damn

Even for the average tall-man, cleaning this whole tavern by themselves would have been too much of a task to complete. Everyone knows that the tapbars and drinkeries in floor three are spacious to make up for its dubiousness. Like an omen for the wandering, 'this will be the last time you lot can ever hound in round tables with your peers before you descend.' Third floor taverns are questionable, but roomy, and the morbid acceptance of demise makes them a constant full-house. Piles and piles of dishes stack, rubbish and dirtied stools, benches topsied and turvied across the room. People come and go to leave their stains with the thought that it's futile to ever fully clean their stop - a popular notion especially amongst tall-men.

But this one's owned by a lone half-foot girl. The tavern on the fifth junction after the entrance, slotted in between two alcoves of deteriorating stone walls, is a tavern owned and maintained by a half-foot girl, standing her tallest only up to most of her customer's waist. And she makes do, all the work and all the keeping. Herself, putting men to shame with her nimble feet and capable hands.

Of course, sometimes, friends would come to help.

"Raku, I'm standing six feet away from you and I can still see that you missed a spot!" Daylily taps her feet. She's standing on the counter to mop the grimy surface down - it's easier this way. She shouts, "mop properly!"

Raku groans. They lean their whole weight on the stick, cheek squished against the wood. A sleeping Chiquita resting on their shoulder, for some reason she's able to not fall.

"Lilyyy... come on I just got back from a job. And I've did that spot already! Twice!"

"Someone puked there, okay. I want that exact tile to be squeaky before opening tomorrow." Daylily returns to her own stuff to be done. Her thick wooden shoes clip-clops upon the counter as she runs topside, wet mop sloshing together with her.

"Okay, very fair. It's just you get obsessive over this stuff, Lils," Raku says, shrugging. Their reluctance is honestly understandable, but they had promised her help before dipping out on their mission weeks ago.

Iris emerges from the pantry. "Well, Lily has a reputation to uphold. Not that easy keeping food mold-free around here," she snorts, and Daylily snorts in return. With those ears of her, of course she had been eavesdropping.

But Iris is diligent, when Raku isn't. She offers to wipe the tables for her, so Daylily lets her take over. To that, the ogre afar gestures at them, protesting at the favouritism full on display.

"And out of all the floors, you chose this one to set up shop?"

Lily snarls. "Don't push it, Raku..."

They're right though. To a certain degree. Daylily isn't that sour to not see the logic behind Raku's question, and with being friends for a while, she knows that it was a genuine question from them, however scathing it may come off like.

Daylily shrugs. She hops down the counter and saunters where Raku is struggling. Her little hands grab around the stick's hilt. "It is what it is."

Being born as a half-foot means inheriting your father's father's father's career prospects. It's generational, trickling down into every half-foot offspring due to genetic makeup. The common ones stay home, exclusively communing with their own, building a life from where their staple food grow and nowhere else; and the ones with hubris end up only as tools for the average dungeoning parties.

They're spry and fastidious, see. A persnickety nature, born down from the wisest of ancestors, make them great assets in helping others eluding danger. Guides, locketpickers, chestopeners.

Daylily, however, is a brazen girl with too much hubris and lack of interest in acting as a guide. She ran away from her village at thirteen, her heart set on the living the high life away from home, wanting to carve out herself into the world. And yet the high life was never meant for her. As halflings were unfavourable by the crowd for their biology - small, too small, she never got close to the celebrity spotlight, her dream.

She had too much pride to return homestead. On her fourteenth, she succumbed into her lineage. Daylily joined a party as a lockpicker, as many of her kin does. She was never really good at it. Two of her party members died twice because she couldn't care less about the dungeon. That's when she quitted, and set her tavern right where she ditched her old party; here, in floor three.

Then time flew, and it was three years having her tavern with all the good and the bad. She wasn't interested in dungeoning, but she was still a halfling with her agility and meticulousness. That was enough to run a business with, and Daylily didn't really mind the house chores it needed. After maturing, growing up alone, menial work are just as natural to her like chestopening and lockpicking.

But quite really. What kind of half-foot does that? She fled her village to become a star, and ended up a servant despite it being for her own cause. Sometimes it keeps her up at night, knowing she's an odd one out. Insecurity bears hardship. Hence, business slowed as well, that was if it had never been slow in the first place.

It sat in between alcoves, hidden behind walls of moss and empty undead shells guarding the entrance. Nobody came for days on end. She had no money to spare her life with. She was ready to go home.

Until the day the guarding undead shells clatter outside her bar, and another halfling rests atop its corpses with a fruit in their mouth.

Another halfling, another brazen halfling.

Daylily took Chiquita one day in as the way older sisters shelter young children, sopping under the rain. The other halfling was smaller, with a sweet blonde hair that fuzzed and matted without care. Lily couldn't stand knowing her kin running around unkempt, and it was like adopting a fierce little imp that wanted to do nothing but have her zoomies in the dungeon corridors. When Chiquita got used to her, Lily learned.

Learned that they could be so similar and yet so different in their becoming. Chiquita loves the dungeon. Chiquita loves venturing. Chiquita can never be pinned down once she's in her zone. She is so much more of a halfling than Daylily had ever been. Chiquita frequently left the bar without telling, goddesses knew where she got off to. The younger one was always, always away.

But Chiquita returns with customers for her. Fetching people from from each and every floor for Daylily to serve, for her tavern to work. Parties of tall-men, dwarves, elves, and ogres alike - they swarmed Lily's humble bar hidden by the alcoves, solely from the word of one little halfling whose presence was more fleeting than a feather. Customers visited, liked the drink, liked Lily's service, left, then returned for seconds.

Along came Iris. Her eastern dishes and herself wanting to survive with it as she trudges this foreign continent's eccentricities. One lone girl became two, even with their own respective things. But admittedly, it was nice having someone else to talk to when Chiquita fled. Daylily never really had anyone to talk to before them.

Then, Raku. Big, hulking Raku. With their sharp teeth, broken ogre horn, and the colouring of an angered sunset, much alike the temper that Raku had still fostered. They had stumbled to her doors, listening to the adventurer gossips around the floors talking about a place to drink and rest. Raku wanted to rest, and Daylily took them in, the way she took Chiquita and Iris in.

And that was the day that she broke free from her genetic heirlooms; that was the day Daylily knew she carved her solitary path. In this hidden tavern behind the alcoves.

Soon, she is nineteen with a reputation: 'good bar in the corner and the serving girl is cute enough if you're into the young-looking ones.' That, too, is an inherited career-prospect - one she tolerates just enough. And in turn, she allows her friends to stay.

Now, she cranes her neck up and smiles.

"Raku, drink as much as you want tomorrow. It's on the house." Daylily's free hand finds the ogre's thigh, pushing them away from the particular tile.

Nineteen, and a tavern owner, and not-that-awful of a friend. Even Iris giggles to how Raku gasps afterwards. Their silly little 'yippee!' echo throughout the room. They wake Chiquita up from her sleep then, and the bar gets livelier than a full-house.

"Hmm, deficit's gonna be high this week too it seems," Iris teases. "Raku, you have the most debt on Lily's tab too."