John waited for a couple of hours, hoping for another customer to show up. None did, however. But that was okay, his shop had never been all that busy anyway and he already had one customer today.

There were other things he wanted to do as well. He wanted to go shopping and buy some decorations for his walls—paintings or perhaps some shelves. Most people who came were still asking for specific things, and John would fill a bookshelf with their requests, so he wasn't sure what benefit shelves would bring him.

But they looked nice, they provided something of interest on the walls, breaking up the monotony. That was good, he thought. Maybe he would fill them with trinkets from his travels, or different genres of books? He wasn't sure, but he knew he wanted something. Other shops had them, and his felt lacking now that he knew that.

And so he left his store again, locking the door behind him as the enchantments flared with magic briefly. He set off down towards the center of town, towards the furniture store he frequented.

The inside looked different, but that wasn't unusual. It had been a long time since he came here. For humans, at least. For John, it was barely even worth mentioning.

He walked around the store looking at their wares, the clerk at the other end of the store watching him with widened eyes. The first floor didn't seem to have any organization, to John. It was a mishmash of different pieces. Shelves, chairs, light fixtures, and even some statues. A stark difference from the sectioned-off areas this store had last he was here.

The second floor seemed more organized, which was curious to John. The first floor would be what people saw first, and he thought that would warrant some additional care. Perhaps there was something he was missing, or they had recently received a lot of furniture with nowhere to fit it?

Walkways led through the second floor, with markings outlining areas for chairs, desks, tables, countertops and the like. Nothing of interest to John. He had a desk he quite liked and none of these chairs would fit him anyway.

The third floor had more of what he was looking for and he wandered through the designated walkways looking through statues and paintings, ornamental hanging shelves and other fixtures he couldn't quite understand. Perhaps statues, or perhaps chairs? He thought statues would make more sense considering the floor below had specific sections of chairs, but they looked quite similar.

It didn't matter anyway, he wasn't here for statues. His floor was already filled with bookshelves and light fixtures, he needed things he could hang on his walls. And there were plenty of those to look at, hanging off the walls of the store or even small walls set up in the middle of the floor.

Some of the paintings were interesting, he thought. Some magical nature to them, emotions and thoughts pushing out of them and drawing his attention. Nothing powerful, even for a weak human child. But it was certainly present, the paintings appearing to be more than they were. It made him wonder if the paintings also had entire worlds within them.

Were there painters who had classes that let them enter paintings? Build up the world from within as though it were clay, possibly acting as some kind of god in the world of the painting? With what he had learned, he thought it would be possible.

The thought of being a painting in a higher world didn't bother him as much anymore. He had accepted his place in his world. He would live his life as best he could, and one day if the opportunity presented itself he would ascend, and continue on until he found an end. But for now, he would live here, content with what he had already.

He took interest in a couple of the paintings that felt particularly serene to him, emotions of calm and patience pushing outwards from them. And then a handful of hanging shelves that looked quite similar to his standing shelves, with gold engravings he thought would serve a similar purpose. Though he decided he wouldn't store books on them.

John headed back downstairs and looked for the employee at the desk. "Hello, I would like to buy some 'urniture please."

"Oh uh. Yes, I can do that. What are you looking for?" The employee said.

"Shelves and paintin's" John said and then led the man upstairs to the pieces he had chosen.

"Uhh, those paintings are twenty gold each, and the shelves that you want are five. How many of them did you want exactly? The shelves, that is."

John thought about his building and the empty walls. The paintings he would put up near the entrance, something to inspire peace with the people who walked in perhaps. The rest of the walls around the bookshelves would be more shelves, though without books. He didn't want to fill the entire store with shelves, but maybe six of them spread out with some odd trinkets and the like on them would look fine?

"Six," John said, handing the man seventy gold pieces.

"Oh wow, okay. Yeah. Uhh, well you can take your paintings and the six shelves then I guess if you have a storage item then." The man said, watching John as the items vanished. "Thank you very much, have a nice day!"

"You too," John said before he vanished, appearing back in his store. The walk through town didn't bother him as much as it used to but he was still excited to furnish his store with what he bought.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The two paintings he put up on either side of the door, in the hopes that the emotions they portrayed would help alleviate some of the fear people had of him when they came in. And the six shelves he spread out evenly through his store. Two each on the side walls, and two on the wall in the back. The front wall was decorated enough with paintings and windows, he thought.

Deciding what to put on the shelves was more difficult, he found. There were many trinkets that would fit, but they needed to be interesting enough to display, but also clearly not available for sale. Though he supposed if somebody did want a trinket then he would sell it for a nice story anyway. So just something interesting then, and if they wished to buy it then they could. A good story was worth far more than most possessions he had after all.

One of the shelves, he filled with various star-shaped objects he found in his travels. One gold star he placed front and center, a weak magic pulsing through it slowly, illuminating the others in a faint glow. He wasn't sure what the magic did, but it was weak enough to be harmless he thought. The last thing he wanted to do was introduce some powerful curse to this world just to make his building a little nicer.

Another shelf he filled with feathers of various colours. He embedded the tips of them into the wooden shelf so they seemed to stand on their own, as though the shelf was showing off its colourful plumage. Each feather felt like it contained some power, though nothing compared to even the paintings he bought earlier. Perhaps taken from some beast he slew, or from their hoard, he supposed. It looked nice, providing a flash of colour in his building.

On another shelf, he placed flowers, each in their own ornate vase. Some of the vases were made of silver, others of crystal. Some of the flowers were colourful, with reds blues and greens filling the shelf. Some were black, some were white. And others seemed almost transparent from some angles. Some even seemed to be made of metal but felt softer than any of the others.

The next shelf he filled with little statues of animals. He kept the more exotic ones to himself and only put out some of the more mundane animals. Cats and dogs, birds. Silver metal filling the shelf, each animal seeming almost lifelike. Carvings, he remembered. From one of the worlds he visited long ago. Sitting at the front of the shelf was a rabbit hopping through a small field of metal grass. He thought it fitting, with the rabbit on his door as well.

The fifth shelf was filled with stones, gems and rocks that seemed to have some magical essence. And on the final shelf, he placed vials of liquids, all of different colours and opacity.

He sat back down at his desk, satisfied with his work. His shop seemed complete now, somehow. Though he hadn't considered wall decorations when he first bought the building either, so maybe there were other things he could still work on. But there was something about seeing everything he had been working on finished that made him happy. Perhaps the paintings helped that feeling along.

A knock on the door reminded him that he hadn't unlocked his shop after he came back, too preoccupied with setting up his new furniture. It was worth it anyway, he thought. There was something cathartic about setting up his new shelves, and it seemed he had a customer immediately afterwards anyway so it didn't have any real impact.

John walked up to his door and unlocked it, opening it up and letting the dwarven woman enter his building. She was almost as short as the child he had met so long ago, though she felt more mature. Aged. Neat brown hair tied in a braid falling down her back, black eyes staring up at John.

"I been knockin' on your damn door for ten minutes now. Are ya open or not?" The dwarf said to John.

"I'm open,' John said.

"Good," The woman said, stomping her way through the store and looking at the books John had out.

John returned to his desk and sat down, watching her walk through the rows, looking at each book's spine and muttering something under her breath. She stopped when she got to the shelf with the carvings on it, staring at them for a few minutes.

"Who made these?" She asked.

"A carver," John said. The memory was still fresh in his mind, one of the few creatures he met in his travels that didn't seem bothered by his presence at all. Completely consumed by their work. John traded some stories for the carvings, deciding they were worth keeping around. Maybe he would visit again, someday.

"These're CARVED?" She nearly screamed, "'Ow the 'ell you carve metal like this? Can I buy these?"

John shook his head. There were few material possessions that he valued, but those carvings were one of them. Maybe he shouldn't have put them up on display then, but it was a shame to keep them hidden forever.

"A'right, 'ows about you show me where the books on local ores are then and I'll take one o' them." She said, walking back up to John's desk.

John waved his hand, filling the bookshelf near him with anything he had on local mines, caves, anything that would possibly lead to finding ore. He wondered if any of it was still relevant, seeing as it had been quite some time since he acquired them. But that was her problem, he supposed.

She looked through the books for a while, picking one that outlined particularly dangerous caves in the area. Places that seemed to go deep underground that people couldn't explore because of the dangers found that low.

"Well 'tis an old one but maybe I'll find somethin', eh?" She held the book at her side. "So one story then?"

John nodded his head.

"Right, I come from far west, farther than any 'round here's probably been. We'd been diggin' deep, deeper than we ever went. Found a big ol' vein of mithril we did and we didn't stop for nothin', no sir. Not when there's blue gold right below our feet." She laughed.

"Ah, but we should've. Realized too late that one, when we broke into a cavern, bigger'n any I'd seen before. Winged creatures cloaked in darkness flying through the hole we made eatin' all of us like some kind of tasty snack. We blocked it off for the time being but some of us couldn't give up the mithril. Kept arguing about just being more careful next time.

"Well, I wasn't havin' any o' that. So I left, came over here. Gonna start my own mine and never go that deep again. There're creatures down there none of us can handle." She shook her head, "Well I'll keep ya in mind if I strike it rich. Two percent discount on mithril, a'right? Thanks for the book." She laughed and left with her book in hand.

John thought about the winged creatures she might have been talking about. He thought he'd seen something resembling the description, but there were many winged creatures deep underground, many of which were cloaked in darkness. When one lives in darkness, such an ability is only natural. She seemed afraid of the depths at least, though she picked out a book that seemed to lead her deeper than any here have gone.

It confused him a bit, that she understood the dangers and yet chose to pursue it anyway. Greed? It didn't seem like greed, it seemed more instinctual to John. Something drove her to dig, deeper and deeper. Despite her fears telling her otherwise. It was interesting to see, though he hoped she wouldn't unleash some evil horror on the town. His bookstore was here and it would be bad if his customers were all killed off. Maybe he would check on her someday in the future.