Mythril

 

Darrel's father is a Kuarna man, his mother is a dwarf. Not meaning a person with dwarfism, meaning a person of the humanoid race oft seen in high fantasy. It had been a three year relationship of convenience. Picture Darrel as you will, because this author has sufficiently poked the race bear.

Darrel drives trucks in the mines between his smoke breaks. When the FIFO charter plane touches down at the capital airport, he changes into a clean hi-vis jacket and boards whichever regional flight is next available. This is occasionally a round trip.

No matter how small the town that Darrel lands in, he knows a guy who will rent him a ute or range rover for two slabs and a full tank. He drives to whichever one of his prospecting claims is closest. Occasionally he confuses which town is paired with which claim.

Each of Darrel's claims has a cave. Like everyone except for mining executives, Darrel has played Minecraft and therefore knows that caves are a convenient way of getting someways underground. Blowing up caves, culturally significant or otherwise, is counterproductive.

Each cave has a back wall with an inscription only visible in moonlight or, rather, a cautiously raised black-light:

'Ennyn Durin Aran Moria. Pedo Mellon a Minno. Im Narvi hain echant. Celembrimbor o Eregion tiethant i thiw hin.'

Darrel usually chuckles to himself: 'Heh, pedo-melon.'

Then Darrel pulls out a fraying spiral notebook and, reading, declares: 'Bunji. No? Koorda. Jimbaram? Hurm.' Flicking pages. 'Yagdalah?'

Darrel eventually says the right password and the cave's back wall creaks partly backward on unseen hinges. With miner's cap, Darryl proceeds deeper underground. The cave gets wide and the walls become symmetrical, the product of industrious digging instead of natural erosion. Darrel occasionally uses a sling to pelt a quart of El Dorado Green at a Balrog, which gets one toke over the line that thou shalt not pass and has to sit down for a bit.

Darrel stops descending when he needs nicotine. He sates cravings then pulls a 10x10x20 cm lead box (which is a bitch to get past airport metal detectors) from his rucksack. Inside is a wool-swaddled grub that yawns like a puppy: 'Ha-wo Dawool. Is it time faw digging?'

'Hey there, Shamir. Yes, would you do some digging?'

'Oh yes goodie.'

'Thank you, Shamir. Please bring back various goodies.'

Darrel places Shamir on the cave wall. The grub lazily but effectively munches its ways into the rock with a sound like rice bubbles hitting milk.  Darryl plugs a power bank into his phone and, no reception down here, begins playing Reigns: Her Majesty. He eats a Nice & Natural salted caramel nut bar.

Four hours later, Shamir emerges from the opposite cave wall: 'Hey Dawool. I bwought goodies.'

'Thank you, Shamir.'

Shamir plops to the cave floor and begins pooping out various ores, which Darrel sorts and weighs. 40 ounces of copper for the retirement fund, 2 ounces of gold for operating costs, an ounce of palladium which Darrel is not sure what to do with, plus two ounces of mythril. Shamir yawns and crawls back into the lead box, snuggles into the wool. Darrel sings a tone deaf Norwegian lullaby before closing the box.

 

So on, so forth. Darrel spends the rest of his week off similarly mining and living off the land, sleeping under the stars. For protein, he uses his sling to hunt the party balloons that float by occasionally, each carrying a 500g pack of tempeh a pop (ha!). Darrel drives back to the town and flies back to the capital airport in time to catch the charter flight to the mines. Another week of driving trucks before flying to the capital. Darrel then usually boards whichever regional flight is next available. This time, Darrel Ubers home to the oh, that's right, you live there looks of his neighbours. He empties his sack onto the pile of copper where the lounge room floor should be. On Sunday, a couple of neighbours partake of impromptu fisticuffs on the road. The rest of Schmocken street comes out to speculate and wager. Kristy and Michael bring out joints and cheese platter to share. A buzzed April sidles up to Darrel:

'I like your front lawn. Veeery waist-height chic.'

'Yeah. Needs another burning.'

'Very practical. I myself avoid hardware stores like, like, what's that bad strain of covid?'

A rumour caught. When April needs tools she sees Caroline, a fabricator who smelts her own metals with April's Slut Root in lieu of coking coal. Darrel gets the address and heads to a warehouse that is forever available for lease, knocks on the back door.

A holler: 'I ain't sharpening no more chainsaw blades.'

Darrel lets himself in: 'Do you make chainsaw blades which don't need to be sharpened?'

Caroline dangles a cross peen hammer by her thigh: 'This gray-market enterprise serves fem clientele only. No man allowed, including the tax variety.'

Darrel raises a halting hand: 'Have you worked with mythril much?'

Slight left-right-left of the head conceded: 'Yeah. Never breaks, never rusts and light weight. Not worth the per-ounce price. Coo-Hatch Steel does much the same thing but cheaper.'

'The teeth of a chainsaw blade wouldn't need many ounces.'

Yeah, all right: 'How much are you selling?'

'More than you can afford.'

Caroline returns to hammering shit: 'I'll think about it.'

 

Darrel follows another rumour, this one salvaged from the hacking coughs and splutters of the mines' fourth smoking area: 'Ah doctor, chlem, a doctor who spends her long weekends kack on a houseboat, floating grrk on the Murray. between scllloooi Victoria and New South Wales.'

Not quite Seasteading, but the murky waters between the two states is where Dr Smateushin Pateushin performs medicine best described as 'extra-cirricular'. With an Indian mother and Chinese father, the race bear was prodded into giving Dr Pateushin an Intelligence of 8 and a Medicine Tag, Good Natured to boot. She installed a Logic Co-Processor into her own cerebral cortex when she was twelve.

Darrel rents a tinnie and finds her houseboat: 'Permission to come aboard?'

'Granted.' Dr Pateushin steps on deck, removes bloody scrubs. 'How may I help?'

'I was hoping you could squeegee my lungs.'

Puckered smile: 'Those are fun. Booked out for the weekend, but we'll sort out a date and time. How are you paying?'

'Mythril.'

Dr Pateushin tilts head right.

Darrel continues: 'Lithium is used to treat bipolar disorder. Silver has antiseptic properties. Mythril, atomic number eleven-and-a-third, may have undiscovered medical applications.'

Two nods, sly eyes: 'I'll think about it.'

 

Darrel has one last chore before he flies back to the mines. He brambles through his front lawn, splashing petrol this way and that. He finds Carl centre lawn, laying on his back with a blunt between his lips and zippo lighter in his hand.

Darrel: 'Please don't light that.'

The blunt falls down Carl's cheek: 'But it's El Dorado Green.'

'You have El Dorado Green?'

Carl lolls head right and tries to grab the blunt with lips: 'You get high?'

Darrel wants to say 'No, I hurl it at Blarogs' but does not want to confuse Carl and so says: 'Sure.'

Blunt falling down other cheek: 'I'm not in the El Dorado Green game. I'm in the Quetzalcoatl Feather game.  I might be in the Ghost Tobacco game soon. I dabble in Slut Root.'

'This street is becoming a counter-economic business cluster.' Darrel approves. 'How would you like to be in the mythril game?'

Frowning: 'Why would I want mythril?'

'Because other people want it.'

'Why do other people want it?'

'Because it is a store of wealth.'

'Why is it a store of wealth?'

'Because other people want it.'

'Why do other people want it?'

'Because it has applications. Metallurgy. Medicine. It's like gold.'

'What?'

'Bitcoin.'

'I should think about it. Come to think about it, I am really high.' Carl lights the blunt. 'All right, four ounces for a quart.'