Page 6 of Built Orc Tough
I start leaving him invoices for items I “accidentally” use from his herb shelf, all priced at ten silver each, regardless of size or rarity. He begins filing “air quality concerns” by lighting thickclouds of incense in his half of the shop that smell like burnt sage and dried regret.
When Miss Lyria drops by to “check in,” she finds me measuring exact boundaries with washi tape down the center of the worktable, and Gorran calmly adding hand-drawn signs that say “Silence is Sacred” above his shelf.
“Ah,” she says, sipping tea out of her never-empty thermos. “Foreplay.”
“I beg your pardon?” I snap.
She winks. “I’m just saying, this much tension could power the old fae windmill. Carry on.”
Then she leaves.
Sprout, bless her, tries to mediate.
“Maybe you two should just… talk?” she suggests one morning, blinking from behind her enormous goggles.
“I’d rather gargle cactus water,” I mutter.
“Or maybe swap chores? Like you arrange his vials and he trims your stems?”
Gorran makes a sound that might be a bark of laughter. Or a death rattle.
We don’t take her advice.
Instead, we up the stakes.
I move his cauldron—gently—three inches to the left. He flips my best-selling rose bouquet design and reorders it to follow the orcish “power symmetry aesthetic,” which apparently involves making it look like the bouquet is about to bite someone.
By Friday, the only thing growing faster than the plants is our mutual, silent, very polite hatred.
And if he smirksone more timewhen I bump into one of his strategically placed “healing stones,” I’m going to smuggle glitter into his beard oil.
CHAPTER 4
GORRAN
The trick to a good herbal brew isn’t the ingredients. That’s what the young ones always think—like it’s just about roots and ratios and remembering what’ll give you the runs if you steep it too long. But it’s not that. It’s rhythm.
You wake up early, before the light fully breaks over the mountains, and you let your bones stretch slow while the water heats. You grind by hand, always. Mortar and pestle, cedarwood if you can get it, and not too fast. The plants don’t like to be rushed.
By the time the town begins to stir, the back of the shop smells like warm mint, crushed citrus bark, and a whisper of feverroot that hangs on the air like memory.
I’ve only been at it an hour when the first knock comes—soft, polite, like someone unsure whether they’re welcome. I open the door to find an older human woman, bundled in a patchwork shawl and blinking through glasses as thick as tree sap.
“You the orc who sells anti-ache tea?” she asks, voice hoarse like smoke through gravel.
I nod once, stepping aside to let her in. “Name’s Gorran.”
She shuffles in, gaze sweeping the counter like she expects me to hand her something dangerous. Her nose twitches at the scent of brewing nettleflower.
“Hurts like hell when I walk,” she says, tapping her hip. “Had a tincture once from a faun up near Dry Hollow. Worked for a week, then made me vomit birdsong. Literal birdsong. Fordays.”
“I don’t sell glamour crap,” I tell her, already moving toward the shelves. “I work in body, not illusion.”
She watches as I measure a pinch of marshroot and stir it into the still-warm tea base. Her eyes linger on the careful wrap of cloth I use to seal the bottle.
“Don’t suppose you’re the same orc who wrestled a shifter during the Northern Trials a few years back?”
I pause for a second. Just a second. “Used to be.”
