The silence in the shop felt different now. Less peaceful, more… pregnant. Pregnant with the possibility of lurking, sharp-toothed, vaguely gnome-like entities observing my every mundane move. Pregnant with the unspoken questions Borin Stonehand carried like extra hammers on his belt. Pregnant with the sheer, overwhelming potential for further, more elaborate misinterpretations of my existence.
That creature. Thing. Gnome-adjacent annoyance. It hadn't done anything, other than observe, point at dust, smile creepily, and vanish. But the intent behind the observation felt different from the villagers' well-meaning, superstitious fog. It felt sharper. More focused. Possibly malevolent? Or maybe just weird. Trying to parse the motivations of greasy, pointy-eared lurkers wasn't high on my list of retirement hobbies.
But it added another layer to the rapidly congealing mess my life had become. Layer 1: Be left alone. Layer 2: Fail utterly due to inherent weirdness attracting attention. Layer 3: Have every mundane action misinterpreted as profound magic. Layer 4: Gain a perceptive blacksmith as a dedicated skeptic. Layer 5: Acquire an enthusiastic apprentice devoted to useless tasks and junk geomancy. Layer 6: Add cryptic, potentially supernatural observers to the mix.
This wasn't a retirement; it was a badly written fantasy plot actively assembling itself around me, against my will. A plot I had zero interest in participating in, let alone starring in.
My headache throbbed in rhythm with the distant, muffled sounds of Oakhaven settling into the evening. I needed distraction. Something to occupy my borrowed brain besides paranoia about lurking gnome-things and the ever-present, grinding irritation of simply being here.
Calculating the precise gravitational stresses on the Andromeda Galaxy? Done it. Mentally composing a symphony based on the resonant frequencies of dying stars? Got bored halfway through the first movement. Reciting the complete works of K'tharrp the Flatulent (a surprisingly insightful Vogon poet, despite the name)? Done it twice.
Maybe… examine some of the junk? Not Elara's 'attunement' nonsense. Just… pick something up. Analyze its composition. Trace its probable history through molecular decay patterns. A purely scientific, detached exercise. Grounding, perhaps.
I picked up a tarnished silver locket from a shelf – the one Elara had pointed out earlier. Simple design. Flimsy clasp. Probably held a miniature portrait or a lock of hair once. Standard primitive sentimentality container.
I focused slightly, letting my deeper senses probe its structure. Silver alloy, mostly. Trace amounts of copper, lead, nickel. Impure. Poorly refined. The tarnish was primarily silver sulfide, interacting with atmospheric pollutants – likely heavy doses of sulfur from cheap coal burning and possibly minor volcanic outgassing from the mountains visible vaguely to the east on clearer days. Typical Class-M planet atmospheric profile for a pre-industrial society burning inappropriate fuel sources.
The clasp mechanism was weak due to poor material science and sloppy craftsmanship. Likely failed within a few years of manufacture. The probable history: Commissioned, gifted, worn briefly, clasp failed, stored in a box, forgotten, sold as scrap, ended up here. A short, uninteresting life story written in atoms and decay. Mundane. Reassuringly mundane.
See? Not everything had hidden depths or mystical significance. Sometimes, junk was just… junk. A failed locket. A silent testimony to entropy and shoddy manufacturing.
Satisfied with this minor victory for mundane reality, I put the locket back. Perhaps this place wasn't entirely infested with plot hooks and cosmic irony. Perhaps simple, boring pointlessness could still exist here.
A commotion outside broke the fragile peace. Louder than the usual market hubbub. Raised voices. Laughter, not the usual slightly desperate village kind, but booming, performative laughter. A new energy signature entering the Oakhaven ambiance. Great. Just what I needed. Novelty.
Curiosity, that treacherous, annoying instinct I usually kept ruthlessly suppressed, pricked at me. Not enough to actually go look. But enough to strain my borrowed hearing.
"...told me himself, folks! Bob the Silent! Faced down the Goblin King – a beast ten foot tall with tusks like scimitars, mind you! – right there by Hemlock's compost heap!" A booming voice, dripping with manufactured bonhomie and dubious claims. "One look! One steely glare from Bob, colder than a glacier's heart! And the beast shrank! Turned tail and fled, gibbering about holy sausages!"
What. The actual. Frak.
Goblin King? Ten feet tall? Tusks like scimitars? Steely glare? My intervention involved olfactory manipulation aimed at a chieftain wearing a chamber pot, resulting in a misguided pilgrimage towards rotting vegetables. Where did this epic battle narrative come from?
The voice continued, drawing a larger crowd judging by the murmurs and gasps. "And the sign! You saw it! Wobbling like a drunken sailor in a hurricane! Ready to crash down! Bob just looks at it! Whispers a single word – a word of power, folks, not for mortal ears! – and poof! Silent as the grave! Secure as a dragon's hoard!"
A word of power? I tapped it with a stick! It dropped some dust! That was it!
"Root cellar acting up again? Ghosts rattling chains? Bob walks in, sighs once – a sigh that echoes with the wisdom of ages, mind you! – and the unquiet spirits? Vanished! Banished back to whatever misty realm they crawled from!"
This was… artistic license taken to an entirely new dimension of fabrication. This wasn't just misinterpretation; this was active, deliberate, high-volume lying. Who would…?
A name flashed through my mind. Remembered from tavern gossip overheard during the disastrous festival planning meeting. Gregor the Gregarious. Travelling peddler. Storyteller. Rumour-monger.
He'd arrived. And he'd clearly tapped into the motherlode of Oakhaven's burgeoning 'Bob the Mystic' mythology. And he wasn't just repeating the stories; he was enhancing them. Polishing them. Adding dragons, dramatic sighs, words of power, ten-foot goblins. He was turning my accidental, irritation-fueled interventions into heroic saga material.
For profit, undoubtedly. The murmurs of the crowd suggested fascination. Fascination led to customers for whatever cheap trinkets or tall tales Gregor was selling.
Part of me was appalled. Outraged, even, in a detached, cosmic sort of way. My life, my annoyances, were being twisted, packaged, and sold like cheap souvenirs. My carefully cultivated image of 'grumpy irrelevance' was being bulldozed by heroic fantasy tropes.
Another, much smaller, deeply cynical part of me was grudgingly impressed. The sheer speed and audacity of the fabrication were noteworthy. He'd taken the scattered, contradictory village rumours and synthesized them into a cohesive (albeit ludicrous) narrative in mere hours. That took a certain low, cunning talent.
And he was drawing attention away from me, in a sense. People were listening to him talk about me, rather than bothering me directly. A temporary, indirect benefit? Maybe? Or maybe just laying the groundwork for even more ludicrous expectations when they inevitably turned their attention back my way? ("We heard you wrestle glacier-hearted Goblin Kings, Bob! Can you help us with this mildly aggressive badger?")
The booming voice outside reached a crescendo. "...and they say," Gregor lowered his voice conspiratorially, ensuring everyone strained to hear, "they say Bob wasn't born under mortal stars! Some whisper he walked out of the deep woods, cloaked in shadow! Others say he's the last guardian of a forgotten kingdom, living in quiet exile! Waiting! Watching! Protecting Oakhaven from evils unseen!" He paused dramatically. "Who knows the real truth? Perhaps only Bob himself! And maybe," his voice became sly, mercantile, "for a few copper coins, Gregor the Gregarious might share another tale, another rumour, another piece of the puzzle..."
Shameless. Utterly, despicably shameless. He was selling my fabricated backstory in installments.
I retreated further into the shop's gloom. Pressed my back against a reassuringly solid pile of something (possibly fossilized horse blankets). Let the wave of secondhand embarrassment and thirdhand heroic narrative wash over me.
So this was the new reality. Not just misunderstood hermit. Not just accidental village protector. Now I was a mysterious exile, a former goblin-wrestler, a whisperer of power-words to inanimate objects, possibly not born under mortal stars. All courtesy of a travelling peddler with questionable ethics and a flair for hyperbole.
At least it was interesting? No. Definitely not. Interesting implies engagement. This was just… layers upon layers of weaponized stupidity being piled onto my already overburdened existence.
Maybe I should go out there? Confront him? Issue a cease and desist notice based on unauthorized biographical fabrication? (Requires inventing local libel laws first. Too much effort). Reveal the mundane truth? ("Actually, the goblin smelled compost. I tapped the sign with a stick. The root cellar just had rats.") That would ruin his business. Might make an enemy. Might confuse the villagers even more. ("Bob denies his own heroism! Such humility! Truly, a sign of his greatness!")
No. Confrontation was out. Avoidance remained the prime directive. Stay in the shop. Pretend Gregor didn't exist. Hope he moved on quickly to the next village, taking his outlandish stories with him.
A thought occurred. Elara. She was out there, mapping moss, likely interacting with villagers. She would hear Gregor's stories. Her belief in my 'mystic significance', already operating at dangerously high levels, would be amplified exponentially. She'd return from her Moss Quest convinced I was practically a demigod who happened to moonlight as a junk dealer.
The potential consequences of that reunion were too horrifying to contemplate. My passive-aggressive quest might have bought me time, but Gregor's arrival had just dramatically raised the stakes of Elara's inevitable return.
I needed a plan. A better plan. A plan that accounted for predatory storytellers and apprentices with dangerously inflated expectations.
And tea. Definitely more tea. Even the extortionate, stale Dragon's Leaf seemed appealing now, compared to facing this escalating farce uncaffeinated. Maybe I would risk the probability manipulation to 'find' five silver pieces. The energy expenditure suddenly seemed... justified. A necessary investment in basic sanity maintenance.
First step, though: survive Gregor's reign of misinformation. Lie low. Avoid eye contact. Hope the villagers' notoriously short attention spans moved on to the next shiny distraction. Like a particularly large turnip, perhaps. Or maybe, just maybe, that creepy gnome-thing would find Gregor's storytelling really annoying and deal with the problem for me.
A deeply unlikely, but momentarily satisfying, thought. One could hope. Even retired cosmic entities could hope. Mostly for quiet, though. And decent tea. The simple things. The impossible things, apparently, on Aerthos.