Dramatis Personae: Mallow Hamfast: a halfling grocer, grocery store, and cargo ship. Mishek: a young ent, well meaning, somewhat lost. Fidelja Strifehammer: cyborg dwarf, has a cool robot arm, is not otherwise cool at all.
There is a crowded, noisy ore-smelting chamber full of dwarves and the occasional uncomfortably-hunched human. The chamber is one of hundreds scattered throughout an icy asteroid ring surrounding a fairly useless methane-gas giant. Iron is cheap in outer space, much cheaper than ice, but still, even in ice-mining operations, iron is necessary, and so the ore smelting chamber runs continuously. A magical portal crackles to life in a corner of the chamber. This is unplanned by any of the occupants, and intersects— disastrously— an extremely large, extremely full crucible of molten ore. It begins to crack and split, gold-hot ore spattering to the ground, as the portal expands. There are cries of alarm as the workers begin to notice.
A young ent steps out of the portal. His barky skin is smooth as a birch, tan with patches of peachy-gold, and his mane of green leaves swishes around his face. He flinches at the heat right next to him and looks over at the split, spilling container as the portal winks out. Eyes widening, he dances quickly away from the spreading pool of molten metal and bumps into the solid, unmoving mass of a dwarf who comes up to just above his waist and is staring at the catastrophe he's unintentionally caused. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he says, turning, and sees the rest of the angry crowd. "Oh. Oh dear. I'm really terribly sorry."
Fidelja flinches at the sudden surge of angry voices, hand and claw moving automatically to partly block her screen. "What, no, nothing, I've got this!" About two seconds later, it kicks in that that nobody is looking at her. About two seconds after that, her work station melts. "Okay, that was not my fault," she mutters, to nobody in particular, as she backsteps quickly away from the spreading pool of molten metal. A looming figure bumps into her from behind. Tearing her eyes from the sight of the bisected crucible (she is like, NINETY percent certain this is not her fault), she looks up, and up. It's a... tree... man. He looks very apologetic. He has leaves on his head. The leaves do not look apologetic, but they do look like leaves. Fidelja looks from the ent, to the growing ring of her angry coworkers--the ones that aren't frantically trying to contain the damage. She looks back at the ent. He still looks very apologetic. They are going to eat him alive. She tugs the braids in her beard once, then blows out a breath. "You!" she barks, in her best take-charge voice. She locks her claw around his arm. It's sort of like grabbing a branch, in that she has the sense it's not moving far unless it wants to. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Come with me right this minute!" So saying, she beelines into the crowd, heading for the exit, tugging the ent after her, face furrowed in a frown, projecting 'yes I know what I am doing here, trust me' for all she is worth.
The workers are split between containing the spill, keeping their own work stations from overturning in the chaos, or bristling angrily at the strange new intruder. "Hey, what the hell is that," demands a short human woman, jogging after them with a clipboard. "Is that a monster? Or a guest? Who's going to pay for this?"
"No no," Mishek says, towed along in the dwarf's wake, "not a monster, just an ent, I promise. Um, like a dryad, sort of, and I definitely didn't mean to disrupt anything here, um..." He looks around at the dark chamber they're just leaving, the equally dark corridor they're entering. "Are we underground? What planet are we on?"
Fidelja kicks her foot at a bark-covered ankle. This mostly results in a sore foot. "He's an ent," Fidelja repeats to the woman. "It's like a dryad. And do I look like an accountant to you? Go ask Sverik about that; he's the numbers guy." Picking up her pace while trying not to look like she is picking up her pace, she bolts through the door.
"Oh, she left," Mishek says, looking over his shoulder as the scary person with the clipboard turns away at the door. "Um, I really am sorry about that, did I say? I don't think that fellow was a very good wizard at all, I'm sure there's meant to be some kind of failsafe in a portal spell like that to keep you from coming out halfway through a wall or something." He's talking rather quickly, and his free hand is cupped protectively around the budding bromeliad rooted on the sash across his chest. "The difficulty is, I don't actually have much money at the moment, I used most of it to pay him. Um. I don't suppose anyone would accept payment by song? I know a number of dwarven work songs and several historical ballads..."
Still marching along the corridor, Fidelja looks up at her captive in bewilderment. "Do you know 'Gold, gold, gold?'" she asks, before she can think better of it. That had always been a favorite, back home. She remembers listening to the station halls filling with that song as people headed home at the end of the day. "Wait, never mind. Let's focus on the fact that you just took down the entire mining operation's primary iron ore smelter. You'd have to sing songs for, like--" she pulls up a calculator on her eyepiece HUD, runs a quick search on the base's 'net-- "twelve and a half years just to replace the crucible."
"...Ah," Mishek says. "I think, if I had a choice, I would prefer not to sing 'Gold, gold, gold' for twelve years. Although it's a very fine song! Lovely potential harmonies! I can definitely sing it for you if you like. Um. Perhaps after you tell me where we're going? And, uh, what you're planning?" He tugs gently at the mechanical claw firmly gripping his arm, just experimenting. If he needs to he's pretty sure he can get free, but he's worried he might damage the mechanism, and he'd rather not antagonize this quick-moving dwarf if he can avoid it.
"We are going-- away from the angry people," Fidelja says. "And I have a plan. Yes. Definitely one of those. The plan is, um." She pauses to squint up at the tall tree-man. "You said a wizard cast the spell, right? So... I mean.... technically, this has nothing to do with you. You're just sort of... a bystander. And we'll just kind of... put you somewhere else until everyone calms down." ....Maybe in twelve years. Fidelja tugs at her beard again. This plan needs work.
Mishek brightens at the confirmation that the dwarf is ally rather than enemy. All the same... "I think that's more... the gist of a plan, rather than the plan itself," he says cautiously. "Although I approve of it! It's a good gist. I like being somewhere people who are angry at me aren't." He considers. "I'm not sure the bystander idea is going to be very persuasive, though. So, uh, I hope you know a nice out of the way place to put me. Possibly out from under this mountain? Assuming that's where we are, given dark and rock and mining and all."
What does one do with a six foot tall talking tree? That is a very good question. Fidelja wonders why people keep thinking she is going to know the answer to these things. "It's an asteroid," Fidelja tells him, instead. 'It's like a mountain, but rounder,' she does not say, because her parents always taught her to be polite to strangers. "Just... how far out did you port in from? I didn't think ents even liked space." She pauses, realizing she's still towing him along in an iron grip, and releases her claw. "Er. Fidelja Strifehammer," she offers, holding out her claw-hand. She hesitates, wondering briefly if she should offer her other hand--some people get uncomfortable with cybernetic attachments, and she has no idea where this guy falls on the scale--but, well. Too late now.
Mishek perks in delight. A courtesy ritual! Introductions! Now they'll be friends, this is excellent. "Mishek!" he says, carefully grasping her claw and moving it up and down four times, which seems a good number in general. Then, ritual complete, he lets go her claw. "An asteroid, really?" Eyes wide, he shakes his head, leaves rustling, and sighs ruefully. "He really wasn't a good wizard at all. It was meant to be a different world. I was stranded, you see, there were no ships on planet, but he insisted he could send me to one himself and I was ready to move on... Oh, this was on Dalipir. Yes. It wasn't actually supposed to be space. Although I've never been on an asteroid before, so that's something." He looks more cheerful at the thought, looking around at the rocky corridor with interest.
"It is a nice asteroid, isn't it?" Fidelja agrees. Great rock layers. All the hallways and worker quarters nicely sized and pleasantly illuminated. Too bad she's probably getting fired. If not for making off with their leafy new guest, she figures someone's going to notice the mess she made with the system files she was supposed to be updating sooner or later. And now she won't have time to fix it. Drat. "Dalipir, Dalipir," she mutters, running a quick search on the name. "But that's practically back in the core worlds! That can't be right. Porting's mostly used for in-system travel," she adds, with the confidence of someone who has skimmed most of a 'net article on the topic.
"Ah," Mishek says thoughtfully. "Perhaps that was part of the issue. I wanted to be somewhere farther afield. I think," he glances around again, "he may have taken me a bit literally. I suppose if the spell was strained by the distance, that might explain the lapsed failsafe and the lack of planet." He pauses. "I suspect there is a lack of sunlight on an asteroid. That... could be an issue, eventually."
Fidelja widens her visible eye, considering the long, whippy twigs of his hair and the green leaves growing there. Right. Chlorophyll-based plants. So much less practical than good old fashioned fungi. "Well," she says, drawing the word out in thought. "There are always... hydroponic farms? Grow lights? We could get you a lamp." This sounds stupid even to her. Also, the mining base imports most of its produce, so she's not sure how enactable any of that would be. Although... ooh. Ooh. Idea. She switches directions midstep, detouring back to her room. She needs to pack. And will Hamfast's even be open right now? Well, it's not exactly like the halfling could possibly be out. "Okay, " she adds, aloud. "Now I know where we're going."
Hamfast's is a small merchant freighter currently leasing out one of the asteroid's commercial docking berth. It's a hobbit ship, and, in fine hobbit tradition, a functional and carefully managed greengrocers. In shrewd deference to its mainly dwarvish customer base, Hamfast's offers quite a lot of root vegetables, as well as rats. In total indifference to anyone over five feet tall, all shelves, signage, and light fixtures tend towards the low-slung. During the asteroid's generally-agreed-upon day, Hamfast's hold-turned-shop floor is open to the asteroid's inhabitants and a cheery green OPEN sign is stuck to the outside of the the connecting hatch.
