Strawberry's Descent

Before setting out for the Dwarven Republic, Arista tried to decide what she could tell Gorthruk.

She didn't know if the NPCs understood, in any real sense, that the world itself carried an expiration date now. She didn't know if that kind of knowledge was even something they were capable of holding, whether Gorthruk, going about his ordinary day at the forge, had any awareness at all that everything around him would simply cease to exist in three months' time.

What if he does understand, and it terrifies him? What if he doesn't, and I'm the one who plants that fear where none needed to exist?

I won't tell him the world is ending. I'll tell him I'm leaving.

It wasn't a lie. After March thirty-first, she wouldn't be coming back. She could tell him that much without asking him to face the rest.

She made the journey to the Dwarven Republic the following morning, finding Gorthruk exactly where she always did, overseeing the furnace network's steady, familiar operation.

"...Strawberry," he said, looking up from his work. "You have the look of someone with something difficult to say."

"...I do," she admitted, sitting with him. "Gorthruk, I need to tell you something. In a few months, I'm going to stop coming. Not just to the Republic. Everywhere."

"...You are leaving."

"I am," she confirmed. "It's not because of anything here. I want you to understand that clearly. I'm not tired of this place, or of you, or of anything we've built together."

Gorthruk watched her without answering. Then he rose and gestured for her to follow.

"...Where are we going?"

"There is something I wish to show you first."

He led her down to the lower forge levels, past storage rooms and workshops, then stopped at a small door she had never seen open. He unlocked it, then stepped aside to let her enter first.

Inside sat an enormous, meticulously constructed dollhouse, six stories, intricate shingled roofing, tiny functional shutters on every window.

"...Gorthruk." Arista stared at it, startled despite herself. "You built this?"

"It is a hobby," he said, with careful dignity.

"It's incredible," she said, circling it slowly, taking in the exacting joints, the perfectly fitted shutters, every detail placed with the same precision he brought to actual smithwork. "How long have you been working on this?"

"Some time," Gorthruk said. "Look at the shutters. They open individually."

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She kept circling, kept asking, admiring the roofline and the tiny functional door hinges, careful not to let on that Bram had already spoiled the secret. Five minutes passed this way before she finally crouched down to examine the small figures arranged on the porch.

She picked one up, a simple wooden peg, its top third painted thick and rough and unmistakably, garishly pink.

"...You really caught my essence."

Gorthruk went very still.

"...Bram told you, didn't he?"

Arista laughed. "Yes. He lasted about an hour, actually. I think that's a personal best for him."

"...And you said nothing, all this time."

"I tried sneaking down here a couple of times, actually. Bram told me it was somewhere near your forge. Never found the door."

"How many times is 'a couple'?"

"...Four. Maybe five."

"After Bram found it, I knew I needed a more... private location," Gorthruk admitted.

"I was hoping you'd show me."

Gorthruk looked toward the house. "I wanted you to see it before you left."

"This is genuinely terrible, by the way." Arista turned the pink-headed figure over in her hands. "In the best possible sense."

"The house is not terrible."

"The house is incredible. You know that's not what I meant." She crouched closer, tried one of the shutters, and frowned when it refused to move. "Wait, does this actually lock?"

"Yes." Gorthruk stopped her before she pulled harder. "It's latched from the inside."

Arista stared at him. "You made a working lock. For a dollhouse."

"Locks serve a purpose."

She glanced down at the pink-headed peg still in her other hand, its crude, lopsided features. "...And faces were where you ran out of patience?"

"Locks serve a purpose," Gorthruk repeated, with the air of a man who considered the matter closed.

She noticed the other figures arranged nearby, then, and stopped. "...Wait. There's more than I remember Bram describing."

Two new figures stood at the dollhouse's edge, one with long, careful strands of blue thread glued down one side to suggest flowing hair, the other nothing more than a small wooden ball with eight thin sticks jammed into it at uneven angles.

"...Is that Selen?"

"It is an attempt," Gorthruk said. "The tail proved more difficult than I anticipated."

"Why is her hair blue?"

"I am not going to put strands of mithril on a figurine just to mimic hair."

Arista set the pink-headed figure down at last, then picked up the ball-and-sticks one instead, turning it over with open delight. "And this is Squishy."

"...It is meant to convey the general impression of tentacles," Gorthruk said, defensive now. "I do not have the patience for eight individually articulated limbs on something this small."

"You gave him exactly eight. I respect the commitment to accuracy over convenience." She reached to set the figure down near the front entrance, and Gorthruk's hand shot out, moving it firmly away from the doorway instead.

"Not there. He blocks the door."

Arista looked at the ball and its eight projecting sticks. "Were you planning to invite him inside?"

"He does not need to fit through it. Everyone else does."

Arista laughed and helped him rearrange the crowded porch, careful fingers moving a thread-haired Selen aside. Whenever Gorthruk moved one figure, she had to shift another to make room for it.

"You kept adding to it. Even after Bram found it."

"You keep giving me more to work with," Gorthruk said.

She looked over the small, crowded porch one last time, every figure settled back into its place, then back at him.

"...I'll come back. Before I leave. I promise."

"See that you do." Gorthruk extended his hand, and she shook it firmly. "Until then, Strawberry."

She turned to go, then paused at the door, looking back at him.

"...Anything you want me to pass along, before I head out?"

Gorthruk considered the question for a moment, glancing once more toward the dollhouse, toward the lump-faced figure with no nose standing loyally on the small wooden porch.

"...Yes. Tell Bram I wish to see him."

Arista smiled. "I'll tell him."