01/20/22 Snippet, DESERT.

Decisions!

“You know, you shoulda asked us to help out right from the start, neighbor,” Shiner said a few hours later. “Sure, we would’ve said no. At first. But what did you have to lose?”

Joe sipped more of the brew elves called ‘tea,’ frowned, and then winced. The halflings had stitched him up while he was out, so he had missed that; but having stitches wasn’t fun, either. Which was why the tea. Everybody knew that elf tea was the best for healing the body up quick. But nobody actually liked the taste.

“I wasn’t filled with an inclination to plead my case,” he said. “A fellow gets a slave collar put on him, you can bet he’s soon thinking real hard about what he’ll do when that collar comes off. Didn’t feel it right of me to get in your way.”