Feeling less crappy today, but still crappy enough to be as underachieving as possible while still getting my wordcount. That is why my word count for today is only 5009, which is exactly 9 words over the required word count. Also, the terrible typos are not quite as prevalent as yesterday, but that's because the typos were making my heart hurt. Also, snarky narrator. Look for it. You'll find snarkiness, especially near the end. And the foreshadowing is still continuing. Looky:

The pale gentleman made a curious face, a grimace of sorts, and shook his head. "Perfectly all right, thank you," he said. "THe lady's comment ... took me by surprise. I, too, was under the imression that elves were ... herbivores to a fault."

The elf woman smirked as she rose gracefully from her bedroll, her hair perfectly falling across her shoulders as if she were rising from the sea. main stared at her again, then coughed again and looked away. Last looked at him, obviously pleased her tactic worked, as she told the pallid gentleman (whose name, oddly, didn't seem to be coming to her mind either), "We elves like to spread that fiction whenever we can. It helps people to ... lower their guard. an seeing as many of our professions require the utmost secretiveness and caution, you would of course understand why we don't like to make people ... uneasy."

The pale gentleman gave an answering snerk as he said, "I understand perfectly, Miss ... Middle. I, too, often find myself in situations where caution is ... preferable. To the alternatives."

Last looked at him with a look that clearly said, "I know exactly what you are, I am not afraid of you, and if you try anything with me you will be so very sorry."
The gentleman's look said right back at her, "I couldn't care less what you thought of me, my dear; if I were to try soething with you, you wouldn't know until it was all over."
Last crossed her arms at him. Main finally figured out something was going on and looked at her, suddenly realizing that the woman who had looked so fragile the day before was clearly more than capable than taking care of herself, though her bumbling brother, who was off fiddlinig with something while the fire from last night still smoldered as mere cinders, was clearly an idiot; he was a little alarmed that he could have been so easily mislead (for Main prided himself on being an excellent judge of character; a genius perhaps he was not, and yes, he wasn’t the most politic person, but he felt he had at least one area in which he had some level of expertise – with this revelation that the elf twins (and indeed, that pale gentleman with the exceedingly difficult name) were so vastly different from the initial impressions he had had of them, his ego was suffering a truly agonizingly dreadful and patently alarming blow; in fact, main was feeling that perhaps it would be a good idea to re-interview his intrepid band – if the elves and the pale gentleman with the name that was clearly meant to torture people were as different as he now saw they were, perhaps it was no so far-fetched to assume that the other members of his adventuring party (whom Main had initially assumed were like the others – harmless as far as treachery went, and useful as far as their job descriptions went – but now realized had the possibility to be as frighteningly threatening as these two he had witnessed facing off) were hiding identities as different as innocence is from treachery, or dark is from light, or intelligence is from idiocy, or even as different as life is from death – a difference that Main intended to exemplify for as long as possible, and a probability that could possibly be fulfilled if his party members were hiding a dangerous secret. Main turned to the others in the camp, who had woken up between the time Main had walked around them attempting to waken them and the time at which they now found themselves, and said, “You know, I didn’t have the time to get to know you all yesterday –“

“Yes – we were busy getting a move on,” said the sour-faced man. “You didn’t even ask our names – just ‘yes, yes, you answered my ad, now let’s get a move on, hut hut hut,’ with nary a ‘yes my good fellow, how /are/ you today?” He sat sourly on his blanket and moped as the muscle bound fighter fellow sat up perkily and said, “I didn’t really mind – I like to be proactive and forward moving. But it /would/ be nice to get to know you all … I mean, we will be working with each other for quite a while, and we can’t just walk around in silence /forever/.” He sat expectantly on his blanket, in hilarious contrast to the gloomy, unsatisfied man to his left, and smiled a child’s smile at Main. The last man shot up out of his bedroll and stomped over to main, shoving his finger into his chest. “Who do you think you are, huh?!” he screamed. “Just because we’re working together DOESN’T mean we need to ‘get to know another’! I’m just FINE not knowing /anything/ about of any of you saps, and I sure as blazes don’t want to tell any of you about myself!” He folded his arms, scowling determinedly. Main’s eyebroews knitted (how odd. Genereally they just, you know, sit there and are unproductive, but I guess main’s eyebrows like him to stay warm) and he scowled and stood arms akimbo.

“who am /I/? /i/, sir, am the man who /hired/ you, and as such I am the man who is authorized to ask you any question I please, to make sure you’re not, for instance, plotting to kill me and steal my father’s throne!” Main scowled mightily for the second time in this book, and looked at the angry young man who had his eyebrows just as frowny as Main’s and his arms crossed so tightly that his elbows were going white, who returned Main’s suspicious look in spades. The muscle bound young man looked from one to the other and back again, then shrugged and turned to the cranky man beside him. However, this avenue was also closed to him, as the cranky man took one look at his earnest, wide face, and sniffed and turned away huffily. Unperturbed, the young muscular man got up with a bit of difficulty and went over to the pallid, gentlemanly fellow whose name was so difficult to remember for all of them that it was a distinct possibility that he hadn’t even mentioned it, and stuck out his hand. The gentlemanly fellow looked at him, raising an eyebrow, and then lowering it again in avarice. He extended his own hand, letting it hang slightly limp at the wrist, and looked sidewise at the earnest, young, muscular man (who happened not to be wearing a shirt), saying, “Would you be so kind as to make known to me your name?”

The young man took the pallid gentleman’s hand with obvious excitement and glee and shook it vigorously enough that the pallid man’s head bobble slightly. The pale man’s surprise at this vigorousity was evident as the young man exclaimed, “I’m so glad to meet you my name is Charlie I am so excited to have this job everyone says I’m pretty strong so I became a fighter I’m so excited this is my first job I don’t have much experience but I make up for it with enthusiasm I’ve told you my name now what’s yours!”

The pale man took a moment to digest all the information packed into that extremely long and punctuation free sentence, then said with perfect elocution, “My name is Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, and I would prefer that you would call me by my full name, please. Also, did you say that all in one breath? If so, good show, because that was quite the sentence, and at what volume!” Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants put one elegant digitus minimus in his ear and twisted slightly in the universal sign for “that was really quite loud, my old chap.”

Charlie nodded. “Yes! Everyone I know thinks I have excellent breath support! I’m not exactly sure what all that means, but I’m pretty sure it means I’m loud and talk a lot. I’m glad everyone can see how much I want to be a … speech sayer person … thing.” He cocked his head at Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, his train of thought clearly only just then arriving at the idea of Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants’ name. “You know, you don’t really look like a Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants,” he said, his tone of voice curious.

“Don’t I?” Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants said, obviously offended. “And I’m sure /you/ have just the name for me?”

“Well …” Charlie said, “You’re really looking more like an … /Edward/ to me.”

“An /EDWARD/?” Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants roared. “The NERVE! Giving me such an effeminate and /obviously/ homosexual name? I, sir, am a Fancypants, descended from a long line of Fancypantses, and will tolerate no such aspersions you care to cast on my character! Why, if you were not a member of this noble band (whose nobility I am beginning to seriously question), I would challenge you to a duel immediately! And believe me when I say,” he growled dangerously, “that I have no doubt that I would be the victor!”

Last looked up from the fire where until that moment she had been cooking the rabbits like the boring person she was, and looked from the tall, slender figure of Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, to the paragon of masculinity that was Charlie, and raised an eyebrow, saying with obvious skepticism, “I seriously doubt that, unless you have some elf blood to give you greater strength than you appear to have.”

Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants smirked at her and said, his eearlier anger forgotten, “I’m sure you’re just /dying/ to know what I am, but believe me, my dear, it’s going to take you ore than mere curiosity to figure out my personal species.”