Leifstones
an excerpt

Alina felt her temples throbbing as she heard the unmistakable sound of a brand new stone mug crashing to the floor. She resisted the urge to scream and focused on pouring amber beer into three stone mugs. "Diana!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Bring the beer to the fat stone miner oafs over there, will you?"

The inn was overflowing with customers that night. The sound of raucous laughter and good-natured talk filled the room. It was the end of another busy week for the Solian workers. Vevina's inn was the common place to celebrate on a sweltering night in Sol. One round of beer, they would often say. And then one round would turn to two and three until their newly earned jadestones all ended up in the inn's profits for the day. Inn patrons would often end up spending the night at Vevina's. Alina and the other inn workers had had to carry their share of unconscious men throughout the years.

Alina almost smiled at the thought of having to carry another man out to the street. She had been working at Vevina's inn most of her 16 years of existence and she was starting to feel the strain. Her back hurt and her light brown hair, once straight, had seemed to permanently fall into waves because of how humid it was in the inn. Vevina, her kind mother, hadn't wanted her to work here in the first place. But one particularly boring night, when she was seven, Alina decided she'd had enough of sitting on a hard brown stool in the kitchen, watching Vevina and her workers fall all over themselves cooking simple dishes and pouring beer for a hundred people. She stood up and announced imperiously that they looked like they needed her help.

She remembered how she tripped and broke the beer mug she was delivering her first time. The man she was giving it to laughed at her. She gave him a sharp, blue-eyed stare and he immediately shut his mouth. "I'm very sorry. I'll bring you another mug," she said, her voice loud and laced with ice, her eyes glaring at him all that time. The man gave her an awkward smile and said he would wait.

In truth, Alina's pride had been dealt a heavy blow. In the kitchen, she bowed her head. Her lower lip trembled and she started crying. Vevina ruffled her hair and told her, "It's your first day at work, Alina. First days are always hard." She smiled through her tears and after that night, she vowed she would never cry again. She wanted to be strong. The memory of that night made her laugh inside now. The older workers had teased her for days. But the man who laughed at her came back the following night and the night after that and looked at her with some semblance of respect.

The sound of another mug shattering made her bite her tongue and yelp. That's what she got for not paying attention. The three beer-filled mugs were still on the table. Oh, Goddess, where was that girl? "Diana! The fat miner oafs are looking for their beer!"