Chapter 22: Chapter 22 - The Talk With Worick

Now as you could have guessed, in this session we’re just going to continue from where we left off in the previous session.

What you probably couldn’t have guessed however is that today I’ll be telling you what happened again.

It’s just that I thought you would get a more trut... I mean a better version of the happenings from my perspective than from Daniel’s.

So we stopped the previous session at the point where Daniel told Worick that he had something to talk to him about.

And today, I’m going to tell you how that talk went, and what it was actually about.

***

After Daniel had told Worick that he had something to talk to him about, we had moved into the dining room for that talk.

It had taken a while to get there however, because each of the elves present in the waiting room wanted to thank Daniel for saving the village.

Which means that each of the elves came to shake his hand one-by-one, as we moved through the crowd.

But finally after what felt like hours of "thank you’s", "anything you need’s" and almost any other offer you could think of, we reached the dining room.

Some of those other offers you would probably think of, did have a slight negative effect on the good mood I was in. You wouldn’t believe how forward some of those elven who... women were.

"So what is it that you would like to speak to me about?" Worick asked, sitting across from me and Daniel.

"Do you know if there are any underground water veins that pass through the village?" Daniel asked him, as he leaned forward in his chair.

"Underground water veins?" Worick asked, he seemed about as confused as I was at the moment. I thought Daniel wanted to make some kind of move to implement some of the political steps he had mentioned to me when we spoke about the governance of the village.

Instead he wanted to talk about underground water veins?

"Yes." Daniel nodded.

"There should be a few that pass through the village, we do use water pits to gather the water for our use after all."

A broad smile covered Daniel’s face when he heard this.

"Do you think I can maybe purchase a plot of land somewhere on the edge of the village where I can find a good vein running underground?" he asked.

"Purchase?" Worick asked, even more confused now. "Why would you need to purchase a plot of land at the edge of the village?"

"I want to have a plot of land that is directly above a water-vein, so I can open a bath-house, and it can’t be in the village itself, because I would need to have a rather large building, and some machines that would need to pump the water." Daniel answered.

"No, no, no," Worick said, shaking his head. "I mean why would you need to purchase the plot of land?"

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked.

"I mean there isn’t anyone for you to purchase the land from." Worick answered.

This seemed to confuse Daniel even more.

"No one to purchase from?" Daniel asked. "Doesn’t the area of the village, and all of the areas around the village that aren’t privately owned belong to the village?"

"Of course not," Worick said. "How can the village as a whole own any land?"

I could see that this astounded Daniel.

Since the moment I told him how the political structures worked in the elven lands, he has had a problem wrapping his hand around it. Every time we talked about it, he pointed out how it was simply ludicrous.

How they were leaving themselves with so many weaknesses, be that against attacks, economic struggles, or even growth.

"You guys really need to work on your governance structures," he whispered.

"Our governance structures?" Worick asked.

"Yes, your governance structures, your laws, your infrastructure, everything leaves a lot of opportunities for growth behind." Daniel answered, still deep in thought.

I expected Worick to throw some sort of temper tantrum, maybe even tell Daniel that their governance structures had nothing to do with him.

Start a rant similar to what Darvel had done in our first meeting with him, obviously I could always solve the same problem in a similar way, but only if it would bother Daniel.

If it didn’t, Worick would only have to suffer for the insults he would use, and not have to listen to us again.

But instead, something completely out of my expectations happened.

"Interesting," Worick said. "Can you tell me some more about the opportunities we have missed, and how to prevent that?"

It seemed that my faith gathering plan for Daniel had worked even better than I expected.