This choice: Olga Forgedotter, the bubbly barmaid! • Go Back...Chapter #5The Bubbly Belle of Bleakfrost Tavern by: Bobo the Hobo   Racovania was a sleepy little village nestled in the mountains. Its people were simple farmers, with few exceptions, and the quality of life was questionable at best. Townsfolk were nurtured by hard work, tilling the soil and wrangling the livestock, and those that weren't were similarly forged by equally unpleasant lifestyles. Miners, who worked further up the mountain closer towards the Peaks, couriers who made the treacherous path up and down the mountain and across the country to deliver parcels and letters. Even those who performed service duties in town, like smithees and traders, were not granted easy lives.
It was for this reason, because of their tedium, that the barkeep of the Bleakfrost Tavern put such a great emphasis on keeping her customers bellies filled with good food and mead. After a hard day at work, around dusk, almost everyone who didn't return to their homes could be found at the Tavern—of age or not. The fire was warm and the company was good. Somaria, "the best chef in all of Racovia", kept herself busy trying new recipes and inventing new specials to appease the watering mouths and rumbling gullets of her faithful patrons. It could have been well into the night, eeking into the morning, and the Tavern would still be alive with music of the bard and the drunken laughs of her patrons. Bleakfrost Tavern was very important to Racovania and it's people...
Which was precisely why Olga had found herself so eagerly wanted there.
"On the house, blue-eyes." came the sultry voice of the barkeep, Helga, "Courtesy of the gentlemen who've been eyeballin' you all night."
Olga Forgedotter shrunk slightly, her face flushed and her smile crooked. She waved sheepishly to the burly men tucked away in the corner, their bellies brushing against the table as their rosy cheeks burned with beer and lust. They waved back, rather loudly, and one men put his fingers in his mouth to blow a piercing whistle her way.
She hadn't been at this job very long, and she wasn't very good at it. Every day Olga tripped and fell, spilled pints and dropped food on the floor. But the customers kept coming, even more eagerly than ever in fact! Helga mostly had her work mornings, when the traffic was easy and the workload was light. However, Olga was placed very strategically so that she would get off at six in the afternoon, when most of the lusty-eyed men started pouring in at five. Helga got to lure all the lecherous customers she wanted inside for their business, and let Olga go early once they were good, drunk and hungry.
"Don't take it so personally—it's all in good fun." Helga reassured her barmaid with a pat on the back and a hearty laugh, "Or at least it better be. It'd be a shame if all the tips they gave you had to go to hirin' that Orc to walk you home every night!"
Helga was an older woman. Not close to graying just yet, but she was old enough to have flirted with her Father when they were young. She was strong and sturdy, a farmer's daughter, with long brown hair and deep green eyes. Her skin was ruddy and her figure was plump—she was a head shorter than most men in Racovania, but had a set of hips wider than some men's shoulders were wide. When she pat you on the back, you felt it.
"I think I can take care of myself." Olga said with a smile as she reached behind the bar and grabbed her basket, "Do you think I could get a steak and stew to go? It's Tora's turn to cook dinner and... I don't actually think she remembered."
"Say no more." Helga said with a smile, and then a hearty laugh, "Hey, maybe I'll throw in an extra roll for the two of you, huh? Eat them both on the way home, Olga. You're far too skinny to be working in my Tavern!"
***
Nestled against the dull gray slab of the mountain, lit by the fire of the forge as the life slowly flickered from it, Olga's homestead was of a generous size. Her father's father had built it with the money he had bought from selling his father's farm, and it had been designed with a legacy in mind. Not only did it function as a forge for smithing, its two stories were both a business and a home for his family. A store room and a floor downstairs housed and displayed armors and weapons for the hunters, mercenaries, adventurers and enthusiasts that had been forged outside, while the second floor had all the furnishings a family might need. There was a kitchen, two bedrooms (one that Tora and Olga had shared as children), and a modest living space with a roaring fire.
With their father gone, it seemed almost too big for Olga and her older sister. While Tora had done her best in replacing her father at the forge, no one could replace his rolling laughter or the presence that his boisterous personality claimed all to itself.
"Tora!" Olga cried out, the wooden door slamming behind her, "Oh sister, I've brought home dinner~!"
"Wonderful—I'm starving!"
Tora was Olga's older sister by three years. They had been very much the same growing up, both frail and waifish girls with blue eyes and blonde hair like their father. But since she had become the smithee of the house, lifting the hammer and forging all day, Tora had since grown hearty. Where Olga was waifish, Tora was toned and strong. Though she still had the same sweet face of her mother, her long blonde hair had been cut short so as not to be struck at the anvil, or caught ablaze by the coals. Despite her newfound burliness, Tora was not without her suitors.
"Well that's funny, because it was your turn to cook dinner tonight." Olga chided her older sister as she sat at the table, "And your loving, caring, oh-so-responsible sister just so happened to remember that you always forget."
"Quiet your tongue. You're hanging around Helga too much—you're becoming an old nag." Tora rolled her eyes and wiped the water from her brow, "I'm just now washing up."
"Big order?"
"The biggest." Tora grumbled as Olga set her plate and bowl down in front of her, "I'm happy that word has spread all the way to Adinah, but this is the last time I let them order in bulk."
Olga didn't believe that for a moment, but she bit her tongue. Tora worked hard to keep their family (what was left of it) afloat. She had to pay for steel, for materials, and occasionally protection. On top of keeping them both fed. It was a wonder they weren't bare bones by now—though admittedly, what Olga earned from working at the Tavern helped a lot more than Tora was keen to admit. Times were hard for the Forgedotters, but like her father had always told them, "tempered steel is strong steel."
And so they ate. Olga regaled her sister with stories from the tavern, Tora responded in kind with gossip from her merchants. They went to bed early and departed to their separate bedrooms. They both had busy days ahead of them, Olga knew. Tora had her order to fill, and Helga had her and the other barmaids preparing for the Racovanian festival already. It was just... there had to be more to live than this? Even in Racovania, surely this wasn't all right? As much as she tried to be optimistic, things could get so dreary sometimes.
Olga sighed heavily as she went to bed early, was it so much to ask for something different to happen?
Little did Olga know, as the turned and tossed beneath her covers, that her challenge had been accepted. Her prayers heard by the Gods (though which God, no one could be sure), that which was once certain began to become decidedly less so. What may have or perhaps should have been a humdrum life with her sister, one day after the other with only slight variation, grew uneasy as the winds of fate began to change...
 indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
<<-- Previous · Outline  · Recent Additions © Copyright 2025 Bobo the Hobo (UN: psuedophobic at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Trampltrum has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work within this interactive story. Poster accepts all responsibility, legal and otherwise, for the content uploaded, submitted to and posted on Writing.Com. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author