Borin Stonehand was gone. The heavy thud of the door closing echoed slightly in the oppressive silence, a punctuation mark on the statement: I'm watching you.
Excellent. Just… stellar. My retirement plan, already riddled with more holes than a block of space-aerogel used for target practice by sentient black holes, had sprung another major leak. A perceptive blacksmith. Could the universe be any more creatively irritating?
Why couldn't Borin be like Mayor Grumbleson, blissfully unaware and content to attribute everything to 'village spirits' or 'good fortune'? Why couldn't he be like Elara, whose boundless optimism filtered reality through a lens of rainbows and misplaced heroism?
No, Borin had to have functioning observational skills. He had to possess a working knowledge of cause and effect. He dealt in tangible realities – hard metal, solid stone, the logical progression of heating, hammering, and cooling. He wasn't easily swayed by olfactory hallucinations or coincidental goblin migrations.
He suspected. He didn't know what he suspected, precisely, but the seed was planted. The 'grumpy hermit selling junk' facade was wearing thin. One more significant 'coincidence', one more inexplicable event linked even tangentially to my presence, and Borin's suspicion might solidify into something more concrete. Investigation. Confrontation. Possibly involving pitchforks and torches, knowing the standard operational procedures of panicked primitives.
This required management. Damage control. Or, more accurately, annoyance mitigation.
Option 1: Direct Confrontation. Explain myself. Reveal a fraction of the truth? "Actually, Mr. Stonehand, I'm a quasi-omnipotent entity trying to enjoy a quiet retirement, and my mere presence inadvertently warps local probability. Sorry about the compost cult." Yeah. That would go over well. Likely result: Immediate escalation to the pitchforks and torches scenario, possibly bypassing intermediate steps. Bad option. Very bad.
Option 2: Subtle Manipulation. Use my abilities to subtly influence Borin's thoughts. Plant seeds of doubt about his own conclusions. Make him think he was imagining things. Risky. Very risky. Fine control was required, and my 'mostly memory-wiped' state meant my abilities sometimes reacted… unpredictably. Especially when driven by irritation rather than calm calculation. Could easily backfire. Turn his suspicion into paranoid certainty. Make him think I was actively messing with his mind (which I would be, but the confirmation was the problem). High potential for escalating annoyance. Bad option.
Option 3: Avoidance and Distraction. Keep my head down. Minimize interactions with Borin. Hope his suspicion faded due to lack of further evidence. Simultaneously, create minor, unrelated distractions in the village to draw attention elsewhere. Perhaps subtly encourage a rumour about a hidden biscuit hoard in the Mayor's cellar? Or make Old Man Hemlock's prize-winning pumpkin briefly levitate? No, bad idea. Levitation attracts attention. Must be subtle distractions. Annoying, requires thought.
Option 4: Status Quo. Do nothing different. Continue being a grumpy recluse. Hope Borin dismisses his suspicions as groundless speculation driven by too much forge smoke. Low effort. High risk of failure if another 'coincidence' occurred. Passively reactive, not proactive. My default setting, but perhaps insufficient now.
None of these options were particularly appealing. They all involved either effort, risk, or continued vulnerability. My carefully crafted cocoon of indifference was being systematically shredded by local busybodies and cosmic irony.
A headache began to form behind my borrowed eyeballs. Not a 'staring into the heart of a dying quasar' headache, just a regular, pathetic, stress-induced one. Infuriatingly mundane.
Clearly, pondering the Borin Problem required fuel. Functional fuel. Not the liquid disappointment currently residing in the disposal weeds out back.
Decision made. Priority shift. Dealing with the blacksmith was a long-term strategic annoyance. Securing drinkable tea was an immediate tactical necessity. Operation: Acquire Tolerable Tea (Version 2.0) was a go.
This meant… going outside again. Braving the market. Interacting. Ugh. The sacrifices I made for minimal physiological comfort.
I located my small stash of copper coins – subconsciously replenished as needed through minor probability manipulations targeting misplaced currency, a low-grade background process requiring almost no conscious effort. Pocketed them. Straightened my perpetually rumpled tunic (a futile gesture). Took a deep, fortifying breath of dusty air.
Opened the door. Prepared for the sensory assault.
Oakhaven was still Oakhaven. The baseline level of disorganized activity persisted. The ambient smell remained a complex bouquet of woodsmoke, livestock, questionable sanitation, and lingering goblin B.O. The lute player was still murdering musical theory somewhere nearby. Consistency, at least, was a virtue this dimension possessed, albeit a consistently annoying one.
My gaze swept the market square, performing a quick threat assessment. Mayor Grumbleson? Engaged in what looked like a heated debate over the price of turnips. Safe. Elara? Helping her mother bundle flowers near the well. Potential interaction vector, currently occupied. Borin? Mercifully absent, presumably back at his forge contemplating the existential mysteries of suspicious hermits. Good. Farmer Hemlock? Grumbling at his slightly trampled compost heap from a distance. Contained annoyance.
The coast was relatively clear. Now, where to source actual tea? Not 'Stonker's Delight' or 'Fairy Ring Dewdrops'. Something that might plausibly contain the noble leaf, Camellia sinensis.
Widow Meadowsweet's stall was out. Permanently blacklisted. The dodgy health potion vendor seemed unlikely. The fishmonger? Definitely not.
My eyes settled on a larger, more established-looking stall near the centre. Run by a harried-looking man attempting to sell everything from dusty bolts of cloth to slightly bent nails to sacks of unidentifiable grain. A general goods merchant. Possibility? Low, but higher than zero. Maybe imported goods occasionally trickled into this backwater.
Threading my way through the pedestrian traffic (mostly villagers dodging chickens or haggling aggressively over wilted lettuce), I approached the stall. The merchant, balding and sweating slightly despite the mild temperature, was currently arguing with a woman about the exact number of beans that constituted a 'handful'. Peak Aerthosian commerce.
I waited. Patience wasn't my virtue, but interrupting bean-related disputes seemed like a fast track to elevated annoyance levels. Let them resolve their legume conflict first.
The bean debate concluded unsatisfactorily for both parties. The woman stomped off, beanless. The merchant sighed, wiped his brow, and turned to me. "Aye? What can I do for ya?" His eyes held the weary resignation of a man who had seen too many arguments over legumes.
"Tea," I stated simply.
He raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Tea? Proper tea? Or the herbal stuff Meadowsweet peddles?"
Hope flickered. A tiny, treacherous ember in the vast, cold fireplace of my cynicism. He knew the difference! "Proper tea," I confirmed, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice. Eagerness attracts attention. And complications.
The merchant chuckled humourlessly. "Proper tea. Right. Comes downriver maybe twice a year on the barge from Oakhaven-Upon-Avon-or-Whatever. Costs a fortune. Got maybe... half a pouch left. Dusty. Probably stale. From last season's shipment."
He rummaged under the counter, amidst sacks of grain and coils of rope. Produced a small, slightly grimy cloth pouch. Considerably smaller than Widow Meadowsweet's generous offering of swamp sludge. Tied with faded string.
"There she be," he said, slapping it onto the counter, raising a small puff of dust. "Dragon's Leaf, they call it. Smuggled out of the Eastern Empires, supposedly. Five silver pieces."
Five silver pieces? For a dusty half-pouch of potentially stale tea? That was extortionate by local standards. A week's wages for some of these turnip-farmers. Clearly a luxury item. Which probably meant it was, at least marginally, the real thing.
I mentally calculated the required probability manipulation to 'find' five silver pieces lying forgotten in my shop. Non-trivial energy expenditure. Simpler to just pay. My subconscious currency acquisition was more geared towards coppers, enough for daily irritations, not luxury imports.
I counted out the coins. Far more than the Stonker's Delight. Placed them on the counter. Picked up the pouch. It felt… light. Worryingly light. But it smelled faintly, faintly, underneath the dust and the general market aroma, of actual dried tea leaves. Not peat bog. Not despair. Tea.
"Pleasure doing business," the merchant muttered, already turning his attention to a man trying to barter a sickly chicken for a rusty buckle.
Clutching the small pouch like a holy relic (a real one, not a sock left by a goblin pilgrim), I began the journey back. My mission, against all odds, seemed successful. Tolerable tea was within reach. Maybe retirement wasn't entirely a cosmic joke without a punchline.
Almost back at the shop. Relative safety in sight. Then, disaster.
"Mr. Bob! Wait up!" Elara's voice. Cheerful. Persistent. Approaching rapidly.
I quickened my pace. Pretended not to hear. Almost there. Door within reach.
She practically skidded to a halt beside me, slightly out of breath, clutching a wilting yellow flower (oh please no, not another one). "Mr. Bob! Borin the blacksmith was just asking questions about you! Said you sent that young adventurer Finn to him!"
I kept walking, fumbling with the door latch. "Did I?" Vague memory recall. Noncommittal.
"Yes! And Borin looked all thoughtful and suspicious!" Elara lowered her voice. "He asked me if I thought you were using… magic."
So. The suspicion was spreading. Borin was actively polling the locals. Fantastic. Just absolutely peachy.
"Magic?" I scoffed, finally getting the door open. "Ridiculous. Just sell junk."
I stepped inside, intending to close the door firmly behind me. Elara, however, took my scoff as an invitation.
"That's what I told him!" she exclaimed, slipping inside just before the door shut. "I said you're just quiet and observant! And maybe a bit… mysterious?" She beamed, clearly thinking 'mysterious' was a compliment. It wasn't. It was a synonym for 'suspicious person likely to attract pitchforks'.
She looked around the dusty shop, then back at me, her eyes shining with misplaced admiration. "But you know, Mr. Bob, if you did have secrets, maybe even… magic secrets… they'd be safe with me! I'm very good at keeping secrets!"
She finished this pronouncement with a conspiratorial wink that was probably supposed to be reassuring but instead filled me with a profound sense of impending doom.
Great. Now I had an overly enthusiastic, self-proclaimed secret-keeper convinced I was a closet wizard. And a perceptive blacksmith actively investigating my 'strangeness'. And a pouch of possibly stale, extortionately priced tea clutched in my hand.
Retirement. Bliss.
I needed to brew this tea. Immediately. And hope, against all experience, that it wasn't just another exquisite shade of disappointment served in a chipped mug. The fate of my sanity (or what remained of it) potentially depended on it.