The faint, lingering aroma of fermented vegetation and goblin fanaticism hung in the air. A truly unique olfactory signature for Oakhaven. They should bottle it. "Eau de Desperation," perhaps. Or "Essence of Existential Regret (Compost Edition)."
I rinsed the teacup. Cold water. The plumbing in this rented hovel (calling it a shop was generous, it was more a slightly-less-drafty section of shed) gurgled ominously, like a dying beast choking on its own stagnant fluids. Primitive. Everything here was aggressively primitive.
It wasn't charmingly rustic. It wasn't quaint. It was just… badly made. Like the universe had gotten bored halfway through rendering this particular planetoid and just hit 'copy-paste' on the "Generic Medieval Failure" template.
I placed the cup back on the dusty counter. It sat there, mocking me with its emptiness. My brief, unsatisfactory interlude of attempted hydration was well and truly over. Annihilated by diminutive green morons with delusions of divine sausage retrieval.
My retirement plan, Version 7.3 (Sub-variant: Quiet Desperation), was already hitting significant operational hurdles. Namely, reality itself seemed determined to happen near me. The sheer inconsideration.
A shadow fell across the grimy threshold. Accompanied by wheezing.
Oh, stellar. Just what I needed. Bureaucracy.
Mayor Grumbleson stood there, puffing like a leaky bellows. A portly man whose waistcoat strained valiantly against the inexorable pressure of too many meat pies. His face, usually a mask of worried incompetence, was currently split by a wide, unnerving smile.
"Bob, my good fellow! Remarkable!"
I offered him the Oakhaven standard greeting: a noncommittal grunt that could mean anything from "Acknowledged" to "Considering vaporizing your constituent atoms." It saved vocal cord effort.
Grumbleson bustled inside, seemingly oblivious to the fine layer of dust coating every available surface, including, probably, himself within moments. He beamed. It wasn't a natural expression on him. It looked like his facial muscles were staging a painful, poorly rehearsed revolt.
"Absolutely remarkable! The goblins! Gone! Vanished!" He snapped his fingers, a surprisingly loud crack in the shop's dusty silence. "Poof!"
I internally debated the accuracy of "poof." It was less a sudden disappearance and more a misguided pilgrimage towards rotting vegetation, but why split hairs? Especially when splitting hairs involved actual conversation.
"Heard the commotion," I mumbled, aiming for bored indifference. It wasn't difficult. Boredom was my resting state; indifference was the cherry on top.
"Commotion?" Grumbleson chuckled, a sound like rocks tumbling in a barrel. "My dear Bob, it was nearly a catastrophe! Farmer Hemlock's prize hen was accosted! Market stalls threatened! Young Timmy lost his favorite turnip!"
The sheer scale of the potential tragedy was overwhelming. Brunhilde the Hen subjected to goblin critique. Vegetables placed in mild peril. A root vegetable Separation Anxiety incident. Truly, the annals of cosmic horror had nothing on Oakhaven village drama.
"But then," Grumbleson leaned closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially, though we were the only ones present besides the perpetually judging stuffed owl, "they just… stopped. Turned tail and ran off towards the old Hemlock place, gibbering about sausages!"
He slapped his knee. "Sausages! Can you imagine? Divine intervention, I say! The village spirits protecting us!"
Yes. The village spirits. Manifesting as the overwhelming stench of decay. Plausible. Almost as plausible as sentient tapioca pudding forming a galactic empire (Timeline 4-Beta-9, a messy affair, wouldn't recommend).
"Luck," I offered, hoping the monosyllable would terminate the interaction.
"Luck?" Grumbleson scoffed. "Nonsense, Bob! Oakhaven is blessed! And perhaps," he winked, an action that involved his entire face scrunching up like a discarded paper bag, "we have a certain... wise newcomer to thank for tipping the scales of fortune?"
Ah. Here it comes. The unsolicited attribution of competence. My absolute favorite pastime. Ranking right up there with undergoing spontaneous molecular disassembly or listening to Vogon poetry.
I focused intently on a particularly stubborn stain on the floorboards. Looked like dried regret. Or possibly jam. Hard to tell in this light.
"Just run a shop," I said, polishing a rusty hinge with a rag that probably added more grime than it removed.
"Modest! Always modest!" Grumbleson chortled, clapping me on the shoulder. A mistake. Physical contact. Unsolicited. I resisted the primal urge to recalibrate his skeletal structure's relationship with gravity. It took effort. More effort than rerouting goblin olfactory nerves.
"Well, whatever the cause, the village council sends its... well, its relief! Yes, profound relief!" He puffed himself up again. "There was even talk of... a celebratory turnip stew tonight! You must join us, Bob!"
Turnip stew. The pinnacle of Aerthosian cuisine. Boiled sadness in a bowl. An invitation dripping with unspoken social obligations and the near-certainty of indigestion.
The sheer horror of it must have shown on my face, because Grumbleson faltered slightly.
"Ah, well. Perhaps another time? Busy man, running this... establishment." He waved a vague hand at the collection of discarded histories cluttering the space. "Yes. Understandable."
He clearly didn't understand at all, but his capacity for self-delusion was, I had to admit, almost impressive on a local scale.
"Things to... sort," I grunted, gesturing vaguely towards a pile of chipped pottery. A universally understood excuse for avoiding unwanted social interaction. Works across galaxies, apparently.
"Right, right! Of course!" Grumbleson backed towards the door, relief evident on his own face now. Probably feared I'd start haggling over the price of a bent spoon or something equally dreadful. "Well, good day to you, Bob! Good day! And thank you... for being here!"
He bustled away, leaving behind a lingering scent of perspiration and existential panic barely masked by forced joviality.
Silence descended once more. Blessed, beautiful, fragile silence.
It lasted approximately thirty-seven seconds.
"Mr. Bob? Are you in?"
A different voice this time. Higher pitched. Carrying an alarming payload of youthful enthusiasm.
Elara. The village girl who seemed inexplicably fascinated by my collection of derelict objects. She peered around the doorframe, eyes wide, hair slightly askew, clutching a small, brightly colored flower.
"Heard the goblins," I stated flatly. Maybe if I preempted the topic, it would wither and die faster.
"Oh, yes! Wasn't it scary?" She stepped inside, undeterred by the gloom or the aura of profound irritation I deliberately cultivated. "Mayor Grumbleson said they just ran away! Like magic!"
Not magic. Olfactory manipulation. Get it right. Honestly, the lack of precision in primitive languages was appalling.
"Lucky," I repeated, hoping the word hadn't lost its meager repellent properties.
Elara tilted her head, considering this. "Maybe. Or maybe..." Her eyes drifted around the shop, settling on a tarnished silver locket lying forlornly on a shelf. "...maybe this place has good energy? Like, protective?"
Good energy. Protective. This 'place' primarily accumulated dust and despair. Its most potent 'energy' was probably static cling on a dry day.
"It's just old stuff," I sighed. The slow leak of resignation was becoming a steady flow.
"Old stuff has stories," Elara insisted, her voice filled with the kind of earnest belief that usually preceded terrible life choices involving cursed artifacts or falling in love with charming rogues destined for tragic ends.
She stepped closer to the counter, placing the flower – a daisy, I think, though my botanical knowledge of Dimension #734-Gamma flora was deliberately minimal – carefully beside my empty teacup.
"I brought this for you. To say... well, just 'cause." She smiled, a genuine, uncomplicated expression that was almost more jarring than Grumbleson's forced bonhomie. "Maybe it'll brighten the place up?"
It was yellow and white. It clashed horribly with the prevailing brown and grey color scheme of impending entropy that defined the shop's aesthetic. It was... thoughtful.
Dammit.
Unsolicited gratitude was bad enough. Unsolicited kindness was infinitely worse. It created expectations. Obligations. Emotional resonance. All things antithetical to a quiet, detached retirement spent contemplating the eventual heat death of the universe.
"Thanks," I mumbled, the word feeling foreign and rough in my throat. I poked the daisy gingerly. It didn't disintegrate. Didn't try to steal my wallet. Didn't declare itself the harbinger of the Root Vegetable Apocalypse. Small mercies.
Elara beamed, apparently interpreting my grunt of minimal acknowledgement as profound appreciation. "Old Man Hemlock says you're really wise, you know. Quiet type. Sees things others don't."
Hemlock. The owner of the compost heap now presumably acting as a goblin pilgrimage site. His definition of 'wisdom' likely involved predicting rain based on joint pain or knowing which mushrooms wouldn't kill you. Probably shouldn't be used as a reliable character reference for a former multiversal administrator.
"Just run the shop," I repeated, my personal mantra of minimal engagement.
Elara didn't seem discouraged. She looked around again, her gaze lingering on a particularly dented kettle. "Do you... know the stories of all these things, Mr. Bob?"
Every object in this universe technically had a 'story'. A chain of causality stretching back to the Big Bang, involving stellar nucleosynthesis, planetary accretion, flawed manufacturing processes, and ultimately, abandonment in this dusty corner. Did she want the long version? Involved quantum physics and several epochs she likely wouldn't find engaging.
"Some," I admitted vaguely.
"Wow." Her eyes sparkled. Oh, stellar entropy, not the sparkles. Anything but the sparkles. That usually heralded the beginning of a 'quest' or some other form of bothersome narrative momentum.
I needed to shut this down. Fast. Before I accidentally ended up 'mentoring' someone on the optimal trajectory for dusting forgotten artifacts or the philosophical implications of rust.
"Shop's... closing," I declared, abruptly deciding it was. Mid-afternoon, but who cared? My shop, my arbitrary closing times. One of the few perks of pretended self-employment.
Elara looked surprised, but thankfully, compliant. "Oh! Okay. Sorry to bother you, Mr. Bob."
"No bother," I lied, already turning towards the back room (a slightly smaller, slightly damper section of shed).
"See you tomorrow?" she asked, already halfway out the door.
The question hung in the air, laced with cheerful expectation. It implied a continuation. A recurring interaction. A pattern.
Patterns were dangerous. Patterns led to attachment. Attachment led to caring. Caring led to active intervention when things inevitably went sideways, usually involving screaming, explosions, and far too much paperwork (metaphorical or otherwise).
I merely grunted again, letting her interpret it however her optimistic, non-cosmically-jaded brain wished.
The door creaked shut behind her. The silence returned. Tentative. Fragile. Like a soap bubble blown near a porcupine.
I looked at the daisy. It sat there, unnervingly yellow against the gloom. A tiny, cheerful monument to everything I was trying to avoid.
I considered vaporizing it. Atom by atom. Just wiping its irritating perkiness from the spacetime continuum.
Too much effort.
With another sigh – this one carrying the weight of eons of bureaucratic nightmares and the fresh sting of unwanted floral arrangements – I picked up the offending bloom and looked for something, anything, to put it in.
Maybe an old inkwell? No, cracked. A chipped mug? Possible candidate.
Retirement. Bliss.
Someone, somewhere in the vast, indifferent cosmos, was having a laugh. A big, booming, paradox-inducing laugh. Probably at my expense.
And the worst part? My tea was still cold.