The train ride back to Khaghrumer was uneventful for Jonathan except for two things. The first was the way that the warriors sent to hunt down the troll reacted to the news that a mere human had managed to slay one practically single handedly with disbelief and astonishment, and the second was how much every bump in the track hurt his aching body on the half day ride back. Jonathan continued to insist that he’d only played a small part in the whole affair as he lay there convalescing. Without the brave dwarves that had lost their lives in that fight he never would have a chance, but Erkom assured him that the story no longer went that way. That in the version the dwarves were telling each other now he was a fiery arch mage that left nothing but salt and ash in his wake. It was apparently brutal and quite vivid, not that Jonathan could understand any of it.
Jonathan was as surprised as anyone by their enthusiasm for his magical fury, even if just thinking about channeling right now gave him a pounding headache, but apparently dwarves hated trolls far more than they hated magic. At one point he commented to his friend that if he’d just known that he would have killed one sooner, which let loose a gale of laughter from the whole car of convicts once Erkom coached him on how to say it again in dwarvish.
When they arrived back in the city their crimes were formally discharged, as they'd now paid their debts to the kingdom. The first thing Jonathan wanted to do after that final formality was to go home and find a shirt and a pair of pants that wasn’t completely shredded to uselessness, followed by sleeping for about three days straight. Erkom wouldn’t hear of it though, and dragged Jonathan to the railyard. They had to go, to let everyone know they were okay, Jonathan understood that, but the last thing he wanted to do was hear about his great deeds for the hundredth time in the last few days. The rest of the crew was elbow deep in replacing a cylinder, but as soon as they showed up, a break was called. At first Erkom was the hero - returning home after keeping Jonathan alive in the face of back breaking work and his ever present nemesis, but when the dwarf told them the real story of how their human friend got so banged up, their jaws gaped open in the telling.
Jonathan actually had to endure that spectacle twice, and blushed from the attention they gave him both times. The first was in telling them all what actually happened, and the second was in telling them the story the way the other prisoners had started telling it. The first version blew their minds, even though they had seen him channel the fire from a pressurized locomotive, but the second one almost made some of the crew burst from laughter. Only after he’d endured that ritual humiliation and the promise of another drinking excursion after he’d recovered in a few days was he finally allowed to go home and get dressed.
After that, everything changed. Suddenly people knew who he was, and strangers started telling him good morning on his walk to work. All of the sudden he wasn’t just the human, he was the troll slayer. It shocked Jonathan how much that one little difference made. Instead of being ignored or glared at as he walked down the street there were nods and the very subtle expression that passed for a polite smile among dwarves. He would have missed it when he arrived, but Jon had been here long enough to recognize the small cues, and that made him feel all the better about the small measure of respect he’d finally earned.
The novelty didn’t fade, even weeks later as he slowly got used to his new routine. He worked, he learned, and he healed. He did a lot of healing especially. Something about how hard he’d pushed his fire affinity made him feel like he’d broken some important part of his spirit during the fight with the troll. For a week after he got back he suffered from random headaches and double vision. He could barely channel any fire without physical pain, but it didn’t matter. He’d give himself all the time he needed to heal. After all - after the salt mines Khaghrumer felt downright comfortable, and one of the first things he’d done when Jonathan had gotten back was to tell Maxom that his catering services were no longer required. He even managed to tell him that himself, with only a little help from Kaspov. He took more joy than he probably should have in the old curmudgeon's irritation, but Jon reassured him that he would still pay him rent and his jailer’s fee, and it seemed to be enough for him.
He’d known enough dwarven for a while to barter in the market for a hot meal for a while now, but the newfound respect gave him the courage to actually do it without Kaspov or Erkom having to hold his hand. That was just the beginning though. Once he started to really immerse himself in dwarven culture, he finally started to get the syntax and the most basic of vocabulary under his belt, his whole effort to learn the stone tongue started to pick up speed. He might still be living alone in a warehouse, and spending most of his waking hours working, but without Fedon here to bother him and everything that really mattered going so well - things were really starting to look up.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Suddenly he wasn’t living in his own world with only a couple dwarves that knew Wenlish to speak to. Day by day he started to understand the jokes that the other dwarves on the crew told each other. Not perfectly of course, and not all at once - but finally he could laugh along with his teammates instead of wondering what was so funny or having to have things explained to him. He could also understand most of what they were talking about when they started talking about the theoretical magics they called physics and engine-ringing that they almost always debated at length before the actual repairs started. Even if the problem looked to have a straightforward solution, or was common enough that Jonathan had seen it before and had a reasonably good idea of what was wrong, this vital step could not be avoided.
It turned out that their world view was every bit as complicated as the elemental one that he used, just very different from the one he was used to. The dwarvish world was made up of numbers. Everything was made up of numbers, and those numbers were made up of other numbers. Steel was made of small numbers like tensile strength and carbon content, and its strength could be calculated based on those using tables and reference books rather than by feeling the density and amount of earth a given piece of metal contained. Jonathan would never really understand it, but it was interesting to listen to them argue about it anyway.
It was fascinating to him that the world could be a place where the elemental magics of humans and the logical magics of dwarves could coexist. He spent many nights lying awake wondering what the implications for that might be. Did that mean that elves might have their own magic, or trolls? Were trolls even smart enough to use magic, or might they have some inborn power that would better be explained by dwarvish formulae? Jonathan couldn’t say. He would never be smart enough to answer these questions. The dwarves had recently upgraded him from tool holder and gopher to wrench turner, and that was as far as he was ever likely to get.
As always, his life was mostly just work, but now he was in no hurry to get home. Now he’d much rather listen to the dwarves debate the fine points of their strange number worship or tell each other stories they’d all already heard a dozen times. That didn’t matter. Jonathan hadn’t heard them even once. It was then that he started to understand how important repetition was to their culture. They didn’t try to innovate or deviate very often. That was dangerous. They just kept doing things the way their grandfathers had a century earlier, and the world moved right along as it should.
It was during one of those times that he first noticed Anda, and he was hardly the only one. Work didn’t quite stop when she showed up to deliver a part or pick up a parcel, but it certainly slowed down as the dwarves he worked with appreciated her from afar. He found out her name from the gossip of his crew as they discussed what her bride price must be in the same sort of way that his brother used to rate different beauties against each other. She was hardly the first female dwarf he’d seen in the city, but she was one of the first one’s he could recall ever seeing more than once. She also happened to be the prettiest one he’d seen too.
Not that she was as beautiful as his Claire of course, or some of the other village girls. Like the rest of the dwarves she was much too tiny, even compared to Claire who had always been fairly petite, but Anda was more like a doll than a grown woman. Still, it was still a rare treat to see a trace of beauty in his life. Mostly it just reminded him of what he’d lost, but it had been over two years, and it didn’t hurt quite so much to think about his beautiful redhead anymore. It had been years now, and even though Claire might have thought he was cute once upon a time, he doubted that she still thought of him any more.
He saw her here and there over a couple weeks. She seemed to be some kind of messenger, but he never had the excuse or the courage to go talk to her. Some of the dwarves on the crew were quick to make crude compliments about her after she’d left, and a couple of the single dwarves were quick to point out that they’d be happy to buy her if only Kaspov could pay them more so they might afford such a fine partner. That always got a few laughs, but for Jonathan it was a blank spot in his understanding of dwarven culture. Very few women worked outside the home or certain female dominated guilds like weaving and lens grinding, so Jonathan only ever saw them in the bazaar and dwarves never made displays of affection in public - even if they were married. In fact, it seemed rude to ask a dwarf if he was married, or if he had kids. It wasn’t quite taboo, and it did come up, but it was hardly the topic of conversation that it would be in the world above.
Over time, seeing her grew to be one of the highlights of his week, but he never quite put his finger on why. It just made his day better to know that there was still beauty in the world, and to be reminded that women existed, even if the one he truly wanted was a whole lifetime away by now.