Thankful for My Orc (OrcFire #8)

Prologue Up To Now…

Over twenty-five years ago, the sky over the Mojave tore open and five thousand Others spilled onto the desert floor in what people would come to call The Rift. Many species appeared on the desert sand: orcs, nagas, minotaurs, wolven, and others that had no basis in any of our folktales.

It wasn’t an invasion. No armies. No demands. Just people: shocked, some half-dressed, speaking languages no one knew.

The first human response was fear. The second was fencing. A federal task force corralled the newcomers into a ten-block area on the edge of Los Angeles. The government euphemistically called it the “Integration Zone.” Everyone else just called it the Zone.

For a long time, “integration” meant permits, patrols, and paperwork.

Curfews. Menial jobs. Learning English while the city learned to look away.

And outside the fences, a chorus of purists shouting to deport them, euthanize them, erase the problem.

Some days it was slogans and petitions; some nights it was slurs, smashed windows, and fires no one admitted starting.

But the world keeps moving, even when policy tries to hold it still. Kids grew up. Markets opened. Workshops hummed. A few humans drifted in for cheap rent or good food and stayed for the stubborn, vibrant community that refused to die.

Orcs brought craft guilds; naga formed councils; minotaurs taught rhythms you could feel in your ribs; and wolven ran night patrols that kept streets safer than any cruiser.

Customs survived the fall: elders still teaching the old ways, aunties feeding whole blocks when money ran thin, and orc grandfathers laying ink to mark family with symbolic tattoos.

The Zone changed the city, and the city changed the Zone. Not everyone welcomed it—some still flinch at tusks or scales, and some work hard to make sure doors stay shut. Even so, more often than not, hands meet in work and care, in the small, ordinary moments that build a life.

At the center of those ordinary heroics stands Fire Station 32: the heartbeat of a neighborhood that refuses to give up.