Rata S Thompson #1

>The chill morning mountain air in the Northlands is enough to wake a girl up. Not merely in a biological sense, but also in a existential metaphorical sense. Such was my state of mind as I fished my tank top and shorts from the water barrel beside the shack. They'd frozen solid through the night. Opting to use my fur instead appealed to the outdoorsman in me.

>In the blistering cold, bare naked but for my naturally downy and eminently stroke-able fur, I was having second thoughts. After a few swings against the side of the cabin, with the crack of ice and my colorful language filling the air, the clothing was only slightly damp and fit enough for wearing. My thoughts were interrupted by the coughing wheezing fit produced by the elf exiting the cabin.

>Thin even among elves, there was something primal and rabid about her. Something not merely attributable to her mangy gaunt physique. It's to be expected really, from a family known for producing contraband essence supplement.

>I lit a cigarette and put it into my lucky cigarette holder, as she started the makings of a true mountain-folk breakfast. The dirty blond hair was thin and unkempt, and a sharp spark of madness lurked in her eyes as she cooked up the essence supplement. She did this with a series of complex homespun laboratory pieces, mostly done in copper.

>"Don't touch that one, or it'll 'splode. Might kill us too." said the elf, as I stepped back from an array of spiraled metal. Naked, holding damp clothes in the snowy, icy Northlands. Standing next to an essence-runner's explosive and illegal equipment. It was enough to make me question my life, aims, and career. Did daddy Hunter's little chipmunk want to spend her life shooting guns, doing drugs and (occasionally) journalism?

>I took one look into the stretched, sere elf as her eyes met mine. The bare raw primal madness shined in her gaze, unbound by the dark emaciated pits of her eyes. The sharp savage expression as she set the prepared meal of contraband essence on a ramshackle table reminded me of the first time I'd fired a gun.

>Fucking wonderful sensation. The way I've lived, I regret very little in general. I stared at the wet cake of essence, a pile of solid white with the refractive glimmer of blue tinting it. I could smell the reek of magic from across the room. As we sat to eat of our contraband cakes, I felt a familiar grin across my face. The sort that exposes my buck teeth, strong enough to crack and break wood or bone. Likely it is the same smile my colleagues have often claimed rings of its own brand of insanity.

>"Let's eat breakfast, you crazy bastard." I said to the elf who would literally have mange, were she a beastman.