The peddler rolled a silver coin
between his knuckles, counting the number of times he could get across and
back. “Five…” The day was long and
customers were a rarity. As such, he had little else to do. Besides, he’d been
practicing. “Six…” He had yet to break
his current record of nine laps, and a determination to surpass himself had
taken over his mind. With a focus and care far greater than any silver coin
warranted, he followed the movement with bewitched eyes. “Seven…” With each lap he
leaned closer in, as though he were the spectator to some captivating event his
hand was competing in. Due to all this, you can understand why he failed to
hear the small group of 4 approach his modest selection of wares.
The tall one tapped his foot with
annoyance. As his annoyance grew, so did the rate at which he tapped. This, in
combination with the peddler’s slow, stilted counting (“Eight…”) threw his rhythm off, causing him to step on his other
foot. This, of course, only made him all the more furious. The short one giggled
gleefully at his companion’s error, resulting in a red-faced glare being shot
in his specific direction. “Nine…” Turning
back to the peddler, he sucked in a deep breath. The shy one turned away and
covered his ears.
“OI. WHAT’S IT TAKE TO GET SOME HELP
AROUND HERE?” he shouted, giving the table leg a swift kick, causing the peddler to lose control of his hand. In that moment
between the coin leaving his hand and hitting the table, the peddler’s world
crumbled into minuscule pieces. This was it. There was no point to life any
longer. His dreams, hopes, and ambitions just a sham. Why was he a peddler? He
hated traveling, got terrible anxiety when having to talk to people, and could
barely manage to sell a glass of water to a woman dying of thirst in the
desert. By all accounts he was a failure. He blamed his mother, to be quite
frank. She babied him during his childhood, never letting him get a scratch or
have play-dates with his friends. Heaven forbid her little boy get his knees
dirty or catch a cold. Maybe if he had been allowed to be a normal kid he’d
have toughened up and done something with his life. He could have been a
world-renowned actor, an athlete, an astronaut! Perhaps even a wizard had he stayed in school. Yes, if only he caught cold
growing up. Everything would have been different.
After all that had occurred, the
silver coin hit the table. With that first smack against the wood, the peddler
realized that he was, in fact, lamenting about his life due to an inability to
reach lap ten of silver coin knuckle-rolling. What a moron. He pressed his forefinger and thumb against
the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh. He needed to get his priorities in
order. “My apologies”, he began. “Good afternoon. How can I…” He had finally
looked up at the group in front of him. Upon seeing them, the corners of his
mouth curled into a frown and he furrowed his brow. “Oh. Dwarves. Great.”
“What the hell do you mean by
that?” The tall one who also was keen to shout more often than not began to get red in
the face. The shy one refused to look up and kicked his foot back-and-forth at
nothing in particular on the ground. The chipper one with strikingly good looks
was distracted, looking at his reflection in the one of the pots hanging next
to peddler. The short one who others noted was also daft stared at the silver
coin, wondering why it had stopped rolling on the peddler’s knuckles.
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.” It
was a half-hearted response for a reason. And a good reason at that, he told
himself.
Before the one who was irritable
often could respond, the gleeful, handsome one had broken from his own
reflection and stepped in front of his tall friend. He flashed a quick grin
before speaking. “Hello, good sir. My friends and I –“
“’Oi. ’Friends’ is a bit strong”,
cut in the tall, irritable one from behind and slightly above the handsome one.
“My friends and I”, repeated the
chipper, handsome one “were wondering if you’d be interested in purchasing
something from us”.
Now, this seems like the type of
thing that would be odd to here as a peddler. After all it is the job of the
peddler to sell to customers, not the other way around. And you’d be right in
assuming that this was an odd question. In fact, had this been a group of
humans or elves, the peddler might have been so intrigued that he would have
been tempted to inquire further about the item that was up for sale. However,
these were dwarves. As a peddler, one must always be wary of dwarves.
The
reasons for this are numerous. Dwarves are collectors by all accounts. What
they collect varies from region to region. This ranges from lumber dwarves,
stamp dwarves, coin dwarves, seashell dwarves, etc. The most popular of the
dwarves, as one might guess, were the ore dwarves. Though the reason for the
popularity of the ore dwarves is technically unknown by any non-dwarf, human
scholars have theorized that it’s due to the harsh working conditions that the
mining dwarves must endure. This ability to live such a strenuous lifestyle
exhibited the tenacity of the Dwarf race, and was a respectable trait that all
others should aspire to. This was entirely untrue, but far be it from the
dwarves to not use such a silly idea to their advantage.
Another much smaller school of
thought, held by those who were considered inferior by scholars, maintained
that the reason for the popularity was a result of a small group of miner
dwarves striking more gold than any individual could possibly imagine. With
this gold, the dwarves did what anyone would do: they built a kingdom. Rumors
of the origin of the kingdom spread throughout the land, and all that anyone
could guess was that the miners were responsible for it. This was much closer
to the truth, but still, no dwarf in their right mind would admit to anything
of the sorts.
A third thought was held by only
one person, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was. He was preoccupied with
a silver coin on a table.
What is important, however, is not
that the dwarves are collectors. Far more crucial to why the peddler possessed
such a blatant disdain for the dwarves was due to their incessant need to try
and sell anything they collected that they considered “extraordinary”. These
things include (but by no means are limited to. Some believe the list to be
infinite in length. They are wrong, but not by much.) rocks that are perfectly
oblong aside from the occasional jagged edge or bump, black string, leaves that
have started to turn orange in preparation for the fall, moss that “absolutely
grew on the south side of a tree”, 5-legged spider corpses, and so on. The
peddler could not care less about purchasing any of these things. He was tired.
The day had been spent on knuckle-rolling coins. An exhausting feat to say the
least.
“Listen, I’m not interested. I
haven’t been interested ever. I don’t want string. I don’t want dead spiders. I
don’t want half-eaten moldy bread. It’s getting late. I just want to go home.”
The peddler stared at the group, hoping that at least one of them would be understanding.
Not the tall one, obviously, but one of the other three perhaps. Surely,
someone had to understand.
The shy one who was always blushing
looked up as though he were about to speak. His gaze met the peddler’s and he
returned to his previous task of staring intently at his own feet.
“You’re going to love what we’ve
got for you today”, started the vain one. The peddler’s pleas didn’t even begin
to penetrate past his constant grin. “Believe me. With this in your possession,
the entire world will be at your fingertips.”
“No, listen. I don’t –“
“It is exceedingly rare. Quite
literally one of kind. You will become the sole owner –“
“Please. Stop. I just –“
“Oi. Shut it,” piped the one
wearing an angry frown. “Let cheek bones over there do his spiel.”
“Like I said,” cheek bones
continued with a smile, “You will become the sole owner of the very last
dragon!” He thrust one arm up in the air, striking something of a victory pose.
He looked and his peers, waiting for them to applaud him. When they did not, he
cheered himself and held the pose.
The peddler was slightly confused,
but mostly just exhausted. “You all are having a laugh, aren’t you? Very funny.
Mess with the guy who hasn’t sold anything all day and just wants to go home.
Dragons aren’t real; not these days at least. They’ve been extinct for almost
three centuries. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be leaving now.”
“Wait! I can prove it, right now.”
The good looking one reached into his coat pocket. The peddler snorted. A
dragon in a coat pocket? That was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing he’d
ever heard. Oh well. At least he had gotten a decent laugh out of today, if
nothing else. He turned and started heading in the general direction of his
home. He took four steps before hearing a loud bang behind him. He turned to
see whatever joke the dwarves were clearly trying to play on him.
On the table was a white egg,
roughly the size of an ostrich egg. There was also a silver coin and the nose
of the short, silly dwarf who was staring intently at said coin, but that’s not
terribly important. The egg didn’t look special, outside of being slightly
larger than an egg one might expect to find in a dwarf’s coat pocket.
“That’s an egg,” the peddler said.
“Of course it’s an egg, you idiot.
What, you thought he had an adult dragon in his pocket?” the short-tempered one
spouted. “You might be dumber than he is,” he pointed towards the dwarf you
would expect him to be pointing at.
“Errm. Why exactly, is there an egg
on my table?”
“It’s a dragon egg!” exclaimed the
one who couldn’t help but smile constantly. “The last dragon egg in the world!”
Now, all the peddler wanted to do
was to go home. His day had been ruined a number of times, and he certainly
wasn’t in the mood for any more nonsense. The dwarves clearly weren’t going to
let him be until they had gotten rid of the “dragon” egg. This left him with
only feasible option.
“How much for the ‘dragon’ egg?”
“Aha! I knew you were interested,”
responded the one with perfect skin – for a dwarf that is. “It’ll only cost you
–“
“Silver coin.”
The words were followed by the
turning of two dwarf heads towards the table. They stopped once they got to the
simple one, who was now pointing at the silver coin. The nervous one continued
to stare at the ground in order to avoid catching any rogue glances that might
end up in his direction. Once was already too much for today.
“WHAT?” shouted the one who always
woke up on the wrong side of the bed, “WHADD’YA THINK YER DOING?”
“Hey, relax buddy. You know you start to slur when you get angry. Everything is going to be fine,” the
chipper one said, trying to keep everyone as cheery as possible. He turned to the one who had attempted to sell a priceless item for next to nothing. “Listen. We
can get more than one silver coin. We can get more silver coins than you’d ever
be able to use all on your own. You could have a whole room of silver coins!”
He threw his fist back into the air to emphasize the obvious awesomeness that
he had just explained.
This excited the short, daft one.
With a room full of silver coins, he expected them all to move and play with
each other. Maybe the silver coin here wasn’t moving anymore because it was
shy. If the coin had some friends to play with, it would be willing to move
again. It was a brilliant plan, he thought.
The three of them turned back to
the peddler to renegotiate the terms of the transaction. What they saw, however,
was a missing egg and the lack of a peddler.
The peddler slept well that night. The
dwarves were no longer in sight, and the thought of having an egg that large
for breakfast the following morning put him right to sleep.
