“...So I don’t get why,” I said as I worked on my knees, resurrecting the window display a customer’s errant kid had knocked down, “they didn’t even give me a chance.” The conversation had run stiltedly between sales, recommendations, and wheezing becoated figures I didn’t wanna divulge too much around. Now it was finally just us. The best time of my week. “We look the same! In a Clearlander city surely that should be enough!”

  “Oh. So why wasn’t it?” came Robin’s voice from the back of the shop.

  “I don’t know!” I’d noticed over the weeks, today especially, Robin had this odd habit of conversing with such sporadic interest it was like he was trying to blend into the background of the world, the way one would into a forest when they were under conscription orders – hypothetically of course. Like at times he was trying to be a mirror in the discussion, nothing more. “Why would I be airing all this if I knew why?”

  “I thought you were updating me on your week.”

  “Yeah, but also I… I think I need some of that magic people-reading thing you do. Help me figure it out.” I sighed and slapped my hands on the display table. “Not that it’s your problem to fix. It’s mine. I’d understand you keeping out of it.”

  He hummed quizzically. “I thought it was obvious.”

  “Not to all of us!”

  I stacked more of the packets into spires, snapping them together and swearing I’d impale the head of anyone else who knocked them down right on the tallest one. Didn’t they used to do that on the bridge round here? But hey, it’s how Sterling wanted them, so it’s how Robin wanted them, so it’s how I was making them. Exacting, unremitting. A chain of command even Oldfield could admire, I guess. That man liked his chains. Hope I’d see him manacled in them one day. And not in the fun way “...Robin?”

  He hummed again and it sounded… off. I dragged myself to my feet and went to find him. “Robin? What are you –” He trudged from the back room with a box, head down, cowl up, like a ghost haunting his own shop. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Just thinking.”

  “It’s clearly something.” He lumbered to the cart, heaved the box onto it. “Come on.” Skulked back the way he came and disappeared again. “What’s up? I wanna hear.” I didn’t stand in his way when he passed again. “And honestly I really can’t afford to lose anyone else at this point,” I added, trying to lighten it a little.

  “You wanna hear?”

  “Of course! Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You sounded stressed at me.”

  “At the world! Not at you, I promise.” I didn’t risk going over to him. “Why in all the woods would it be at you? You’re the best part of my life right now.”

  He mumbled into his collar, something about me complaining. My shoulders dipped and I plastered on a smile I didn’t wanna wear. “At the world. I’m sorry. Not at you. I don’t think I could find a single bad word to say about you.”

  Robin swallowed loudly. The place was way too quiet. “I dunno. Uh. They closed their group off to protect themselves. They’ve been hurt by those who look like them too. Probably scared. Of the war, not you. Still scared though. Most people do most stuff cos they’re scared of something. We all live in astonishing fear of our worst nightmares entering our waking world, and the prime way to control anyone is to back them into a corner and dangle their deepest fears in front of them.” He shrugged and added another, “I dunno.”

  “Well that’s… good to know. Thanks. Guess I can’t do much about them until like Kaspar they figure out I’d be the valley’s lamest spy.” I paused. “While you’re at it, do I really act that much like a spy?”

  “Uh. You don’t talk about where you’ve come from, do odd things at odd times, spend long hours alone. No fixed social groups and you take temporary jobs. You sleep wherever you can get a bed like it’s a better bed than any you’ve known. Odd mix of clothes – some very rough, some very refined. You ask weird questions too.”

  “Wow. The more you know, huh.” He wasn’t even looking at me and I felt like he’d examined my every pore and wrinkle. I tried to peer around into his face but he was still messing with the cart stock, and my teeth found my lip and I tried at least not to draw blood this time. “Thanks again. It’s helpful. You’re smart with this stuff, seeing people in a way I can’t.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Survival,” he said simply. The light was falling outside the shop windows, and that one word cast a deeper shadow through the room. “Don’t thank me. I had to figure these things out. Just, uh, surprises me you want to hear it so much. Most people don’t like hearing what I figure out about people. Much less about themselves.”

  I leaned on the corner of the cart and it tipped a fraction. “Then most people need to fix their sticks.” I rolled my thoughts around my tongue for a minute. “You see people in such an insightful way that if they take issue with it, it can only ever be understood as an issue grown within their own self-image.”

  “Uh, I think most people don’t like seeing how they really are.” He sorted the last couple of boxes into place and seemed a little less rigid. “Maybe like a mirror that shows all the guts and gore inside you?”

  “Alright, o wise man, tell me verily of my blood and bones, my deepest fears.” I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear what he’d say but by the spirits I had to hear him say it. I couldn’t lose anyone else and I needed to know he’d tell me anything, no matter how sharp.

  Robin actually looked at me this time. Not like I was a person, but more like… He took a couple steps back and gestured idly at me, my face and eyes down to my chest. Like the way those in the know would admire an artwork. “I think you know,” he said finally. “In fact I’m sure you know. Everyone knows what’s inside that inner box, but also knows they can never open it. Poke it, prod it, use it as a footstool, but never look at the contents directly. Spirits forbid if anything external forces it open. You’ve actually said it a few times to me in the last quarterhundred like your brain was trying to sneak it in without your body feeling the fear of it. It’s quite a thing, how much people give away when they’re not looking at it. Pride and fear are the same face turned upside down.”

  I smiled and I wasn’t sure why. “Something fun to dream about tonight,” I said. Thumbed the corner of the cart. Didn’t wanna leave here yet. “May I guess yours?”

  “Oh, is this what you do for conversation in your hometown? Figure out each other’s deep fears?”

  I coughed suddenly. “Not a million marches away, there. Wow. Erm. Well…” I turned to him, did the same thing he’d done of scanning his hand in front of me like a dowsing rod. Didn’t work. Hadn’t expected it to. Robin had a different kind of magic to the one I knew. “You made a clear point when I got here about how you’d used the extra profit from the malady season to get more pain relief medication from down the valley. Boswellia extract? Seemed kinda proud of saying the hospital could keep it as extra stock. And I heard somewhere that pride and fear are the same face turned upside down.”

  He smiled in a way that I’d only seen on street orphans. “Uh, not a bad attempt. Want another?”

  “Love to but it’s getting late and they keep telling us we have a crucial exam not many weeks away, so I’ve got a few hours of doing-anything-but-studying to catch up on. But I’ll be thinking of you.”

  “Oh, you’re that interested in figuring it out?”

  I wanted to say no. Tell him the thoughts of seeing him every Felday was most of what got me through the week right now. Wanted to work out the right way of telling him everything he meant to me but the jangling of a bell and another wheezing customer cut me off. “Are you still open?” croaked the gentleman, clearly indicating both his startling illiteracy and the abysmal colour recognition of one side of the door sign being green, the other being red. Robin was right: reading people was easy when you knew how. “I only need one or two things – shan’t take long.”

  And I wanted Robin to tell the intruder to hack off the way I would’ve done. If not worse. But Robin’s face shone with a warmth I could never manage and he informed the gentleman it was too late but he’d make an exception, just this once. While he helped, I hung around the oils and balsams like a lost kitten. And when the customer was finally gone, the moment went with him. “You’re too kind to these people,” I said and my words echoed in the shop. Robin shrugged while he put the coins in the safe box, like he’d do it every day of his life if asked. “I think I figured out what your fear is. But that wasn’t gonna be why I was thinking of you.”

  *

  “You know, if you keep grumbling about being alone, there’s always space for you with me and Aster and Raven and Sparrow.” Our room had long grown dark but the chat still bounced between me and Holly. I swore if I could sleep like Grove, half my problems would vanish overnight – literally. “Come chat! We’re heading to the theatre tomorrow afternoon and I know none of them would mind a jot.”

  “I can’t, and anyway, you’re girls. I’m not that kind of alone.”

  I heard her move in her sheets. “What kind of alone, sorry?”

  “Like… Guys,” I said clearly.

  She tsked loudly. “I knew three gay guys before you and none of them could figure guys out either. Is it a cultural thing?”

  “All the hot ones’ life stories are tragedies, that’s what it is. Like some fated character in a travelling theatre.” I rolled over and tried to work out if I could manage to do the hospital in the morning plus the theatre in the afternoon… Same city, right? Same buildings? A chorus of voices in my head railed at me. “Hey, Holly?” I called out. “I think tomorrow if I skipped lunch I could probably –”

  “I’ll personally kick you out to the gutters if you’re gonna say you’ll squeeze it in. I’ve got big boots and it won’t be the first time, trust me.”

  I grumbled and turned back over. Let the thoughts of Robin float in, hoping he felt less alone in his apartment than I did here, surrounded by people. Thoughts of seeing him tomorrow. Thoughts of going to the theatre too that I made myself chase off. I pulled the sheets closer around me. “Thanks again,” I said into the room so I knew she’d hear me.