Hivkir looked glumly into his mug.

It was hard to tell if the moon elf was more disturbed by the quality of his drink, or quantity.

Farnell and Violant, from their own corner in the Smiling Swindler, wandered over to the dark-faced elf.

The Adeshian woman peaked over his shoulder, and wrinkled her nose as she examined the liquid. It was more sticky than any drink had right to be, the color of molasses a shade too orange. She tapped the wooden table with a fine finger.

"Hivkir, friend dearest, why the long face? It can't be your drink, there's not a thing wrong with it." Muttering under her breath, she added, "Least not by old Tender's standards."

Both of the humans regularly noted that Old Tender, the Smiling Swindler's bartender, had named his tavern wrong. The last thing that came to anyone's mind when looking at Tender was the word 'smiling'.

"It's not the drink," Hivkir replied unhappily.

"Moonie, if you looked at me the way you're looking at that drink, I'd run back to Old Kingdom." Farnell, a blond man with an unlucky air about him and drunken eyes even when he was sober, was a long-term resident of the 'Swindler'. Along with Violant and Hivkir, as it were. The three of them were mildly genuine 'friends'.

"It's not the drink," the wrinkled elf repeated. "It's a family matter."

"You have family?" Violant's concern was almost sincere. "My great condolences."

"Well, I still don't see what the drink did wrong," Farnell declared, leaning on the table. The elf mage shot him a dark glare from deep within a face, wrinkled like a dried prune.

"The drink has nothing to do with this," he hissed, swatting the man's roving hand away from his mug. "As I said, my wife's family is coming to Valond."

The Adeshain wrinkled her nose again. "I thought you ditched that old badger back in Ildis. It was funny, actually, that story about how you smuggled aboard a dwarven fishing ship and left her in a butcher shop, Finch made a song about it."

"Without this drink, I might mention," Farnell interrupted. "The drink played no role in any of it, the drink is innocent-"

"'Fleeing a shrew in a boat full o gnomes,' yes, I remember that atrocity," Hivkir replied, deciding to ignore the blond man. "'Glance scared right, glance scared left, check if any old codgers left'- I had headaches for a month. Why Tender hasn't given that horrid youngster the boot yet, I have no earthly idea. Do you believe he actually pays him? For that sorry excuse of singing?"

"Yes, yes, perfectly horrid." Violant didn't sound very sympathetic. "Go on, old man, your wife's coming to town?"

"Worse. She found out where I live."

"Yet the drink wasn't the one who told her, so why blame the drink-?"

"Shut up about the drink, you pup-nugget! The drink has nothing to do with this! I don't give a toad's spittle for the drink!"

Farnell blinked a few times at the enraged, spitting moon elf, then said, "But if you insist on just channeling your overwhelming hatred towards the poor drink, then can I at least drink it?"

Emmerin Yearswork