You smile gently, looking past your round glasses at the door at the sound of a bell jangling, then to the stranger who enters your small shop, looking tired and smelling faintly of burnt hair. He’s clearly exhausted and mildly disheveled, his coat and scarf haphazardly tangled together, the collar flipped wildly in some places. When your eyes meet his crushingly bright yet tired eyes, and everything stops like stopping a string from vibrating, stillness, achingly silent and calm stillness. It takes you a moment to recover, but you clear your throat anyway, ignoring the feeling; customers come first.

“Good evening, welcome in. Can I help you find anything this chilly winter night?” Idly, you set down your book, toying with the fraying edges to distract from the almost magnetic effect this stranger has on you. He clasps his hands in front of himself and walks briskly to the counter, his boots thumping along the wooden floor.

“Ah, ja, I am actually wondering if you have anything of an arcane nature?” You raise your eyebrows, momentarily shocked, not many people come around for those things specifically, and dutifully, the stranger follows a flicker of hope reigniting on his face, like a dying ember being given reason to live once more. But shock quickly turns into mentally cataloguing your wares.

“Well, we have a small section over this way.” You wheel out past the counter to the back left corner of your shop, picking out a select few books that might interest this stranger. Though you can tell that it’s really not what he’s looking for at the fall of hope from his face, you purse your lips, maybe he could be the one.

“I do also have three books behind the counter, maybe they’re meant to be yours.” You wheel back to the counter. You can see him, in a way that you usually don’t with other people, this man is sad, a dying coal still trying desperately to find reason to be a flame once more.

You don’t just see it, you feel it, in the deepest part of your soul, in the trenches where you desperately try to hide the fact that you want nothing more than to go on one more wild adventure; in the small crevices where you wish nothing more than to stand from this wretched wheelchair and run again. You see yourself in him, trying to find reasons, so maybe this stranger could use a kindness that hasn't been shown for a long time.

“Now, these I found in my hands after my very last adventure, and they’ve been looking for the right person.” From beneath the counter, you heave three hefty tomes. One covered with smooth purple leather that shines mildly in the candlelight, and with a matte finish, there are geometric patterns clearly drawn on by hand.

“This one is about dunamancy and its machinations, truthfully, I’m not magically inclined, so I don’t know much about any of these.” You see the stranger's eyes widen to saucers, blue eyes shimmering with passion and longing. He nods and motions towards the other two, who settled onto the counter. The second one you hover your hand over is bound in tan leather and polished quite nicely, though the cover gives away nothing; you briefly skim the pages to ascertain the book's contents.

“This one is about the nature of primordials, I believe, as I said, I’m not an arcane connoisseur.” The stranger's posture straightens, and you can see his fingers itching to reach out and touch them, to sift through the pages and understand the contents fully; to learn. Finally, you hover your hand over the final tome, wrapped carefully in reddish leather with patterns and small writing burned into it. It doesn’t gleam, but you see the stranger’s eyes nearly bulge out of his face.

“And I think this one is about theoretical magic and oh, I don’t know, hypotheses, I suppose.” The stranger wets his lips, setting his hands on the counter, tapping his pointer finger against the wood. You can see the calculations running through his head. This is basically a cosmic tease; surely these tomes, which Caleb has heard about since he first set his fingers around his first magical components. His gaze flicks to you, battling a strange mix of suspicion and curiosity on his face, fingers still itching to reach out and feel the covers.

“And uh, how—how much are you asking for the three of them?” You purse your lips, gazing at the times long and hard; you’ve tried to understand the contents, but it’s always been completely lost on you. You look this stranger up and down: a ragged coat and pants, dirty bandages wrapped tightly around his forearms. He doesn’t look like he has much.

“How much do you have?” You can tell that the question throws him off balance; he expects something, a solid price that he can haggle, the usual dance of a merchant and their mark. You left him off balance and struggling to regain his equilibrium.

“How…how much do I have?” After a beat, he reaches into his coin purse; the coins shift and clink against each other. He knew he didn’t have enough. “Not nearly enough.” You look at his pouch, not heavy with coin, then you look at the tomes, your party’s wizard would’ve been nose deep in these whilst camping on the road for your next adventure; the thought stung. These need to be used by someone.

“Let’s make a deal.” His eyes narrow, a potent mixture of skepticism, caution, and curiosity. He echoes your words, mirroring his cautious gaze but not unkind; you see his eyes flick to the tome and then back to you.

“What kind of deal?” The words leave his lips before he can stop himself, inquisitiveness getting the better of him, and you smile tenderly but brightly, then squeeze your hands together tightly, the memory of your late friend flashing through your mind. These tomes need to find some use, or that last adventure was for nothing.

“Pay me twelve gold. Total, but when you understand the contents fully, or come back from whatever adventure, you tell me about it, you let me write about it.” You unclamp your hands and place your hand on his, which is still firmly on the counter, your eyebrows furrowed in a strange, brewing expression of grief and acceptance.

”What are you getting at? You want twelve gold for all three? And you want me to return with what…? A story?” You laugh; it’s not truly mirthful, but the laugh makes Caleb feel light, like something has clicked, like the dying coal of his soul burns just slightly brighter. You motion to yourself, not what you used to be, but trying, now bound to your wheelchair, not able to adventure and fight beasts like you used to be able to.

“The stories that are produced aren’t anything like how they used to be; there's no point in keeping these bad boys if they can be of use to someone else.” You can tell he’s puzzled, questioning your logic, running through all the reasons that you would be offering these tomes for possibly a hundredth of the price. And not only do you want his story, not the team's, not what his team will do as a whole, but you also want to know his rendition of the team's story.

“You want my story… You’re not concerned I’m some highway man or brigand.” You laugh, truly this time, mirth dancing across your face as you’ve laughed so many times before, but you’ve forgotten what it was like to laugh truly.

You wipe away a fake tear and then gesture to all of him, “Highwaymen don't typically barge into locally owned bookshops in the middle of the night to look for coin.” He found himself almost smiling at your reaction, a rare expression of amusement wriggling itself onto his face, seeing something refreshing about the way you conducted business, something that eased the weight of his usual apprehensiveness

“You’ve got a point there,” the stranger concedes, “Most criminals wouldn’t choose this place to be caught in, especially at this hour.” He looks down at the tomes, then back at you, blue eyes heavily sizing you up.

“We have a deal. Twelve gold, and if I return— when I return, I’ll tell you a story.” You smile wide and radiant and hold your hand out to shake, which he takes, and you note the stark contrast between your hand and his. Yours are recovering from years of calluses, smoothing over but still home to many stories, and scars, yours are rounder from a better diet and shorter, with decently clean and trimmed nails. His are the exact opposite, long, nimble, bony fingers darkened with soot and dirt and whatever the hell else, with dirt, or something that looks like dirt caked under his fingernails. But you can’t find it in yourself to care how dirty he is.

“Better tell those friends of yours to keep you alive.” He chuckles, a rare noise that wanes into something like a soft smile.

“They already spend far too much time keeping me from doing something foolishly heroic.” He glances back at the door of your establishment as if expecting all of them to charge in at any given moment— all noise and chaos and vividly colored blasphemy to subtlety. Then his forget-me-not blues meet you again, burning brighter now, with determination that you didn’t see before.