He hadn't expected it to go so easily the second time, but he'd hoped. Muscles bunched and tightened as he tried to get the leverage he needed to repeat that unexpected win, but this time Zeph was ready for him. He might have been almost fast enough, but he still wasn't strong enough. Struggle though he tried, his arm was pushed inexorably back...
and back...
and back, until his knuckles brushed the bark for the second and final time.
Frustration flashed across his face, a flicker of petulance that came and went as he sighed and nodded, unable to dispute the outcome. Having lost not once but twice there was little else he could do but acquiesce to the deal he had agreed to. "Yeah, yeah... you'll get your hide." A loss of profits that he desperately needed, but it couldn't be helped. Besides, he'd learned a thing or two. One of those things was that he might almost like the old man, but that was a dangerous way to think after just one meeting. Taking the slap on the back with more grace than he expected, he turned to help lift the beast so they could get it down the mountain. "Do you want the front or the back?"
{Finished}
and back...
and back, until his knuckles brushed the bark for the second and final time.
Frustration flashed across his face, a flicker of petulance that came and went as he sighed and nodded, unable to dispute the outcome. Having lost not once but twice there was little else he could do but acquiesce to the deal he had agreed to. "Yeah, yeah... you'll get your hide." A loss of profits that he desperately needed, but it couldn't be helped. Besides, he'd learned a thing or two. One of those things was that he might almost like the old man, but that was a dangerous way to think after just one meeting. Taking the slap on the back with more grace than he expected, he turned to help lift the beast so they could get it down the mountain. "Do you want the front or the back?"
{Finished}
