He always got the shit work, did Nariinkû. Watching a golug village, waiting to see if they did anything. It was damn boring up in a tree all day. His arse hurt something fierce. Legs cramped. Aching back. The high summer sun burning his skin. Not even a day's rations to get him by. Get it outta the tree, yuh maggot, he was told. As if a random squirrel or bird was likely to scamper up to him and say hello.
And what for, eh? So the Boss could tell their numbers? Nar knew that within an hour. Two days ago. He could count, you know. Wasn't any hardship.
Whatever else the Boss wanted, Nar couldn't say. Watch and listen, he'd told the Orc. Watch what? Listen to what? His perch was a fair distance from the edge of the village, hard by a stream. Almost nobody ventured out this far. Nar could mark heads for his counting at this distance, but there weren't no golug-hai wandering off alone or what have you to this bend of the stream. Sure as shit weren't coming all this way to talk about the kinds of things the Boss wanted to hear.
Whatever that might be.
Sighing, he shifted position a mite. Put some pressure on the other side of his arse for a change. Just to mix it up. Even it out. Then a twig snapped, and he froze.
Down below him, he could see a lithe figure walking among the trees along the stream. He frowned. A goluglob? Alone? Really? Not a couple of their cursed warriors who might have something interesting to say? No, just his luck, Nar had to watch a stinking female gliding about in the graceful way they had, brushing her fingers across the bark of the trees in passing, a wistful expression on her face. Nar rolled his eyes and tried to keep his impatient huff quiet.
As she emerged from a cluster of trees into the small clearing directly below him, Nar narrowed his eyes. Something stirred in him, seeing the smooth, pale skin of her face and bare arms. Her unmarred flesh was so different from his own. She seemed otherworldly and remote. Tilting his head to the side and leaning a little so he could keep this strange vision in sight, Nar watched her drift past his tree. Long blonde hair fell smoothly down her back.
She moved slowly, as if inviting his eyes to linger upon her beauty in awestruck reverence. Even the light blue gown she wore shimmered in the dappled light as though she were an extension of the stream by which she walked.
Nariinkû was young by an Orc's reckoning, yet there was an almost instinctive recognition of this creature below him, as though his blood, if not his life, recalled such a time when he and she were of the same kind. A time before memory, when ancient golug-hai were taken and corrupted into ugliness and hate embodied. A time long forgotten.
His hands moved of their own accord, it seemed, for his thoughts were adrift, his eyes trained on the youthful-seeming goluglob and her oblivious wandering. When the shaft flew, he had no quarrel with his hands' mission.
She even squealed a bit when the arrow struck home.
Nar drew his best knife to finish her off. Out of respect, of course. Afterwards, while picking the gristle from his teeth, he had to admit he hadn't eaten such a lovely meal as this in a good long while.