Kora

The odds had shifted, now there were two of them.

Kora chewed her slab of meat slowly, thinking.  She liked to think when she was happy, and warm meat in her belly made her happier than anything else.  Thinking at other times was often just a chore.

The new arrival was sitting beside Willow the Magic Maker, the two of them talking back and forth in the common tongue.  Kora understood common better than she spoke it, but despite being relatively proficient for an ogrillon she was still just that - a proficient ogrillon.  The rapid flow of sibilant sounds between the two creatures was challenging, and Kora knew she couldn't chew, think, and try to decipher their words all at once.  So she sat back on her haunches and continued her chewing and thinking, watching the thin creatures out of the corner of her eye.  The new one caught her gaze and raised it's hands, showing it's lack of weapons for defense.  Then it gestured toward the tree trunk.  Kora followed the direction of the pointing finger and spotted a blade embedded in the bark part way up the tree.  The implied command in the gesture was clear, but she was still processing this new addition to their little group and had not yet fully decided whether she would follow it's commands or club it to death.  She grumbled and went back to her chewing and thinking as the two humanoids restarted their endless stream of words.

Two of them. 

Now that she could compare them to each other her best guess was that the first was female, although her breasts were small and didn't hang or swing nicely at all and her scent was faint.  The new one must be male, though he didn't look all that different from the female in Kora's eyes.  The most important point was that they were now two and she was still only one.  She could still club them both and be on her way, but the woman-thing, Willow, had made fire for her.  The taste of roasted meat on Kora's tongue right now came pretty darn close to offsetting her worries about these magic-making tiny things murdering her in her sleep.  Her situation still warranted some consideration though.  There had been no actual evidence so far that the new thing could make magic - that might mean he'd be less harmful if he got angry.  Perhaps Willow needed a mate, and since she was clearly so physically unattractive with her up-high breasts and almost no muscles or body hair to speak of Kora understood if she might want to ingratiate herself to this male.  The ogrillon rumbled again, deep in thought.

The last thing to consider is whether these creatures would lead her back to Bagronk.  Kora wasn't sure how she felt about that - on the one hand, she could always give them to the orcs and they might pay her a shiny coin or two.  On the other hand, in her time traveling with Daren she'd started to like the idea of leaving the Orc City.   She'd had no idea where they were going but, frankly, she had already decided that she liked it better than the cesspool they were coming from.  She'd been born in an orcish city, and until the past weeks had never known any other environment.  Here, on the road, the air was fresh and clean.  There were trees and grass and although they were stunted and unhealthy compared to the verdant forests in other parts of Locessa, to an orgrillon who had seen very little of either in her life they looked beautiful.  There was less food out here, but when found the meat was fresh instead of rancid, and the hunting itself was fun.  But most of all there were no orcs to taunt you and beat you at their whim. 

A thought occurred to her suddenly and Kora let out a long, low growl.  What if they were planning to take her back to Bagronk as a deserter and collect a reward themselves?  What if the orcs had sent them?  The two humanoids' seemingly incessant chatter actually ceased for a moment, both of them were looking at her.  Kora realized her teeth were bared and her hackles up.   She stared at them for a moment and reviewed the facts; she'd never seen them before in Bagronk, they were small, they were broken.  They would actually fare far worse than her in that town and since smaller humanoids were supposed to be smarter it seemed to make sense that they would be going away from the Orc City.  Maybe back to their land of magic that smells like sweet thngs. Maybe.....

A vivid memory suddenly flooded Kora's brain.  A small but significant moment in her childhood that had involved a human and the gift it had given her.  It was one of the few pleasant memories she had, the best actually. She was surprised that she'd not thought about that gift for some time.  The ogrillon perked up and smiled.  Maybe these humanoids would take her to their land, maybe they could be the key to her finding another Gift. 

Through with thinking, and for now also with eating, Kora rose and wiped the grease from her immense hands on her shapeless leather wrap.  As an afterthought she used any remaining residue to slick back her coarse mane of hair.  She pulled the remaining haunches of roasted orc meat over and set them beside Willow and her male, who's chatter had ceased once more and who now were looking at her with most peculiar expressions.  Kora reached up and effortlessly freed the small blade from it's sheath of oak trunk, handing it carefully to the male.

"It night, " she announced in her gutteral rendering of the common tongue, "we sleep one then one then one for watching for bad things.  Morning come.  We go.  Away from Bagronk. Yes?"

She nudged the steaming meat closer and waited for a response.