“Ahem. The Tusk?”

  “Yup!”

  No point in trying to deny it, so Lawrah and Githarie nodded as if there was nothing wrong with it. And there really wasn’t – there was no decree in Horde Law restricting consumption of alcohol to only after a certain age – and anyway if father was gonna be stern then just put the hypocrite on blast about the assortments of liquor on his yacht. They had seen it earlier this rote. And had some of it too, without telling him, of course.

  It was really a performative test. It wasn’t that Durban Varoka hated alcohol – far from it, he loved it too – he just hated drunkenness.

  But they seemed more awake and alert than he expected. Certainly, they weren’t swaying or slurring. But why were they so excited? They weren’t going to the festival were they? “Hmph. Had fun?” No tone of concern, but neither did he smile. Instead, he crossed his arms.

  So Githarie and Lawrah, who had stealthily shared another bump of their stash while skulking through the library looking for Zhak, before zealously sketching together further details for the game plan, launched into their routine.

  “But atul left for the festival!” Githarie. Remember not to call it the razza.

  “Yeah, and we gesh our limits,” Don’t let Lawrie lie directly, she’s terrible at it.

  “So, we’re just gonna have a quiet zug’s late rote in.” Let Githarie do the lying, even though she was quite poor at it too. Blink, blink, blink. But to Raigo it looked like she was just fluttering her eyelashes, and not knowing her tell, he found it precious. And it put him off guard.

  Raigo narrowed his eyes. They might not have been the worst liars, but it was the Chief’s job to sniff out muttshit. They were still dressed as they were in school, which did put Raigo at ease. But why was Zhak with them?

  Zhakkathan, skilled in persuasion and noting the chance, came in for the goal, “-we’re gonna tutor Githarie.” The only way to make this convincing was to blame it all on her. “Githie’s been missing so many classes and has been late so many times that she’s really, really fallen behind. Lawry and I-” he motioned to Law “-are gonna catch her up! I mean, they say that teaching is one of the best forms of learning, don’t they?” Wasn’t this the original plan in the first place? What were they doing?

  Damn he was good, Githarie had mentioned her plan before they disembarked but she had totally forgotten about this supposed tutelage after her fall. Should have just left it to the nakaz geshzugas boi in the first place.

  Lawrah nodded vigorously. Githarie shrugged and flashed her pearly whites, and added “Sha know me, Durban! Gezzno nakaz zug, hah. Master Striglin called me a slacker this early, it made me realize - yeah, I really gotta krimp my shi- ah, my grades together. I mean up. Krimp my grades up. Don’t wanna flunk!” Oof, she was really playing it by ear now.

  One of Raigo’s eyebrows rose, but the story tracked: he knew that Zhak and Lawrah were in fact good students. There was something off about Githarie right now. Raigo could tell she was being phony. Maybe she was just embarassed?

  But he slumped his shoulders, sighed and smirked. The truth was he didn’t even care if they went to the razza. He knew that children would be children. He was concerned about a potential crisis emerging. He was Durban. But in the end the Chief was not as authoritative as the title suggested. He was ultimately powerless to stop the bois and zugs from doing whatever they wanted to do.

  Youth was freedom.

  “Well, Githarie, I do hope you have a productive tutelage. I’m sure you’re in fine hands. But are you sure you’re all in a state to sit still to cram?” It certainly was cramming by the way they painted a picture of Githarie’s rekt grades. “After all you just came from the Tusk, and, well, I heard atul got pretty rambunctious there this late,” he narrowed his eyes, “kicking off the, what did you kids call it? The razza.”

  Githarie crinkled the bridge of her nose and waved her hand a little too hard. “N-aah. It was pretty tame and ting, actually.” So, so blatant.

  Disbelieving, but admiring her cheekiness, he finally smiled and said, “Aight.”

  He pushed the door open further with his back; arms still folded over chest. “Hungry? Eat spinsum?”

  “Ooh! Mog!” The wondrous brunch had not yet been forgotten by Zhak, “Could do with a late rote snack.” Perfect distraction!

  So, the gurls ran up the stairs to Lawrah’s room to zug out, like zugs do.

  Lawrah’s room was more modest than believed by most Rotherans. Raigo provided, he did not spoil. But she still had a queen-sized bed frame with a thick polyester down mattress, her own arcane tome, a small tribe of plushies, and not a huge one but still a walk-in closet, but the most wonderful thing, to Githarie, had to be the private ensuite bathroom.

  Lawrah took a long time rummaging through her wardrobe, and Githarie, who liked to already be ready for whatever the rote had coming for her right from the early, started whistling idly as the seconds passed. But then she remembered something.

  The book she smuggled about in her overalls front pocket! It was her magical pouch, it was so baggy and loose and the pocket so sunken deep that she could store so many things in it. A purse, but way more convenient. Other than P.E, where she had set it down before the climb, had she been carrying it around with her this whole time? She got so drunk she completely forgot and had snuck it past Meldy again just now! Once when fetching Zhak and the other when leaving. She cackled mischievously to herself at getting away with it. Thrice.

  Well, Lawrah was going to take a while. Why not crack it open? Running her fingers down the macabre tome’s bindings, she hesitated. Would she awaken some sort of demonic presence?

  Nah, that’s not magick, that’s just superstition.

  With how pepped up she was, her eyes darted from paragraph to paragraph, not necessarily comprehending everything, but just enough to move forward. She didn’t bother to refer to the addendums and skipped the prologue entirely. Well, she tried to skim it, but after a yawn, gave up.

  Lawrah jumped out – posing with one hip pushed out and both arms raised – in a flimsy dress, with a ridiculously low-cut V that reached her navel, and it made her look all the lankier.

  “Nuk.” Githarie stuck her tongue out and gave a thumbs down.

  She then plowed onward without realizing she had jumped ahead a few pages, and then her attention suddenly rapt. Well, happy birth- day? Nah, these halflings couldn’t possibly celebrate a birth-rote for a whole half revolution, what were they, Godlike Oligarchs? And what was the point of that, might as well just party the whole rev. Then it dawned upon her that these halflings must live in equatorial regions – it was called Middle Earth after all – like the places lost to Reath. Day just meant rote back then. Right. Anyway, Happy Birth-rote to you too, Bilbo!

  Lawrah was really taking her dear sweet time. She thought of the aurora australis when Gandalf– he did seem pretty ghash, a magick master, he musta been real geshzugas like Zhak – set off his fireworks display. Fire. But she felt a little unnerved that he had made fireworks in the shape of a dragon.

  She found the rich halfling’s speech a little bit long winded, wasn’t this book supposed to be forbidden? Where was the action? The conflict? Huh? Why would any person ditch their own birth-rote party, Githarie was just too young to gesh. What gullible nakaz creatures! Ai, don’t these halflings know how camouflage transmogrification worked? Gimb him, sha lazy halflings. Preach Gandalf, scold him for playing such a dick prank on your friends! Though, she also couldn’t understand why he was giving birth-rote presents instead of taking them. And besides, these gifts were so damn trolly. It seemed like Bilbo was mocking those he gifted.

  This Frodo character was truly quite the dawdler. What are they blathering about? Ai-sha, what was wrong with all these gossipy halflings. They certainly had too much time on their hands. And why did this Sam like – she shuddered – elves so much? They don’t even sail, they ride those beastly dragons. Oh, finally. Gandalf, at least he was a nakaz bit more ghash than the halflings, all mysterious. Welcome back, wizard.

  But she was interrupted before long, for Lawrah had jumped back out from her wardrobe, sauntering about in a dangerously short miniskirt. The very lowest contour of her butt peeked past the hem – she had worn this a long time ago and outgrew it – but it gave off the look of a fresh school zug, naive and curious. To try and balance out her scantily dressed bottom, she took a long-sleeved form fitting top .

  Githarie cupped her mouth with one hand as if to amplify her voice and droned, “Nu-uk. What, do sha wanna look like a slut?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ah, gross Lawry!”

  “Ya skai sha hai, I don’t see you getting dressed. Are sha just wearing that?”

  Githarie, not quite as fashionable as Lawrah, had only thrown on a simple overall. Lawrah noted, however, that the overall was backless, the suspender straps crossing together to form an X on her exposed back, and although the front flap was pulled far up past her breasts, it still left her flanks exposed, allowing a small profile peek of her bosom, known among orcans as ‘side boob’. So Lawrah assumed Githarie likely had the same intentions as her. It really took one to know one.

  She winked, “I came prepared.” She had stripped off the top underneath her overalls back at the Tusk and swung it wildly like a whirligig’s blades above her. She swung a little too hard and it zipped away. But Githarie, always a fan of improvisation, only took it in stride.

  Lawrah usually made fun of Githarie’s mousy attire, but this time even she had to admit: it was a cute look. But she had to disarm her.

  “Wait, wait, I think I know whatsha missing.” She went back to rummaging.

  Githarie returned to her book, but it was starting to bore her, so she quickened to speed reading. She cared not for these Proudfoots, or Brandybucks, or Tooks, or Gamgees, and especially not the Sackville-Baggins. These halflings were wealthier than elves!

  “Oi, nurd. Get outta that book - what - is that elfskin leather? Ugh, where’d sha get that.”

  “The library, duh.”

  “Oh.”

  “Forbidden section, hehe.”

  “Get the fuck out of here, zug. Meldy will rekdar sha if she gimbs out.”

  “But she wo-on’t,” the iconic Thraxes sing-song lilt.

  “-mph,” Lawrah threw her old sweater right into her face.

  A sweater! Oh my god. True ancient cashmere?! It was a relic! It was a long time since Githarie wore anything with even comfortably stitched sleeve joints, but this went to another level. Oh, it was so soft! Githarie immediately began plotting ways to nick it.

  As if reading her mind, “Take it. Doesn’t fit me anymore, last time I wore it was like,” she tilted her head to count, “like ten revs ago! Besides, it’s gonna get cold, mog.”

  She let the straps of her overall drop to her waist and pulled it over her head. It was simple black, re-dyed with charcoal particulate a long time ago, and so the black was faded and worn with gray patches, but that only made the fabric all the more fascinating. She noted as she pulled her overall straps back on that still, while it hid her sideboob – she was kind of excited to stuff something under, try and make her bosom look bigger than it was – besides, black really did go well with everything. Black was gof. She rolled the sleeves up. While it made her skin look paler, the bubbling half-life of cocaethylene in her system encouraged her to just tell herself: fuck it, we ball. This was what made her unique! She was proud to be different.

  Skai! The orc gurl hadn’t picked out an outfit yet? Hai, how much time does a zug gotta kill? Back to reading.

  Then finally, she stumbled upon an alien script she had never seen before. She was entranced, these elegant, curly, calligraphic runes! How pretty. Maybe she could get Dey to tattoo it on her.

  She could not recognize even one of these runes, but to her surprise, she could read the oral transliteration word for word. Just simple orcish! She mouthed them out one by one.

  “Ash-” da numba one.

  “-Whazzat, Gee?”

  “Nothin’, Lawrie. Reading.” Lawrah went back to her indecision.

  Lowering her voice as if speaking an evil language, Githarie continued-

  “Nazg”- Bling. Her precious bling.

  “Durb”- rules.

  “Atuluk” - atul, everybody. Atuluk was the long and formal way to say it, to respectfully address an audience.

  “Ash nazge gimbatul.” Er- da numba one bling to find y’all?

  “Ash nazge thrak” – to bring – “atuluk.” One bling to bring them all-

  “Agh” – and – “burzum” – in the shade – “ishi” – in, er – “krimpatul.”

  Tied up in knots?

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Respectfully, da bling rules everybody. Da numba one bling finds y’all, da numba one bling brings y’all. And in shade ties y’all up in knots.

  What? That doesn’t mean anything at all.

  Oh wait. It was right here after the footnote.

  One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness, bind them. She felt a slight chill. It was a bit ominous.

  “Are you done yet?”, Gith complained, as she slammed the book shut, sick of trying to concentrate on all the little details the book was throwing at her.

  Finally on her third outfit – Lawrah was now wearing a wraparound halter top and a long skirt with a very high slit, all the better to reveal her long legs – the Princess of Rothera felt ready to go. Unnecessarily long slits, thought Githarie, but the fit was pretty fiyah. Ain’t holy fiyah but let her think that- we gotta leeroy.

  “Kop, babe. Kop.”

  Now they stood side by side in front of the mirror, coquettishly comparing themselves to each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking. Orcans didn’t have much in the way for makeup, but their flourishing chlorophyll skin usually held up, protected as they were from ultraviolet by their skin moss. So, it only came down to just a few things.

  As Lawrah brushed mascara on her lashes, Githarie had to wince. “I don’t know howsha do that without feeling like you’re going to poke yourself in the eye.”

  “Ai-sha, grow up, Githie.”

  Githarie skipped straight to the eyeshadow and eyeliner. Add some more black. Maybe a hint of purple. Yeah, violet.

  “Easy with that!”

  But Githarie was going all gof now. She leaned her waist back and brushed her fingers through her hair, countenance dead serious. Gof.

  “Kop gof.” Lawrah agreed, as she brushed a much more vibrant cerulean-teal on her lids.

  “We are so back,” she was half-afraid she might never make it out of the Tusk.

  They checked themselves out, blowing kisses, casting poses, brushing their hair every which way to see which parting matched best. Then, remembering earlier this rote, Githarie winked at Lawrah and began to do a ‘moonwalk’.

  “Hah! We haven’t done that since we were nakaz baby zugs.”

  “Forgot sha moves?”

  Now they did the moonwalk together after putting on a track on Lawrah’s black disc player, which they kept playing, before Githarie backed herself all the way into Lawrah, who then grabbed her and was about to tickle her before-

  “Oh, no, no, no, I know what sha up to, hai. Won’t get me!” Lawrah chased her around the room for a bit, and eventually they both collapsed on Lawrah’s bed, wheezing with laughter.

  “Let’s go! Leeroy!”

  “We’re forgetting spinsum.”

  “Right.” Lawrah pulled out what remained of the baggie.

  To the zugs’ dismay, Deyandra’s first payload for them had been drained to nearly empty what with all the passing around at the Tusk and Tooth. Githarie punched Lawrah on the shoulder, “Why didsha let Zholl take it all?”

  “I didn’t!”

  Waste not, want not. They emptied the pouch and chopped up two fat rails for the road.

  “Skai!”

  “-Sha hai!”

  As they hurried away without even letting Chief Raigo know of their departure, the black disc still spinning into the needle, all the better to make him think they were still there.

  When they reached the Cornucopia, the old Fucks House, where an orcan could get anything that an orcan could give a fuck about – why they called it the Fucks House – they found little Zhennie Zhing morosely filling a sudoku, quite miffed that she was going to miss most of the razza for Cornucopia duty. When she saw the Chief’s daughter she shot straight to attention, both vicariously for these lucky zugs who could go first, but also because the durb boss’s daughter had just showed up.

  The Fucks House Cornucopia very much resembled the Great Tavern and the School, but it was a great deal larger and had an even taller pentagonal prismal hall situated next to it. Here were stored the most valuable treasures of Rothera, freely loaned to whoever needed it.

  “Off to the razza?”, she piped up excitedly.

  “Nah, just goin’ for a ride,” said Lawrah, a bit anxious that excitable and indiscrete Zhennie could very well blab to father, in which case Lawrah would be so rekdar.

  Zhennie’s shoulders slumped a bit, but then she perked up glad that she wasn’t the only one missing the festivities.

  “Comin’ right up!”

  She jumped into the back and wheeled out two cafe racers.

  The cafe racers – stripped down motorbikes with all unnecessary components removed for lightness but the primary engine and drivetrain monstrously tuned up – were the preferred mount of the Rothera. First, the dire lack of materials – they were just a jellyfishing and aquaculture village, not the underground lake-mine complexes of Vostok – meant that the minimalistic ethos of the cafe racer fit perfectly with Rotheran needs. There wasn’t very far to ride to anyway, it was an island. Pounding rocks to dust and mixing a crude concrete sludge, the village had paved crisscrossed roads in a completely uncoordinated manner. It was just dirt and snow underneath after all, perhaps a little bit of the thaw moss that now seemed to creep everywhere on the uninhabited mainland coasts. Plots of land meant for agriculture would be plowed with rotting algae, and not always to beneficial effect, sometimes even poisoning the soil with toxins. Then nothing could grow. It was all very experimental for the young village.

  Better to just pave it all.

  As she was wheeling out the first bike, she looked at Githarie and Lawrah, still slightly coked out and drunk, but at least not so much that they couldn’t hide it sufficiently- from the Durban. Zhennie wasn’t a noob. Zhennie liked to party. And so, she could tell that they were definitely going to the razza.

  She leaned one elbow on a handlebar, “Some ride sha goin’ on? Weren’t sha zugs at the Tusk?” She did her best to mimic Lawrah’s dad, but it wasn’t quite spot on, maybe with more practice though, “Don’t drink and ride!” It was a hard impression to do for excitable Zhennie, Chief Raigo just said things very plainly, calmly, and slowly, with a soft voice.

  Zhennie took a page from her boss, “Listen, Lawrah, sha gesh me since I was a real nakaz zug, and I ain’t gonna snitch on ya, mog.” She put three outstretched fingers on her chest, her pinky and thumb folded behind.

  “And I really wanted ta go to da razza too, but”- she swung her knee a bit to kick the floor, staring at her shoe, she was really laying on the guilt trip thick, “-but I gotta do thi-is. Diu!” She swore out in frustration.

  The cry for attention worked, Githarie and Lawrah paused to talk more.

  “Aw, Zhennie! Come here, gurl. Let me give you a hug.” Lawrah was so sweet. Sweet- or diplomatic. Zhennie had just implied she had leverage on her.

  “Ay, I bet it’s not even gonna be all that! Sha won’t be missin’ no - thing, zug. By the way, gurl, sha kicks are fiyah.”

  “That’s real ghash of sha to say, Githarie. But-”

  Her eyes stood still from bouncing about the room looking at things to talk about so that she might be saved from her interminable boredom as she realized she had a directive to fulfill and here was as good of a chance as any to score some points.

  “Hey, aren’t sha zugs kinda worried about the orcan serial killer?”

  Everyone had heard of the orcan serial killer. The orcan serial killer kidnapped young orcan zugs and sometimes even bois too. They were never heard from again. What the orcan serial killer did with the zugs, no one knew. All they did know was that zugs were disappearing, all across Reath. A lot of the time more conservative and traditionalist orcans would say- this is simply the price of orcan freedom. Orcans get into sticky situations and get themselves killed. It happens. But if so, some evidence of how these zugs died should also have been found. None ever had. So, the Horde was forced to conclude that what it did know was that orcan girls were disappearing, nowhere to be found. Here one rotation, gone the next. It should have scared the shit out of all the zugs, but it didn’t. They were orcans.

  “Ain’t no such thing!”

  “Sha crazy, Zhennie! Stop reading conspiracy theories.”

  But Zhennie just nodded and smiled and said, “Be careful out there!” For she was the conspiracy.

  “Make sure to return the bikes when you’re done! Or sha durban dad will have my hide.”

  “Mog, Zhennie. Ok, we gon’ gul out.”

  “Have a good ride!”

  Straddled on their ghash bikes, sans helmet it goes without saying, they were revving and ready to go when-

  A stealthy little scurrying Zhak scuttled up to them, “Wait! Wait! I’m coming too!”

  Githarie, leaning on her handlebars, made sure to give introverted Zhak an out, just in case: “Sha sure you’re ghash for this? Don’t sha hate these things?”

  “Whaddaya talkin’ about, I love music.”

  “Ok, come along, nakaz Zhak.” Yas! Githarie was glad to have her favorite brother there. He leapt behind Githarie, grabbing her snugly by the waist.

  “Lok leeroy, zugs!”

  With a few revs, a kick of the kickstand, and for Lawrah a little wheelie, they drove off, wind whipping their hair, cool displaced air breezed their face, through the twilight to the bamboo forest where the festival was hidden and being held – the running bamboo forest.

  Zhennie sighed and wrapped her arms around herself, swooning at the durban’s daughter. That sexy zug-zug, ugh, the things that Zhennie would do to her! She’d show her a whole new world. Zhennie knew she could do it; she had turned far too many gurls to have any doubt left.

  Lawrah had pilfered another of the Chief’s bottles when she went to retrieve her cannabis.

  Though, if Lawrah did ask him, he would have forbidden it, because he was afraid that permissiveness would lead to a slippery slope. He preferred keeping rules unspoken. He didn’t like to talk about nasty business. He hated arguing.

  He thought to himself- see? He was still hip to it.

  But no gadgets or gizmos like Doraemon, just zug stuff – lip balm, handkerchiefs, bottle of water, and of course, the book.

  Her hammerspace.

  Her gaze skipped along Concerning [Halflings], absorbing nothing, then glanced at Concerning Pipe-Weed, but assumed she already knew everything that was to be written upon gimbing the word ‘nicotiana’. She thought to herself, that’s not how it’s spelled, is it? Of the Ordering of the Shire stood no chance, and so, Githarie missed some very important context - Of the Finding of the Ring, the story of the Old Halfling, the book that the Godlike Who Cannot Be Named For Legal Reasons actually wanted to write, for it was his bedtime story to his own son. Of course, it was the Lord of the Rings that truly made his fortune. She loved the map though!

  He was hesitant to leave. And Githarie should have been more hesitant before casting that judgment.

  She had completely missed the note about how birth-rotes worked in halfling culture.

  Alright then, keep your secrets! But this was not said by Frodo originally, it was Pippin. ‘All right, Cousin Frodo! You can keep your secret for the present, if you want to be mysterious.’

  The situational irony was completely lost on her.

  I want a gurl with a short skirt and a long jacket.

  All orcans wanted to individuate, find some way in which to be special, but when the base template of their essence – built off of the quad-helical essence store of all the lost cryptids that they transmogrified endless phenotypes from – was exactly the same, it meant that in a sense, they could not help but all be the same. None of their mutant essence was left, for being dipped in the vat truly dissolved the former self entirely. If the process was observed there was a definite period in which the mutant was dead but the orcan to emerge could not be called alive. Reborn without their memory, the mutant and the orcan were arguably two completely different people.

  The Horde Master had scribbled it into a footnote, well in advance before the first appearance in the text, just to remind himself later how he had built the orcish lingo.

  Though no such thing as an evil language existed, as evil is represented by meanings, not the runes that represent them. Evil can be expressed in any language. Like virtue, it didn’t require complicated concepts.

  Githarie was using the word in a literal sense, not a figurative sense.

  Does it?

  It would take her a very long time to eventually finish the saga.

  It was considered slightly offensive to try and rub plant matter on the skin to create the appearance of a good burz, especially on the face.

  It wasn’t a proper moonwalk, she really was just shuffling her feet backwards, but the mirror was not full length and so from their reflection it looked like she was gliding backwards anyway.

  It was the one they always danced to- Billie Jean.

  You could say they were being smooth criminals.

  That was not why they called it the Fucks House; it was a retroactively invented history. The truth was much more boring. The place had been named after a Godlike named Vivian Fuchs.

  From each according to ability, to each according to need.

  Not a bad way to communicate, but easy to attempt, hard to actually pull off when dealing with matters of love.

  Zhennie was the real ghash, not posers like Githarie or Lawrah who were still trying to pretend to be something that they were not. She really did care about Rothera and she chose to work under the Chief not just because she knew she could learn a lot, but because she wanted to make a difference. She wanted purpose. Also, the job had perks, like Raigo getting vig on the scavengers scoring an abandoned shipment of fresh white Nike Air Force Ones still packaged, buried in the muds of a hurricane long ago. Lawrah had a pair but dared not wear them, ever. They were white. Raigo appreciated Zhennie in a lot of ways, sometimes more than Lawrah, who was too swept up in trying to become popular when the durban daughter usually never could be – such was the hard way of politics – Zhennie got things done and helped him out. They were a team. Lawrah didn’t understand the only orcan who had that true dynamic with her father before was her mother Uruyeh. As for Lawrah and Raigo, they had more of a friendly adversarial relationship. They were playing opposing black and white, they were not on the same team, even though they both wanted the same thing. So Zhennie scored five pairs of AF1s and that’s why she wore them everywhere she went. So comfy!

  The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.

  Zhennie had been recruited to a secret organization that said they served the greater interests of the Horde- they had her at hello.

  An orcan serial killer should be fundamentally impossible after the Horde Master struck the offending epi-essential sociopathy triggering alleles from the archive cells.

  Yet there was not a single instance which the orcans could point to where they could gather any evidence of such happening.

  The abundance of vehicles left by the Godlike Beings to scavenge, and the simplicity in the Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, both holy fire and electric, meant that Lawrah was riding a scavenged and rebuilt Royal Enfield Himalayan that had its forks, brakes, suspension all worn to the nub and replaced one by one before Raigo finally scrapped the engine and replaced it with a new one. Raigo really liked this ride, he nicknamed it ‘Theseus’- he had pretty good Godlike knowledge for an orcan. Githarie and Zhak rode an orcan forged copy of the Triumph Bonneville design.

  Zhennie, with her innocent and sunny demeanor, would lure other gurls just looking for a cheerful friend in, reeling them in closer rote by rote until the chance moment of ‘unexpected’ intimacy, whereby she would put the moves on aggressively. It always worked. Miss Zhing really had the rizz. And also, being the Chief’s most trusted assistant, loved to spill the tea with the olog durb so that he would spill her back some of the most delicious information a Rotheran could get. She and Raigo got along because they both shared mutual hatred of those delinquents, the Lions. For Zhennie, especially Zholl. Even though they were cousins – Whirligig Master Zhing had married another Luyee. Ooh yes, she hated Zholl so, so much.