Confuzzled Mini Story, 2025
Finding Their Way

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Racoon Jayb

It should have been well known that a soul didn’t have to continue on the same path in life forever, but the world wasn’t all that amenable to that, sometimes. Even in the city, there were people who still knew about Schedill, what he’d done – oh, what a fractured past that gnome had. Much of it was stitched back together again, somehow, though not even Schedill could have pretended to understand how he had been given that much grace.

Maybe it had something to do with Anissa. Maybe. But he wasn’t going to say that aloud, not as he traipsed to the marketplace board with Becky at his side. The white hen clucked behind the gnome, pecking at the ground, ever on the alert for scraps that could provide her with a tasty moral. His red hat bobbed through the crowd, the market as busy as ever, and he absent-mindedly tugged at his black beard, forehead furrowed.

Nothing new, nothing new…

Schedill scanned the board of bounties, finding nothing that would suit him and his strengths – but maybe he’d end up taking something that was less suitable, to put some coin on the table. For a moment, the gnome’s thoughts cast back to another time, when he’d worked under someone, and the lines in his brow deepened.

Not going back to that.

He was curt, even with himself, mooching away from the board, a man stepping around him with a grunt. Schedill ignored them. He ignored most people around the city, choosing who to pay attention to and, especially so, when he used his voice or not.

Stalls of fruit and vegetables lay ahead of him, along with the fabric traders further along the line in the market, and he turned dismissively from them. There was nothing there that would benefit him and his fingers itched, wanting to be out, collecting on a bounty. Work had been slow of late and there were too many willing to take on riskier work than ever, with times on the leaner side. At least the merchants were doing well, though it all came through in the value of what they were actually selling. He was savvy enough to know that someone bringing fine cloth from a faraway land would earn more than a potato farmer having gone to market, but the latter sold better than the former. It was not a business he had any interest at all in getting into, definitely not.

As he headed back to his small dwelling, not quite in the poorest part of the city but it was certainly a more modest area for those counting their coin, he paused. He’d recognise Anissa anywhere and he shook his head, wondering at how she moved so fluidly amongst humans, and other expected races, those days. She looked like a regular woman, bar her eyes, in her human form with her red hair tumbling down, swept back from her face. No one but he, as far as he was aware, knew Anissa was actually a draconic humanoid. She probably had him beat on the “torrid past” thing, however, as any trouble Schedill had got himself into was entirely of his own doing.

Anissa looked to have taken on some work at the ale house, sorting and loading the barrels to go into the tavern and then sending empty kegs back, all to be refilled. She laughed a bit awkwardly at what her companion, a fellow worker, said, though she was still taller than most in her human form, standing eye to eye with him. Her draconic form, of course, stood easily at six-feet-tall, towering over him.

Whereas Anissa did not specifically take on bounties, like him, the draconic humanoid was still learning the ways of the world. He eyed her as she lugged a barrel up on to her shoulder, adjusting the weight of it, yet it was a balance for her in looking like she was having trouble with a heavy load (while doing work that typically male labourers took on) and getting on with it too. 

“Hey, Anissa,” he grunted, a gruff note in his tone even when Schedill didn’t mean for it to be there. “You got a minute?”

She paused and he could almost see the tip of her tail flicking in his mind’s eye, like the image of her was shifting, revealing more than it should have.

Anissa dusted off her hands, copying something she’d seen other races do around the city since she’d integrated there, and smiled. It was a little too wider, though he let out a short chuckle at that, so brief that it was cut off almost before it had begun. She was growing on him.

“Last of the shift,” she said breezily. “What’cha up to, Schedill?”

“That’s informal for you,” he said, falling into line with her as she headed to the back of the ale house, just so she could collect her pay for the day. “What’s gone with your airs and graces, ‘ey?”

She blinked at him.

“That’s how people talk around here.”

“That’s how common folk talk around here, and beyond too,” he elaborated. “You find a way that suits you, you don’t have to copy everyone to fit in, y’know.”

She put a hand on her hip, though still smiled at the barkeep as he handed over her wages in coin.

“Thank you,” she said, though he waved her off, grunting something about returning at the same time the next morning for another round of work. “Schedill… I’m not going to fit in and get along with people if I don’t learn how they are.”

“Oh, you’re good enough as you are already,” he said dismissively. “C’mon. No new bounties going up. Might find me lugging barrels about with you tomorrow.”

“Oh!”

She grinned, walking alongside him, but slowing her step to keep pace with the shorter gnome.

“Don’t worry about that. I was out early, so I’ve already taken care of it all for you.”

She reached into the pocket of her leather jacket, which came down to her mid-thighs, and dug out a handful of paper, which she passed over to him. He didn’t pause in his step as he flicked his eyes over them, though he nearly tripped over Becky in his surprise.

“Anissa!” He shook his head, gently shooing Becky out of the way so the hen clucked alongside him once again. “Are these the bounties I was looking for? You took ‘em off the board?”

She grinned.

“Yup! Figured you’d be needing them. Early bird gets the bug and…what they say.”

“Worm,” he replied, distracted by the four scrawled bounties in his hands. “Let’s get to my place, so I can go over these. Anissa… Thank you.”

It was still unusual for him to find someone who went as out of their way for him as Anissa did, though perhaps she did not do all that much for him, considering all she’d done was check the board before she started her own job in the morning. Yet, usually, if he got a late start and missed the best jobs, he simply would have to make his peace with that. No one was going to pick up the slack for him.

Still, Anissa did. Thoughtlessly and selflessly, without even thinking about it. He warmed through, grunting to himself and picking up the pace as they headed down a side street where the buildings seemed to loom. They were more closely packed there, with timber frames, going up three or four storeys, usually with lines of washing strung out over the street itself. A horse obediently plodded their way down the road with a cart rattling behind them, the back jostling with boxes and their owner sitting up front with a loose rein. They clearly knew their job.

As was his preference, Schedill had chosen a home that went across two levels: the ground floor and the first floor, though it was designed with gnomes in mind. Anissa didn’t like ascending to the second level, as the stairs were shallower and it tripped her up to have them not match her height in a more dramatic way, but he’d made the living area cosier, for her. He wouldn’t have bothered if it was for himself, though he unlocked the door and grumbled as he ushered her in.

Would Anissa notice if his tone was a little warmer towards her than before? He would not know. But the draconic human settled herself down at the kitchen table, big enough for three people if they squeezed in close, with a sigh and a relaxing of her form.

And there she was, no longer shapeshifting into a human but in all her glory. Her jacket had been deliberately loose to accommodate any changes as she let her six-foot-tall body show, a lighter red in colour with orange plate-scales that ran from the underside of her chin down her neck and plunged into her clothes. He was yet to see her in anything less than what Schedill would consider modest dress, though heat coloured his cheeks faintly as he thought of what “less modest” would entail.

You like taller women, his father had teased him, only a couple of weeks before. Just like your dad.

Schedill didn’t know how true that was. There may have been something between them, though he was still in the process of defining what it was that lay between him and Anissa, if anything. Sure, he’d been somewhat friends with her when he’d found out about her true form, but there’d been something that had intrigued him back then still, even if the gnome had not been willing to dig further into it at the time. 

He shrugged it off, setting the kettle to boil on the stove. He didn’t drink tea himself, but Anissa did and he wanted her to feel comfortable, despite that not being something Schedill had ever really done for anyone else in his life. It just hadn’t really crossed his mind, but he was becoming a lot better and more considerate since renewing ties with his family.

He was lucky.

“Are they any good?” Anissa asked, stretching one wing out and then the other, her tail draped across the kitchen, for it was still on the smaller side for her. “I grabbed everything that looked like the usual jobs you take.”

“They’re good,” he mused, petting Becky as he perched on his wooden chair, the hen hopping straight up into his lap with a soft cluck as she settled down. “One that looks like they want a ridgeback captured though, those scaley, “lizardy” things. Alive? Weird.”

Anissa shrugged.

“The bounties where you don’t have to kill something are always better,” she said, her stance clear. “But if you took on other work too, maybe you could afford somewhere that isn’t on the edge of being too small for me.”

“You’re not feeling hemmed in, are you?” He said, eyes suddenly on her, the bounties forgotten. “I could open the window… Ah, but that’s on to the street.”

In her draconic form, she could not be seen. She waved him off with a smile.

“Oh, Schedill,” she said, meeting his gaze and then flicking her eyes down and away, as if shy. “You’re always looking out for me. And to think I thought you were such a grump before and no more than that. No, no… No, Schedill, I was merely teasing. That’s okay, is it not?”

She slipped into a more formal way of speaking, her language not quite knowing where to settle. He blinked at her and shook his head, his beard hiding his smile as he hopped down again from his chair, scattering a disgruntled Becky, and set about sorting the tea and the whistling kettle.

“Hm. Yes, yes… From you, it’s okay. Okay from you, Anissa.”

His chest felt funny, like something was moving in there, something he could not quite put a finger on. He didn’t have to, however, though he felt her eyes on him as he moved around the kitchen, never able to put all that much space between them. The gnome didn’t feel he wanted to, his mind slipping, unbidden, back to what his father had said about liking tall women.

“Here’s your tea,” he said, back to his gruff self as he, finally, plonked a cup on the table, tea almost, but not quite, sloshing over the edge. “If it’s too hot, you’ll just have to wait. Added a drop of milk though, just the way you like it.”

She giggled, folding her hands around it. Though it was a large cup to him, she still seemed to dwarf it and his cheeks fizzed with an odd heat once more. 

There might just be something more to his relationship, in a way, with Anissa than Schedill could have thought… But that would all have to come through in time.

With Anissa, Schedill suddenly had nothing but time.