I give serious thought to just leaving, but the weasel keeps looking at me expectantly, and I don't really want to offend him since he's been nice-ish. So I do my best and just keep my eyes either on the ground or the sign to limit the number of people looking "in" at me even though its getting uncomfortably hot. But I'll take heat over everything else, so it's fine.

  "What can I do for you?" The clerk asks with a big toothy grin only barely visible behind his colossal gray beard that's been pinned in place by a series of animal-themed hair clips.

  "I'll take whatever you recommend that has an Ignia component. I'll also pay for him, whatever he's getting." I respond in short, clipped tones while gesturing at the weasel.

  "You sure about that? He eats a lot, and we feed him for free normally. It would effectively just be a donation to the shrine."

  "That's fine."

  He gives me a figure, so I start counting out the coins while he sets about gathering the food. It takes only a minute or so and he slides a small tray with what looks like a fried red tofu with some sort of sauce atop it, a glass of green-blue bubble tea, and a small pile of cookies. The rest of the tray, however, is entirely coated in bowls full of berries. No recipe, no anything else of note, really. Just berries, and some of the bowls have syrup either atop or in small containers on the side.

  I hand over the coins and voice a quiet thanks before asking, "Is it alright if I go sit by the shrine? I'll clean up if I make any sort of mess."

  He nods, "S'fine, there's some seating within the shrine if you'd rather not sit on the floor."

  The weasel eyes me curiously as I pick up the tray. "Shall we eat, little one?" I offer. In response, he hops down and weaves around my legs for a few moments before I start moving and then bounds forward.

  Moving more slowly, it takes a couple minutes to get back to the shrine, but inside there is some seating next to a single table. Once inside, I set down the tray and take a seat — the weasel joining me a moment later and immediately shoving his entire face inside a bowl and making some of the most offensively wet-sounding eating noises I've ever heard. With the gusto he's diving in, there's no way he's even breathing.

  I, comparatively, just take a knife and fork and start to slice off pieces of the fried tofu and pick at it with no real interest anymore.

  The slavering and slurping abruptly ends and the weasel turns to stare at me again. "Are you a bandit?"

  The question catches me off guard. "No? Arguably the opposite. Why do you think I'm a bandit?"

  "Hmmm, townspeople say that nobody comes here who doesn't live here, is not a merchant, or isn't a bandit. You don't have a cart, so you are not a merchant. So, you must be a bandit."

  "Does this town have a lot of problems with bandits? They're really not a common thing to be forming a baseline assumption about. I don't even recall the last time I heard of a "bandit" existing."

  "Mmm, no. Just two."

  "And do they look anything like me?"

  "Mmm…no. Do you live here?"

  I see a pattern forming, so I try to head it off. I'm really not in the mood. "My friend and I got hurt in the woods and came here for help. We won't be staying." I say sharply. "What are you, anyways? Some sort of…saint or something? A guardian of the town?"

  He sighs and chomps down on another berry, managing to communicate the most put-out expression I can imagine on such a creature. "Why does everyone always ask? Male. Also yes, I am a guardian here."

  I have to stifle a laugh, not remotely expecting that response. "I meant, like… I've never heard of a talking weasel—"

  "Stoat." The correction comes with an instant sharpening of his posture and narrowing of his beady black eyes at me.

  "Sorry, talking stoat. I don't know much about the animals around here." He immediately relaxes, so I continue. "Anyways, I was just going to say I've never seen or heard of something like you outside of fiction stories or as a familiar. And you are obviously far too complex to be a familiar."

  He looks up at me thoughtfully. "Mmm… I am a stoat." The finality by which he states it makes it very clear that I will not be getting a more involved answer. Especially after he says nothing whatsoever and returns to eating, seemingly forgetting we were talking.

  I try to think of what to talk to the creature about, but before I can come up with a topic — it's hard to find common ground with something like this, who'd have thought — he stares at me with another uncomfortably interrogative glare. The look sends a chill down my spine, but I can't really place why. I could punt this thing if it came down to it…

  "Why did you hide your body in the food line? Your posture changed too. It is why I thought you might be a bandit."

  It's a very simple question, and the one I really am not in the mood to answer, but again, I feel obligated to, so I do. It's not like this thing is going to have the same preconceived notions about my people. "People don't like my kind. My horns and tail are a clear indicator of what I am, and I was in a good enough mood to forget about that fact for a little while."

  "Mmm, why don't they like your kind?"

  I grit my teeth and consider standing to leave, but the question seems genuine, so I push on. "Because…" I hesitate, thinking of how to word it. "Putting it simply, there's not many of us, and people don't know anything about us other than that we're strong, and are apparently bad luck. So people react negatively to us."

  "Mmm…"

  Almost a full minute passes as he bobs his head like he's holding a private conversation internally. Great, I'm explaining racial prejudice to an insane, talking, stoat.

  "You okay?" I ask tentatively.

  "Don't be rude, talking to Hat."

  "Ah. Right." I return to waiting patiently. Of course he's talking to his hat.

  After another thirty or so seconds of picking at my food, he launches into a fairly impassioned-sounding rant.

  "Mmm… Okay. One: Hat says the people looked at your horns because they were different not because of 'racism'. If you are uncommon, people look at you. People look at me all the time. If people look at me meanly, I hurt them. You should do the same. Hat says 'but only if you're sure.'"

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  He nods sagely before continuing. "Two. Not from Hat, from me. Thank you for buying me food. We are friends now. If anyone is rude to you or hurts you, I will kill them."

  Without skipping a beat, he finishes. "Are you going to finish that? You have been pushing around the squishblock for five minutes. Don't waste food."

  The three statements together leave me utterly flummoxed.

  "Uh…thanks? And no, I'm not very hungry, if you want it go ahead."

  How do I even respond to that? I saw the looks. They're the same as always. I've known it my entire life. It was every experience I had on coming here, and ultimately led to why my parents died. What does this little thing know about any of that?

  I decide I should just leave the situation. He means well, probably, but it's a topic that's only going to make me mad. "Thanks for the talk. I need to be getting back to my room to rest."

  "What is your name? Hard to be friends with no name. I am Sir Henry Slinks." When he looks up at me, I get a good look at him for the first time in a while, and his entire head and most of his torso is dyed in a tapestry of berry juices the full span of the rainbow.

  "My name is Nyssa Vigil. It's nice to meet you. Have a good day."

  With that, I pull my coat tight, ensure nothing of my heritage is showing, and go return the tray as the stoat returns to lazing about on the plinth.

  I'd been planning to look around and explore the town a little more but… I'll just go lay down. That'll be better for my leg, anyways.

  Plus, it'll be nicer to talk to Serafina if she's around than it would be anyone else in the city. We'll see if I feel up to going to the congregation later.

  Serafina frowns deeply after I explain how my outing went. She went the full breadth of emotions from excitement to disappointed to mad for me, and I appreciate it all, if I'm being honest. Commiserating is always cathartic for things like this.

  "Well, the weasel — sorry, stoat — might have a point, but you know how people are better than most. We don't really need them while you're recovering. We can just relax in here and order in. The innkeeper offered to bring food while you're getting better." She steps forward and pulls me into a hug that warms me up quite a bit.

  She's right, I'll forget about this town in two days when we leave, and I can just move on with things. Go back to worrying about things that matter inbetween population centers — monsters and other dangers.

  "Thanks Serafina."

  We spend the next few hours mostly relaxing — I nap on and off, and Serafina spend the majority of the time poking through her codex making reports or reading any of the seemingly countless books she has in her carryall pouches.

  "Maybe it's a stupid question, Serafina, but why do you carry so many books with you?" I ask, sitting up and tucking a pillow under my leg to keep it raised and circulation going.

  "Hmm? Oh, I don't always bring books with me from home. I just stopped by bookstores here in Burrowvale and in Silverbrook and stocked up." She says dismissively with a wave of her hand. Not dismissing me, but just treating the answer as incredibly mundane. "I don't get much out of bringing books I've already read, so I stock up anywhere I go and eventually use them to stock my home library or donate them to the Vigil records or the Kharbon Repository."

  "How much do you buy? Since we've been traveling together I've seen you with no less than thirty different books in hand."

  "Oh. Pretty much anything I haven't read before."

  I just stare at her, agape. "Isn't that…really expensive? You just clear out book stores?"

  "Is it that odd?" She looks genuinely perplexed when she asks. "I just like books."

  It puts me in an awkward situation — one I put myself rather squarely in with my quick question. "Not…odd, I guess. I suppose I just don't have anything I like well enough to want to collect it."

  She looks thoughtful for a moment before pointing at my hair. "What about your hair clips? I know you'd been waiting for your horns to finish coming in so you could wear them. The amethyst one looked quite nice on the day you returned to the keep, even considering everything else."

  "You…knew about that? Really? Don't get me wrong, I guess you're right. But that's less of a collection thing. It just…" I trail off when I think of the exact reasons why I've always kept a nice little stockpile of little jewelry like that.

  "I wasn't demanding an explanation, Nyssa, I'm just saying that you, despite what you try to fool yourself and others into thinking, are still a person who likes and wants things. You're more than the armor and the knives." She tosses a book onto the bed in front of me. "Two things. One: I think you might find that book interesting — it's a good example of why I clear stock everywhere I go. Two: how do you think my family has gained so much knowledge and opened so many libraries and schools? It takes books!"

  She beams at me as I scoop up the book. It has some distantly familiar runic artwork on the front, but the language is something I only barely remember. I wind up staring at it for a few minutes, desperately trying to reassemble the language with twenty-year-old memories. I really fail to make any headway, though, which leaves me frowning and feeling guilty for letting it fall out of my mind so long ago.

  "The words don't matter much, it's mostly overly poetic ramblings to describe the actual content. The demonkyn are very much given over to incredible acts of poetry despite the fact that your language is so concise. Take a look at the artwork. I'm well aware that you're out of practice, I didn't give it to you expecting you to torture yourself with it, Nyssa."

  Distracted from my oncoming, and probably deserved, spiral of guilt, I flip it open to a random page and find very few words on the page. Instead, I find very detailed diagrams of poses and transitions between positions. Interested, I flip back to the start and start fresh.

  Flipping through, the poses feel incredibly familiar. Each one is depicting a demonkyn with a similar body type to my own — complete with horns, tail, and even my leg structure in exacting detail. The sort of level of detail that would require a model, or personal experience.

  Each of the poses is part of ritualistic dance routines — the ones that my fighting styles are derived from that I've been working from half-remembered routines from my childhood to develop. They've been very effective, but little inconsistencies have long prevented me being able to fully utilize them.

  Many of them, perhaps most importantly, are for ritualistic worship of my people's interpretation of The Watcher.

  As I progress, I find myself giddily flipping page by page, trying to find routines I've been using, and then scrabbling to pull out my codex to jot some things down — page numbers, problems I've been having.

  "Well, I guess I'll consider that a successful find, then. I thought you might like that one." She sounds so nonchalant about it. Finding anything from my people is nearly impossible. I've looked, endlessly.

  "How did you find this? It looks really old. So little was recovered after the fall."

  "I've been holding onto it for a while — I just never found a good time to bring it up. But I bought it from a traveling trader some years ago as a novelty and to ensure it wasn't lost like so much else. I brought it with me on this little excursion on the off chance that you might need a pick-me-up after everything that has gone on."

  Listening to her, I just slowly close the book to protect it from some traitorous tears forming at the corners of my eyes. I swipe at the stinging tears to try to force them away. But instead of hurting like usual, this is something buoyant — something happy.

  "Serafina, this is one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever given me. I…really don't have the words to thank you for it. I can try to pay you back, I know it can't have been cheap…" I offer meekly. My resources are a fraction of a fraction of hers — she did just casually remark about buying entire book stores, after all — but I feel like I have to offer.

  "Just how transactional of a person do you think I am, Nyssa? You will not be paying me for a gift I gave you. I swear, you're hopeless." There's no venom in the words, just a warm, and admittedly reasonable, disbelief. "My only price is that you make use of it. It would be a shame for it to go forgotten and unused now that it's in the hands of a rightful owner. Maybe show me the dances sometime if you're comfortable with it? I've read wonderful things about them from books and seeing them performed by someone with the body type they're designed for would probably be a delight."

  It sets me blushing something fierce. Most of the dances are performed with fairly minimal garb aside from flowing fabrics to limit restrictions to movement. My people preferred blade-dancing to avoid harm, instead of relying on armor, and it's something we have always done to great effect.

  But dancing like that in front of someone? In front of Serafina?

  It sets my heart beating a good bit faster, so I take a bit of time to really wipe my eyes, plainly buying time.

  "I…uh…could do that, once I have some time to study, just need time to study. To study a bit, you know."

  She merely smiles back at me without a care in the world.

  "I think I'd like that, Nyssa."