A woman entered John's store, wearing a dark red suit, and black hair in a ponytail behind her. She looked around at the store, shaking her head a few times as she did.

"You're the one wanting your building rebuilt out of sovereign marble?" The woman asked.

John nodded his head.

"You understand that sovereign marble is incredibly expensive, not to mention the labour costs of replacing it all without tearing your building down first?"

John nodded his head again.

"And you understand that sovereign marble is usually formed to the shape, instead of put together piecemeal as we will have to do with your building? There will be dark shadows breaking up the marble surface where we join the pieces together."

John wasn't aware of that, he thought that his building would be solid white as the other ones were. When he thought about it though, he quite liked it. The dark shadows would provide contrast, which he thought was good. He nodded his head.

The woman shook her head, "I will have some guys come down to take measurements, and we'll get a price together for you. For the materials. The labour you will be paying per day on an ongoing basis. Will that work for you?"

John nodded his head.

He was beginning to get excited, as the day drew closer to where his building would be completed. There were so very few things left for him to do with it, and this was the biggest one. And it was here! It was happening, the woman was setting it up and getting him the final price of it all.

The price itself was irrelevant to John, but knowing that it was coming was enough for him. He had been working out of this bland gray building for long enough and was excited for a change of scenery.

The woman returned several hours later followed by a group of men. They were dressed in similar attire to the people from the furniture store, though the colour was a dark red and they wore thin black cloth gloves.

She spoke with the men, pointing them in different directions, and they went off to different sides of John's building. Each had a black stick that they poked the edge of his building with, before magic surged from them, surrounding his building in a pale red light that faded as quickly as it came.

The men returned to her, and she gave them more instructions as they spread out around his building once more. This time with small tools that had a long and flexible extension they dragged around, making marks on his building and writing in booklets they carried in a pocket.

The woman entered John's building again. "We've got the general idea of your building now so we can start to work on sourcing the material. You'll need about forty-five tonnes of sovereign marble. Which at a rate of one hundred gold per tonne will run you just about five thousand gold. I will need payment upfront for this. I refuse to take on the debt of sovereign marble."

John summoned a wire, forming it into a ring and filling the ring with enough space to hold that many gold coins. He then filled the space with said gold coins and handed it to the woman. She took the ring, and John could feel a pulse of mana enter it as her eyes went wide in shock.

"Did you just create this?" She asked, barely able to contain her excitement.

John nodded his head. It was a simple thing to make and carrying so many gold coins would be inconvenient, he thought.

"Can you make more of them? How big can you make one? How many people know you can do this?"

If John had eyes, they would be rolling, he thought. To be pestered over something so insignificant, the greed from the woman almost palpable. He formed his speech spell, "No."

"No, you can't make more of them? You would just give something so valuable away like this? I can pay for the materials if you need more, can you make me an even bigger one?"

"I do not wish to," John said.

"I can pay you. As many stories as you want."

It was almost tempting, but the woman disturbed John. Something about her made him feel that this trade was not in his favour. The greed, the lack of awareness she had. He regretted having made the one ring for her already.

"You ha'e the money. Please just build my buildin'." John said to her, almost wincing as he struggled with some of the letters. He would need more practice.

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"Yes sir, anything for you, sir." She said and headed back down the road from where she came.

A frustrating individual, John found. He was glad the other lady he gave a ring to was less egregious. Perhaps because she had been born into wealth, she never truly understood the value of it. Not as though John understood much better, a simple ring as that being worth such a reaction was incredible to him.

He watched the people around his building continue to drag their tools around, marking his building at fairly regular distances. They talked amongst themselves as they worked, making plans for drinks later. Whispering about the monster who ran this building, thinking John couldn't hear them.

The experience was mostly negative, for John. He was excited for his building to be finished, to have something he could be proud of. But the process through which it got there was much worse than he expected. A greedy owner, and lax employees with no respect for the person they're working for.

Were money to be something he was worried about, the slow work of the employees would bother him more too. It bothered him a bit anyway, because the slower they worked the longer they spent near him. But to think they would charge him by the day and then not work hard. He was paying them to talk and lounge around, poking his building on occasion.

Now that he thought about it, he was still annoyed at it. Even if the money itself wasn't a concern, the principle of the matter just felt wrong to him. They should have some respect, he thought. But it wasn't a huge problem. Things would work out, and he would have his completed building in time. He just needed to be patient, and that was something he was a bit of an expert in.

Hours more passed as he watched the men work around his building, covering it in dark lines. As darkness fell, they packed up and left, leaving John alone to his thoughts once more.

It was a nice break, he found. To be free from their incessant babbling and judgement. On a normal day, he kept his awareness firmly within his building, often extending out in front of his door a little to see who was coming. Anything not in his building was largely unnoticed by him, and he was free from the bustling noise of the street.

But when there were people he was hiring to work on his building right outside, it was difficult to not keep an eye on them. He tried to pull his awareness in closer a few times, but the worry overwhelmed him and he would always take a look outside again shortly after.

The stress was something he wasn't used to. There was nothing they could do to him, but there was plenty they could do to his building, and he liked his building. It was his own, something he was proud of.

A customer entered the store, interrupting his thoughts. An older man, his back bent as he hobbled in. Short gray hair and a long gray beard, wrinkled skin and black eyes that looked at John.

"Hello there. I'm looking for children's books, do you have any?"

The old man watched with childlike wonder as books flew out of John, filling the bookshelf next to him.

"What a useful spell that must be. Though I suppose I would just never get out of my chair again." The man coughed as he chuckled, walking over to the bookshelf. "Oh my, it's so much further away than it seemed before. Is this some more of your magic?"

John nodded his head.

"You're an interesting chap, you know that?"

John hadn't thought himself interesting before, but he supposed from the perspective of a human he would be quite unusual. He didn't respond, watching the man browse through the books.

"Oh ho ho, yes I remember this one. My mother bought it for me when I was just a young boy. I read it all the time. A little bit much for the girl now, but maybe I'll be back again." The book was a tale of a girl who fell in love with a farm boy. The plot was near inconceivable, John thought.

"Ah yes, this one will do fine." The man said, bringing up another book to John's desk. It had a few pages talking about all the different letters, a couple of pages on animals one might see around town, and then a couple of fun adventures. A shorter book without much substance.

"My daughter's giving birth soon, finally. I was worried I would die before I saw the day. Though I guess there's still time." He laughed. "I lived a pretty mundane life, working on the farm with my parents. I took over when they died, but my daughter was too eager to go out exploring and I'm too old to do it myself now so I've retired. Sold the farm to a younger man with bright ideas and bought a little place near town.

"I'm gonna be a grandfather soon. I really never thought it would happen. I didn't fault her for it, of course. I'm proud of her and who she is. But I always hoped, to myself. And here we are." He coughed. "She's settled down with somebody she loves and is having a daughter of her own. Maybe I shouldn't have given up the farm so easily after all, but what's done is done." He smiled at John.

"Do you have any family?" He asked.

"Far away," John said.

"Ahhh, I'm sorry. Well, thank you for the book, John. I need to get going before it's too dark out." The man said, and headed out the door, hobbling his way down the street.

John thought about the man. He liked the man, he thought. He looked at the book on the shelf that the man paused on, the one he said he had as a younger boy and teleported it to his desk, reading through it. It was a nice book, he thought.

He extended his awareness out of his building, seeing the man walking down the street. He teleported the book in front of the man, making it float until he reached out and grabbed it. The man turned towards John's bookstore and smiled, thanking him.

It felt good, John thought. But he wasn't sure exactly why. Something about what he did made him feel pleased, made him feel satisfied. He gave the man something freely, without wish of payment in return. But John felt the man had shared two stories regardless, one of his daughter and one of his childhood. And yet, it felt different.

This was his own decision, a customer didn't pick it out. This was a gift, he realized, from John to the man. Was it the first gift he had given, he wondered? He gave the gay girl a ring, would that be considered a gift? The ring to the woman building his store was payment, he thought.

The ring the girl was given was requested, she asked for something to keep her book a secret. That wasn't a gift, but something else. He wasn't given anything in return though, so was it different? He thought it was, but he couldn't quite understand what it was.

What he was sure of, was that he enjoyed it. He liked meeting the man, and he liked seeing the man happy with the gift he gave him. There wasn't anything more to understand, John thought. Everybody ended up happy, and that was enough.