“Come on, you’re almost there,” he wheezed, steadying and guiding an unsteady griffon to the exit. “You sure you don’t want me to walk you to the inn?”
“Hah!” the cat-bird guffawed, dismissively waving a clawed hand. “This? This ain’t nothin’. There was one time I flew all the way across the Celestia sea in the middle of a typhoon; if I could handle that, I can handle a little bit of snow and wind.”
“Uh-huh,” Anon groused. Stopping just outside, he squatted down and pointed over at a three-story structure not a hundred yards away. “Just walk in a straight line and you’ll be fine ~ alright?”
Listing to one side and overcorrecting, the griffon lurched against him. “Got it. Thank Ms. Naggis for the hospitality.”
“It’s Mrs. and it’s Haggis - not Naggis,” he lamented, instinctively looking back and half-expecting to see her looming over them. “Safe travels.”
“Same to you,” the pickled chimera hummed, hobbling off into the night.
Pushing himself up, Anon lingered by the door until he saw the griffon reach the inn, take a tumble, get up, and eventually see himself inside. He’d always assumed that workin in a bar and dealing with customers who’d had one too many drinks would be a nightmare, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought it would be. Stepping back and into the tavern, he closed and bolted the door behind himself.
“That everyone?” a familiar, gruff voice called.
“Yup,” he shot back, glancing to the side, “except for Dovah.”
Not getting an immediate response, he strolled past several tables to the far corner of the room. While Haggis would only allow customers to sleep in the tavern under extraordinary circumstances, there was one exception - Dovah. Seated with his back to the wall, the monstrous effigy of a dragon had sat unmoving for the entirety of his time in Equestria. He’d only asked about the gargantuan statue a single time, but his savior-turned-host’s answer had been cryptic and stern enough to keep him from inquiring a second time.
‘Don’t mess with Dovah ~ got it?’ Haggis had told him.
Ever since then, he hadn’t questioned Dovah’s history, significance, or why the stone it was hewn from was always strangely warm. Stopping before the great carved wyrm, he patted its thigh and brushed a bit of dust off its crossed arms. Honestly, regardless of where Haggis had picked the thing up, he thought it was a pretty nifty aesthetic choice for the place.
Turning in place, he examined the interior of the tavern. Most of the tables were already wiped down, all the tankards and plates had been bussed to the back, and the only thing left to do was to place all the stools and chairs into their proper places. As he went to wrap things up, attending to the final details before he hung up his apron, the sound of heavy hooffalls caught his ear.
“Everything alright?” he asked, knowing just who’d trotted in on him.
Haggis drifted to the bar and came to a halt. “Aye, everything’s fine, lad. Care for a drink?”
The question piqued his interest and derailed his thoughts. Haggis wasn’t much of a drinker, nor was she one to socialize much, which made the offer exceptionally uncommon. Strolling over to her and pulling up a stool, he eased himself down and placed his trusty dishrag on the bar.
Having to practically lay down to reach the lower cabinets behind the bar, she reappeared with a dusty bottle in her hoof. “Ya drinkin’ or not?”
He hastily nodded and shifted in his seat. “Sure. Special occasion?”
“Something like that,” she noted, somehow managing to lip her stogie and uncork the bottle with her teeth.
As she twisted and plucked two relatively clean glasses from a shelf behind herself, his eyes wandered to the wall behind her. In spite of the tavern being stocked with all sorts of spirits, he was left to believe that most of the liquor she had was mostly just for show. Many of the bottles hadn’t been touched in what had to be years, and he’d always been curious about them.
“Here, lad,” she huffed, sliding a shot glass filled with amber liquid over to him.
He lifted the small glass to her and smiled. “What’re we toasting to?”
“Today,” she began, nodding to a shattered executioner’s sword perched above the front door, “that.”
Looking over at the sundered weapon, he knit his brow. “That have a story behind it?”
“Aye,” she somberly replied, knocking back the slug as if it was water. “Aye, it does…”
He waited patiently for an explanation that didn’t come and watched her pour herself another drink. “Care to tell it?”
An amber glow bathed her face as she took a long draw of her cigar. “You know the deal…”
“Fine,” he lamented, “I’ll cut wood tomorrow.”
One of the most infuriating things about Haggis was that she was remarkably tight-lipped about her past. In the months he’d spent under her room and in her employ, he’d gleaned perilously little about who she was and what she’d done with herself prior to saving him from an unfortunate fate - that said, the few details she had given him were enthralling to a fault. She’d apparently been an adventurer for most of her life, but that’s about all he knew.
A grin split her muzzle and she seated herself opposite from him. “That’ll do. So that blade,” she continued, peering into her glass, “almost took me head.”
“Almost?” he hesitantly parroted.
Smiling all the broader, she pulled at her collar to reveal a bare line of scarred flesh just above her shoulder. “Almost…”
He gulped, taken aback by what had to have been a grizzly wound. “So what happened?”
Her brow lifted, she flashed her teeth, and smoke billowed from her snout as she snickered. “Full of questions tonight ~ aren’t we?”
Moments from asking her how he couldn’t have more questions, he stopped himself. She seemed to be in a decent humor, neither bitching about the till from the evening or having had to deal with any ornery customers, but that could change in an instant. Strumming the fingers of one hand on the bar, he downed his shot and gave her a moment.
A burning blossomed in his throat, made all the worse by the plumes of smoke from her stogie, yet the warmth which radiated in his belly helped to stave off the chill in the room. “If you wanted to oblige me with a story, what would it cost me?”
“Hmmmm,” she thoughtfully mused, stroking her chin. “I reckon washing the linens would be a fair trade.”
“But it’s the dead of winter!” he groused.
“Aye, and what of it?” she countered, staring him down.
Not wanting to deal with her laundry but wanting - no, needing to know how she’d skirted death, he resignedly sighed. “Alright, I’ll wash ‘em this weekend.”
Rocking back and looking more smug than ever, she took her cigar in one forehoof and tapped free its cap of ash. “So there we were, right in the -”
“We?” he urged.
“Don’t interrupt, lad,” she tutted, waving her leg to a vista only she could see. “So we were all lined up and ready to meet our makers. We tried everything to get ourselves free, but they were a crafty lot - had us all shackled and trussed up like Hearth’s Warming hams. There ‘aven’t been many times when I feared - truly feared for my life, but feelin’ the cold touch of the chopping block against my neck was definitely one of ‘em…”
He subconsciously leaned forward and over the bar, hanging on her every word and waiting patiently for her to take another puff of her cigar. He’d had little doubt that she’d been through a good number of scrapes before, bearing the scars of old wounds and a temperament one could only earn from a hard-fought life, although he wouldn’t have guessed that she’d actually faced execution at some point. Waving away wisps of smoke, he held his breath and forced himself to stay quiet.
“I swear, the headsmare could barely lift that thing,” she chuckled, making a small motion to the shattered sword, “but she got it up clear enough. Swear on me mum, I don’t know what came over me, but a bit of quick thinking was the only thing between me and losing a bit off the top.”
Another long draw and another shot left him in suspense. Had he had the slightest inkling that she’d regale him with one of her tales, he would have brought his journal to write everything down - alas, with hindsight being twenty-twenty and having had no time to prepare, he envisioned the scene unfolding. As she set her glass down, her grin faltered.
“You know what I did, lad?” she breathed.
He slowly turned his head from side to side, keeping his eyes on her all the while. “No…”
“I told the bugger I was pregnant,” she snickered, “and she believed me - yeah, it was only enough to make her pull her swing for a second, but that second was all I needed.”
Imagining the great, hulking mare turning the tables on what would have been her executioner, he swallowed hard. “And then what happened?”
“I broke her sword, beat the everliving tar out of her, and freed my crew - easy as,” she proudly proclaimed. “Ended up taking that splintered piece of scrap as a souvenir.”
He yearned - oh how he yearned for more details, to learn who she’d been captured by and why, but she was finished. Corking the bottle and stashing it back under the bar, she twisted and lazily plodded away. This was how it always played out - she’d only barely reveal some gleaming gem from her past, giving him a fleeting glance of some grand adventure she’d had, and conclude as abruptly as she’d begun. As infuriating as it was to be taunted by her exploits, he held onto hope that someday, perhaps if or when he was lucky enough for her to warm up to him, she’d give him a fuller picture.
“Funniest part is, even though I didn’t realize it at the time,” she noted, stopping with one hoof on the door to the kitchen, she peered back at him, “was that I actually was pregnant…”
And with that infuriating tease, leaving him on the mother of all cliffhangers, she disappeared from sight. Badering her would prove counterintuitive, goading her to keep even more reserved than she already was, so it was all he could do to get up, walk around the bar, and grab the first bottle of liquor he could place his hands on. Someday - god help him, someday he’d finish hearing the rest of that particular story…