An oldie but a goodie.
Mishke bounced up and down in spot, pink pony tail counter bouncing to her heels. "Okay, so he's MY orphan for the week?" she asked the too tall human woman eagerly.
The Matron was starting to reconsider the wisdom of this decision, "Well, yes, but.. it's more like a brother-sister relationship and.."
Mishke tuned out everything after the affirmative. "GREAT!" she squealed and turned to pump the orphan's hand. "I'm Mishke the Fabulous, who are you?"
"Er, I'm Ricky, the Orphan, I guess.." He looked up at the Matron but before his responsible caretaker could save him, Mishke had hauled him off and down the steps of the orphanage.
"I've never met a human my size before!" she gushed. "Normally they're all so tall and bulky and their chairs don't fit any decent being. At least the girls aren't hairy like dwarves I guess!" She stopped by the fountain, "So, whatcha wanna do?"
"Do?" Ricky echoed, feeling more than a little bit wide-eyed.
"SURE! Wanna go bungee jumping off the dam? Wanna go fishing for griffons? Wanna go put berries on the guards in Dalamaar?"
"Dalamaar?" he echoed, once again looking to his now very worried looking matron.
"SURE! The Elf guards are all so stoic and sticky. They won't make faces at you or ANYTHING, so it's fun to try and plink berries in their ears. Normally I miss and it catches in their armour, but they don't get mad or nothing. They just mutter about patience and younger races. Sometimes they'll even give you cookies." Mishke didn't have much use for the pointy eared tall people, but they had really good cookies.
"Cookies?" Ricky asked, perking up.
"Yeah! I like their cookies too!" Mishke hadn't let go of his hand, so it wasn't hard to haul him off in her wake towards the docks. "Oh, let's take the BIG boat, the really really big one, then we can kaplunk!"
Ricky was warming up to the manic gnome, "What's a kaplunk?" he asked a little breathlessly since Mishke's path seemed to be straight between two points, be darned the barrels, fences and people in her way.
"OH! It's where you take the cannon balls and you toss them off the back of the ship and it goes KAPLUNK! It's GREAT fun!" Mishke stopped to look around and refocus before chasing off in a new direction down the canals.
"Don't the humans -" Oh, now he was starting that, "sailors get mad?"
"Oh sure, but they can't toss us off or nothing. It's a free service for all warriors of the alliance and defenders of the faith or some such nonsense. Since *I* am a warrior of the alliance in my blow up murlocks with fireballs kinda way, they have to be nice." Mishke stopped about a foot short of the end of the pier and grabbed Ricky before he would have tumbled in.
He had been paying more attention to keep his feet underneath him than where his feet had been going. "Isn't it .. well.. kind of a waste of cannonballs?"
"Naw, I have a druid friend who's always happy to go spelunking for cannonballs. She's an elf, she's a bit weird. I just tell her about all those metal balls at the bottom of the ocean confusing the fish and off she goes." Mishke looked solemnly up at Ricky, "Elves are weird. As if fish are ever anything other than confused?"
Ricky didn't know much about fish other than it's what they ate entirely too much of so he decided to just wait patiently for the ship.
"Hey, after berry picking and kaplunking, wanna go get some ice cream and watch the goblins crash their toys? It's way fun!"
Ricky was starting to think that maybe the Matron had the right of it when she complained about him having too much sugar in his diet. But at least the gnome was way funner than a bunch of dopey human adults. "I like ice cream." he said firmly.
"Who doesn't?? I like ice cream for breakfast, lunch AND dinner." Mishke saw some guards heading down with the human woman from the orphanage. She wondered what they wanted, but fortunately the ship arrived and was already preparing for turn around. "YAY! Off to Elfyland we go!"
She dragged Ricky onto the ship, wondering if humans in plate mail could make it down the ramps with any kind of speed. She thought about waiting to find out, but there were cannonballs to toss..
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