The other side of Reincarnation

　It started small.

　The way these things usually do — small enough that if I’d been looking anywhere else, I’d have missed it entirely.

We were at the general store picking up supplies for the road — Doran had decided, somewhere around breakfast, that we’d earned a change of scenery — when I noticed the shopkeeper’s voice change pitch behind me.

Not louder.

Just colder.

The specific kind of polite that isn’t actually polite at all.

”We don’t serve your kind here,” the man said.

”Take your business elsewhere.”

I turned around properly then.

The man he was talking to had a set of wolf-like ears laid flat against his skull and a tail he was holding very still, like he’d trained himself not to let it move when he was upset — the kind of control that only comes from a lot of practice needing it.

He was maybe seventeen or eighteen.

Travel-worn.

A coin purse held out in one hand like an offering that had already been refused twice.

”It’s the same coin,” the beastkin said, quiet, tired in a way that told me this wasn’t the first shop today.

”It spends the same.”

”Not here it doesn’t.”

Huh.

There it is.

I didn’t feel angry, exactly.

I want to be clear about that, because it would be easy to tell this story as righteous fury and it wasn’t that.

It was closer to a kind of flat, simple certainty — the same certainty I’d felt lighting the air in front of a club a week earlier.

Some things just weren’t going to happen while I was standing there watching them.

”Actually,” I said, stepping up beside the beastkin, ”I’ll vouch for his coin.”

The shopkeeper’s eyes flicked to me — a kid, easy to dismiss — and then to Doran, standing a few feet back with his arms crossed and an expression that suggested he already knew exactly where this was going and had decided not to interfere yet.

”This doesn’t concern you either, boy.”

”See, that’s the thing,” I said, still perfectly pleasant, still smiling the exact amount I always smiled.

”I’ve noticed a pattern with people who say that to me.”

A pause.

”It never actually turns out to be true.”

I set a few coins of my own on the counter.

More than the beastkin’s items were worth.

Deliberately.

”He’s paying for his things.”

”I’m paying for the inconvenience of you having wasted his morning.”

”Everybody walks away with something today.”

Or—

I let the pause sit there a moment.

Easy.

Unhurried.

”we can find out what happens if you keep wasting mine.”

The shopkeeper looked at the coins.

Looked at me.

Then looked, longer this time, at the faint shimmer of purple at the edge of my eyes that I hadn’t bothered to hide.

Because I’d stopped seeing much point in hiding it around people who were already deciding to be unpleasant to me.

Whatever he saw settled the matter.

”...Take your things,” he muttered.

He swept the coins toward himself without further comment, and found something extremely important to do at the back of the store for the rest of our visit.

The beastkin didn’t say anything until we were outside.

”You didn’t have to do that.”

”No,” I agreed.

”I wanted to, though.”

A small pause.

”Different thing.”

He studied me for a moment.

The same recalculating look I’d started to think of as the standard reaction people had to me, sooner or later.

”Name’s Fenrik,” he said, finally, like he’d decided something.

”And for what it’s worth — thanks.”

He looked away.

”Doesn’t happen a lot.”

A pause.

”People stepping in, I mean.”

”Kai,” I said.

”And I’d imagine not. Most people don’t want the hassle.”

”You didn’t seem too worried about hassle.”

”I contain multitudes,” I said, which he had even less context for than Doran had, and which made me feel just as pleased with myself regardless.

Whatever happens next, that’s a problem for tomorrow’s me.

Tonight, I’m just glad the door’s still open behind him.