"You smell like wet dog, farm boy," she said, pinching her nose shut with two fingers.
"What'll it be?"
She looked a touch prettier than usual that morning, hair washed and glossy, her dress missing its usual collection of stains. Maybe she had important company coming through.
"Looking good, Greta.
What's the occasion?"
I asked, glancing around the room, where three travellers sat in a tight little knot, talking fast and low. Two women and a man. One of the women, purple haired and scowling like the expression had been carved into her at birth, looked like she'd rather be anywhere else on the continent.
"Sit down and shut up, farm boy.
What'll it be," she repeated, and there was almost no bite in it at all, and she'd said it twice without a single insult in between, which was either a miracle or a sign I'd finally worn her down.
"I'll take a bowl of your best noodles and a glass of water, fair lady.
Serve it with a smile and I'll leave you a generous tip," I said, because annoying Greta had become one of my few reliable pleasures in this entire town.
"How about I go light on the spit in your food, and if you call me lady one more time, I take your teeth out and feed them back to you," Greta said, somehow smiling pleasantly the whole time she said it.
It remains, to this day, one of the great small wonders of the world how she manages to threaten violence while looking perfectly serene about it.
"Deal," I said.
The travellers looked out of place in the Lady Luck, and probably out of place in Fenholt too, though they were either oblivious to it or extremely practiced at pretending not to notice.
Greta came back with a steaming bowl: frothy brown broth, thin egg slices, meat, a glossy sauce over noodles that smelled, for reasons I couldn't name, like something out of a memory I didn't have. Like a face you've seen a thousand times, or a limb that isn't there anymore but still aches.
It was, without question, the best thing Greta had ever set in front of me. Noblemen's food, I decided, shoveling it in as fast as I could manage.
One of the travellers, the man, stopped talking mid-sentence to stare at me. I tried to ignore it. His stare turned into something closer to a fixed, calculating study, and Greta noticed too, coming back over with a face gone unusually careful.
"What exactly are you doing?"
she asked, and I couldn't work out what I'd done wrong.
"Sorry, my manners.
I'm just very hungry," I said.
"It's not your manners," she said, pointing at my right hand.
"It's that."
I looked down and found I'd been eating with two sticks wedged between my fingers, spoon abandoned in my left hand, doing something with those sticks I had absolutely no memory of ever learning. I couldn't tell you where the sticks had even come from. That was apparently what had the traveller so fixated on me.
He came over, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
"Hi.
I'm Namey, though my actual name is Hiro," he said.
"From Hokkaido, though I live in Tokyo these days.
What's your name?"
Hiro.
Hokkaido.
Tokyo.
The words landed with a strange, hollow familiarity, like a song I'd heard once and forgotten the words to. They meant nothing to me and somehow still rang true.
"I'm sorry, I don't follow," I said.
"I'm Jon Marrow, from Hallowmere.
I don't know Tokyo.
Is that somewhere in Kessara?"
"Are you telling me you're an NPC?"
he said, lighting up like I'd just handed him a gift.
"What's an NPC?"
I asked.
He waved the other two over, and after a long beat of visible reluctance, the purple haired one followed.
"Guys.
This guy eats with chopsticks," Namey said, and his friends just looked politely baffled.
"Big deal, so what?"
the purple haired one said.
"There's no East Asian culture anywhere in Aftermath," Namey said, already pulling up some menu only he could see.
"Someone put him here on purpose, and I want a name before dinner."
"I'm sorry, Namey, we know you think everything's an event," the dark haired one said gently.
"This town doesn't exactly scream important."
"Not an event, someone I know at Genesis Studios.
There's been chatter on the internal boards about Fenholt for weeks," Namey said.
"I can't believe we gave up an actual dungeon in Vorn to come all the way out here," the purple haired one muttered.
"Don't mind them," the dark haired one said to me, kindly.
"I'm Luxy.
This is Savage.
Tell me: if you're from Hallowmere, what are you doing in Fenholt?"
She had a way of looking at you that felt gentle and completely unbending at the same time, like she'd already decided lying to her simply wasn't an option worth considering.
"My father's mining a dungeon here.
I'm waiting on him," I said.
All three of them exchanged a look I couldn't read.
"I've never heard of a dungeon anywhere near Fenholt," Luxy said.
"Might be worth checking out."
"He should come with us," Namey said.
"We can help him find his father while we're at it."
"That sounds like dead weight," Savage said.
"I won't slow anyone down, I promise," I said.
"He just wants to find his dad," Luxy said.
"Let him tag along."
"No," Savage said, already turning to leave.
"A wager, then," Namey said, already sounding like a man who'd regret this by lunch.
"This time tomorrow, I will personally teach him to beat your troll record."
"What record?"
I asked, with the specific dread of a man who suspects he's about to be volunteered for something.
"You think you can teach a farm boy to drop a troll in under a minute?"
Savage asked, half laughing, half genuinely offended.
"Not just that.
I'll have it done by this time tomorrow," Namey said.