of the Void Book 1, Chapter 34

Chapter 34:

“Are you sure it’s not what it sounded like~?” The mage teased the knight as they walked through the streets. For all her protestations, once Muur wrapped her tail around Kofle’s the woman folded faster than wet cardboard, allowing herself to be pulled along with a nuclear blush on her face.

“It wasssssn’t…” She weakly tried as they passed by a number of gossiping women that whispered and pointed their way, “Do you even have a plan on where to eat? Or are you just– walking around?”

“I do have a place in mind,” The Au’Ra told her friend as she rounded a corner. Following her lead, the adventuring pair had delved into the city’s bowels, nowhere near as far as the Miner’s Guild, but easily as deep as the arena. If not a tiny bit deeper. Now, if she remembered correctly it was… “Discovered it while doing some errands for the Thaumaturge’s Guild, and it looked decent enough as a place to get food.” …right around the corner– yep, there it was.

“There’s a food place in here?” ‘Here’ being one of the city’s various housing districts. While she was far from having visited every inch of the Ul’dah, having to go around on Guild’s errand had allowed Muur to get a decent idea of how it worked. For the most part, shops and restaurants were in their own little part of town.

You could walk past rows and rows of closed doors without encountering any sort of business, only to round a corner and suddenly be in the middle of a merchant street. People hawking wares, selling grilled food and offering company for the night. This restaurant would have been right at home in one of these crowded places, where it wouldn’t have been any different from the half dozen similar establishments. Frankly, the only reason it’d been notable enough to stick in her memory was that it wasn’t anywhere near one of these streets.

Instead, on the other side of the quiet street the pair had entered stood a pair of folding double doors, both opened as wide as they could be. The enticing scent of grilled meat and vegetables drifted past the threshold into the small outdoor dining area, and into the wider world from there. Looking through those same doors revealed a slightly larger interior, with five tables rather than the four that stood outside. At the very back Muur could spy the cook, working away at the griddle. 

“Never been that deep in Ul’dah. I always stick to the upper levels,” Kofle whispered, craning her head to look at the eatery’s innards as they took a seat near the back, “But I’m pretty sure this goes against zoning laws?”

“Good, lightly illegal places always have the best food.” Muur chuckled, only half-joking. Depended on the area and what the organized crime scene looked like, to her understanding.

“I’d say you’re wrong,” Her friend said with a sigh as she sat down and scanned the menu written in chalk on the wall– her tail still wrapped around Muur’s, “But considering the Syndicate owns the best restaurants in the city, you’re really not– Oh damn, they’ve got algoat Miq'abob here? Nice,” quickly flagging a barmaid to order half a dozen of them, she turned to Muur, “So uh… I– can- I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.” The lizard replied without a second thought, only belatedly realizing that that may only be a Garlean saying given they had the monopoly on guns from the sound of it.

“It’s not… the first time you grabbed me by the tail like that,” The eggplant mumbled with a light blush, “You did that during our previous shopping trips too. So, uh– I was wondering– do- doyouknowwhatholdingtailsmeansinmiqo’teculture?”

“I’m going to assume something at least mildly scandalous.” Muur said with a lazy grin, giving Kofle’s tail a light squeeze.

“It goes a bit further than that–” Glancing off to the side, the miqo'te stumbled through her words as Muur bullied her, “It- erm, uh- it’s– it’s a sign of courtship,” She eventually blurted out, without making any attempts at getting her tail out of its temporary(?) prison, “So- uh… Y-yeah. You’re- y-you know…”

“Do you dislike the idea?” Muur asked with an innocent tilt of her head that did absolutely nothing to hide the predatory smile on her face, showing off her reptilian pearly whites.

“I-” Kofle tried to speak before cutting herself off with a deep sigh and burying her face in her arms, “Yes- no? I don’t know… I just never… I’m from the Keepers of the Sun, weird considering my skin, I know. And after leaving because of the new Nuhn… and the Fall and everything– I just don’t know. I don’t hate it. No one ever… courted me like this? Even by accident, closest would have been Radbod, but he was an idiot incapable of realising Ulnert wanted to do terrible, terrible things to his virginity.”

“Well, consider me interested. It may work out, it may not, but I want to see where this goes. The whole point of dating is feeling each other out and seeing if we’re compatible.” Muur replied with an easy shrug, leaning back on her chair with all the sinuous grace of a snake. Probably not the wisest of choices, trying to start a romantic relationship with all the things on her plate and hanging over her head, but she’d be damned if she let an opportunity like this pass her by.

“It… is?” The mi’qote asked, genuinely curious, “Menphina’s probably the one of The Twelve I know the most about, but I’m clueless about love outside of how Keepers deal with it.”

“I don’t have much practical experience myself, but it is the most reasonable route, no? Not everything needs to be love at first sight and whirlwind romances.” Muur waved off the very idea with a dismissive roll of her wrist.

Kofle didn’t say anything more, but the fact that she kept her tail wrapped around Muur’s was answer enough.

___________________________________________________________

The pair’s meal went rather well, all things considered. After asking the bountiful maid, who turned out to be the owner of the eatery, that brought them their food, they even learned why this place was allowed to exist!

In ages past, when the mine shafts that Ul’dah continuously grew out of had yet to migrate further down, this had been a one of the numerous places that provided cheap, filling food to the miners that worked the earth. Normally, such places closed down rather quickly once the mining operations moved on due to their main clients simply heading to whichever establishment was closest.

However, by a twist of fate that the woman attributed to a combined blessing of both The Twins and of Menphina. They never did run out of clientele. Certainly, it and its tastes shifted from hardy miners and their preferred food, to something more aligned with the city’s middle class, but people kept coming. And so, they stayed open.

“My great-great-great-great granny was given this charter back when this place opened, see?” The woman had told them with a wide smile, “Said she could ‘operate in this street ‘til such a time operatin’ this business ‘came impossible.’ didn’t say nothin’ about a time frame. So we’ve kept this place open for five generations, an’ if I get my way, it’ll be open for five more!”

After which she’d left them to their food and left to take the orders of newcomers.

“So, what mess did you get into?” Kofle asked after demolishing her first skewer of marinated goat-meat, tomatoes and bell-peppers, “You said something about disasters?”

“Ugh, where do I even begin.” Muur groaned into her hands, before opening wide the floodgates of bitching.

___________________________________________________________

“Huh, ‘disasters’ sound about right,” her tentative girlfriend commented as the lizard wizard finished recounting the tales of family drama, haunting nightmares and crippling incompetence that had been Muur’s life for the last two days, “It does kinda explain that one massive shouting match between a hyur and one of Momodi’s clerks a while back. I wasn’t paying any attention, but ‘ethers’ kept getting mentioned– well, more like screamed at the top of their lungs.”

“Lovely.” Muur grunted as she drowned her sorrows in cheap beer that wouldn’t get a Lala so much as buzzed. “Anyways, your turn, what platter of shit has this city served you?” 

“Weeeeeell,” Kofle swirled her mug of ‘Miner Aproved’ ale – whatever that actually meant – and sighed, “Crime, crime. More crime aaaaaaand shockingly, not a fourth helping of crime? Instead, it was honestly worse– relationship drama. Which one do you wanna hear about first? Only two of those are related to the Gladiator Guild.”

“Let’s do chronological order, so I can appreciate the suffering buildup.” Muur snorted ruefully.

“Heh, fair. So the first helping of crime didn’t actually involve me? Sorta, I got involved in a street brawl,” She said plainly, “Well, I say much. But it did end up with– I think a dozen broken noses? Long story short, there was this guy. Sorta lizard looking? Pretty tall, about as much as a highlander, with a snout, a tail and some leathery-scaly skin. I have honestly no clue what set everything off. But here I was, walking down the streets, when I hear ‘We don’t serve your kin in ‘ere lizard.’,” Kofle’s voice held no venom, or vitriol, but the way that she spat it in a fake approximation of a ‘gruff and tough’ voice– Muur took one guess at what happened right after, “next thing I know, there’s a lalafel flying straight of a window and into my face while someone screams that they aren’t a ‘fackin’ lizard’.”

“Pffftwhahahaha, oh gods, they really went there?” Muur guffawed, nearly tearing up at the idea. Oh, how she loved those damn dogs. “That’s what happens when you call a Bangaa that. ‘S a bit like if someone compared me to the lizardmen around here, just worse ‘cause Bangaa don’t have a single drop of reptile in ‘em. They just get callouses that resemble scales when patches of their fur don't manage to regrow after a shedding.”

“Huh, how do you know that?” Her partner asked, clearly working those new facts in her head, “But anyway. Iiiiiii might have overreacted to the lalafel being thrown at me– by spiking him into the ground…”

“Astounding.” Muur deadpanned, for all her eyes twinkled with laughter. “And my first magic teacher was a Bangaa, so I have a soft spot for the punch-dogs.”

“Fair enough. Anyway, long story short, the guy’s pals see me more or less punt their buddy back into the building, so clearly I’m the ‘lizard’s’ – their words, not mine – friend. Longer story short, I now have a friend in the Pugilist Guild?” Kofle eventually concluded her story, “And also a stern warning from the Brass Blades. But honestly, after the other two cases of crime, I’m pretty sure they have a headache when thinking about me.”

“Nothing like becoming a known headache. Almost as good as getting served ‘the usual’ the moment a restaurant worker claps eyes on you.” The lizard woman snorted, “Now, let’s hear the other two heaps of illegality my girlfriend got herself tangled with.”

“Second one’s easy enough. I’m a gladiator, right? Well, someone very purple tried to get me to throw a match,” Sipping from her ale, Kofle made a pleased sound, “–Huh, that’s actually pretty solid. Anyhow, you get two guesses how that went for the other guy. If the first is ‘you took the money and lost’ it doesn’t count.”

“The only thing in question here is how many teeth the guy lost.” Muur drawled dryly.

“Not actually that many. He was a lalafel with an axe lager than he, angry little shit, I’ll tell you that much,” Sighing, the cat grabbed one of her other skewers and dug into it, “I’m honestly lucky he wasn’t taking the fight seriously, I think he thought I’d been bought, so he was taking it easy. But I managed to get him to step out of bounds. Which of course led to him getting angry, and the Guildmaster getting involved. Fortunately, she managed to smooth things out. Unfortunately, not the last time I saw some purple.”

“Fuckin’ scorpions.” The Thaumaturge grumbled, finally remembering what gang used those colors.

“You can say that again. Just–,” Nodding towards the rest of the clientele, Kofle made a small shushing motion, “Probably best not to cuss them out aloud too much. Anyhow, after that mess, I took my Guildmaster’s advice and took on a job for the Adventurer’s Guild. And I swear I must have the most lopsided sort of luck, because that somehow ended with me dealing with highway robbery, a bleeding out gladiator, two dead Elezen and the Sulatana’s finest grilling me on why I’d killed two men.”

“I have a feeling they didn’t exactly accept ‘they started it and were cunts about it’.” Muur snorted, even as she took careful note of how many feelers the Alacran must have for even a casual ‘fuck’em’ in a random middle class eatery to be dangerous.

“Not at first, no,” Her compatriot in shit luck groaned, “Took them to heal the gladiator back to lucidity for him to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that he’d been ‘mindin’ his own business, spendin’ time with ‘is ma after a hard fought win in the sands’, when out of nowhere come two Duskwight fuckwads screaming demands about his name. Next thing he knew, they’d stuck him like a pig… Only reason he lived was because I heard him beg for his life… So much for a ‘simple’ and ‘clean’ job of ‘escorting a merchant to Black Brush Station and back’.”

“No such thing as a simple job.” Muur grunted in commiseration. “Who’re the Duskwights, though? First time hearing the term.”

“You haven’t been in Eorzea long yet, right? You might not have noticed, but most of the races ‘round here used to be separated into two tribes. For Miqo’tes we’ve the Seekers of the Sun and the Keepers of the Moon. For the Elezen, it’s the Duskwights and the Wildwoods,” Kofle quickly explained, waving around her shish kebab as though it’d help transmit the understanding to Muur’s skull. It did not, “Not that you’ll encounter many ‘Duskwights’ and ‘Wildwoods’ in any of the city states – ‘cept Gridania. But they’re their own mess – the tribal, or clannic, differences only really come into play when you’re away from cities like Ul’dah or Limsa Lominsa.”

“Not that the Au’Ra are any different.” The lizard woman said, lightly tapping the scales encasing her neck. 

The cat woman’s only response was to give out the same pain-filled groan as L’fise had.