The Angry Old Orc

##The Angry Old Orc##

“But how do you be so angry?”

“What?” grumbled the old orc.

“When you fight. How do you be so mad?” the boy asked again.

“Orcs only have two emotions, kid - angry and not angry. So if you’re not angry, just stop being not.”

“But I can’t think of nothing to be mad about.”

“Anything. You can’t think of anything… But it ain’t about thinking, kid. You got to feel it. Its -“

“How do you feel it?” interrupted the boy.

“Hmgh. You want to feel it? Then tell me- what do you have there all wrapped up?”

“This? It’s half a sweetroll I won in a race this morning. All us kids had us a race and then Madra gave the winner a prize. At first I didn’t think I’d win, but when we got to the tree –“

“I’m going to eat it.”

“What? But its mine. I won it fair and square.”

“Fair? Theres only one fair in this world, kid,” he said, snatching the treat from the boy. “I’m stronger than you, so anything that’s yours is mine.”

The boy, oblivious to what the old orc was trying to do, immediately began to cry.

“Uh. Wait – I, uh – Here. You can have it back.”

The old orc tried to hand the sweetroll over, but the boy was inconsolable. His wailing only grew louder. Madra the cook-wife came in to investigate the noise.

“What have you done, Shog? By Mauloch, you ate half the boy’s sweetroll!? What’s wrong with you?”

Madra ushered the boy outside the longhouse, certain that whatever Shog had to say could only make matters worse.

The old orc leaned back in his chair and sighed. Making a single bite of the damnable treat, he thought to himself, ‘Well maybe we have a few more than just two emotions.’