Tamsya Brinn blinked, her eyes, usually clouded with the perpetual haze of exhaustion, clearing to reveal a singular, unburdened thought. “A doorstop, you say?” she murmured, turning to Jolya, who stood rigid beside her. “Well, that sounds rather stationary. And I do believe a good doorstop is quite vital for preventing drafts.”
Jolya stiffened, her fingernails pressing half-moons into her palms. She’d spent weeks orchestrating Tamsya’s removal from their shared hut, maneuvering the district elders like chess pieces to secure her sister’s marriage to the village outcast. Her reward? Tamsya, utterly oblivious, took the threat of logging – *logging!* – as a mere semantic quibble over her future occupation.
“Tamsya, you imbecile!” Jolya hissed through a smile plastered for the public, her fingers digging into Tamsya’s arm. “He means you’ll be *working*! Sweating! With an *axe*!”
But Tamsya merely patted her sister’s hand. “Oh, dear. An axe is so heavy. Much heavier than a doorstop, I imagine. Still, Korsen is a tinkerer. Perhaps he can invent a self-wielding axe. Or a very comfortable log to lie on.” She offered a small, placid shrug, her gaze already drifting towards the dusty exit. The Morndell Village Committee Board, with its cacophony of shouting elders and splintering gavels, was utterly draining. A good nap was overdue.
The walk to Korsen Dael’s residence was mercifully short, though Tamsya felt every pebble in her worn boots. Korsen, a lanky man whose spectacles perpetually slid down his nose, walked ahead, his frame twitching with an energy that seemed to vibrate his tattered trousers. His home, perched precariously at the edge of the Grixen Gully, was less a house and more a monument to discarded metal. Gears rusted beside dented kettles, and a headless scarecrow wore a coat of springs. It was, Tamsya noted, delightfully uninviting to visitors, promising undisturbed quiet.
Her dowry, a heavy burlap sack brimming with the collective’s premium food rations—smoked hams, rounds of cheese, cured fish, and a surprisingly weighty barrel of spiced cider—dragged at her shoulder. Each step was a battle against gravity and her own dwindling resolve. By the time they reached the sagging porch, Tamsya was done. Utterly, completely done with carrying.
“Here,” she announced, hoisting the enormous sack with a final, heroic grunt. It landed with a thud at Korsen’s feet, sending a puff of dust into the air. “This is for you. All of it.”
Korsen, who had been fumbling with a particularly stubborn lock, froze. His head snapped up, his eyebrows arching behind his smudged lenses. No one had ever given him anything of value, let alone the valley's most coveted provisions. He stared at the sack, then at Tamsya, who was already peeling off her boots. “All… all of it?” he stammered, a bewildered hope flickering in his gaze. “The spiced cider too?”
“Every drop,” Tamsya confirmed, sighing in relief as her feet touched the cool, packed earth of the porch. “It’s far too heavy to carry inside. And then I’d have to decide where to put it. Much easier for you to manage.”
In that single, dismissive act of unburdening herself, Tamsya inadvertently secured Korsen Dael’s complete and utter devotion. He saw not a lazy woman offloading responsibility, but a benevolent, almost ethereal figure bestowing a bounty upon him. He spent the next few minutes meticulously arranging the rations on his workbench, as if they were delicate gears, muttering about their optimal storage temperature.
Inside the single, cavernous room that served as Korsen’s living quarters, the air hung heavy with the scent of old oil and something vaguely metallic. A vast, lumpy mound lay near the hearth. As Tamsya collapsed onto the nearest patch of floorboards, the mound stirred. A colossal head, shaggy with matted wool, lifted. Two placid, intelligent eyes blinked open.
“Barnaby,” Korsen called from the doorway, his voice surprisingly soft. “Our guest has arrived.”
The mound, which was indeed a sheepdog of preposterous size, slowly unfurled. Barnaby. His bulk seemed to absorb all available light, his coat a patchy quilt of grey and cream. He took one ponderous step, then another, his movements a masterclass in slow, deliberate motion. He sniffed the air, then Tamsya’s outstretched leg, then her face. With a sigh that seemed to deflate his enormous chest, he nudged her gently with his nose, then, with the practiced ease of a seasoned napper, draped his entire, considerable weight across her midsection.
Tamsya let out a soft ‘oof’ as the air left her lungs. Barnaby, a living, breathing weighted blanket, settled with a contented groan. His fur was surprisingly soft, smelling faintly of hay and damp earth. Pinned firmly to the floor, Tamsya found herself in an unexpected state of bliss. Movement was impossible. Effort was irrelevant. This, she realized, was the pinnacle of stationary existence.
She was almost drifting off when the flimsy door burst open with a resounding *THWACK!* A sharp-featured man in a crisp, if slightly too-tight, gray uniform stood in the doorway, a clipboard clutched in his hand. “Labor Enforcement Officer Joric Groat!” he barked, his eyes, identical in their coldness to his cousin Alistair’s, immediately fixed on Tamsya. “Here to verify productive capacity within the Dael residence. And it appears we have a problem already.” He tapped his pen against the clipboard. “Brinn, Tamsya. Zero points. Not even a single… *twitch*.”
Korsen, who had been admiring his new stock of salted pork, spun around, his face contorting in a mask of furious indignation. “Get out, Joric!” he shrieked, snatching a heavy iron spanner from his workbench. “You’re disrupting essential public work!”
Joric Groat sneered. “Work? She’s lying on the floor, doing precisely nothing. This is exactly what the Board warned about, Korsen. Your ‘trophy wife’ is a drain. I’m docking her points.”
“Docking her points?” Korsen advanced, raising the iron tool like an iron mace. “She’s performing crucial structural load-bearing! For Barnaby! Do you have any idea how important proper Canine Postural Support is for maintaining optimal sleep cycles in a valuable livestock guardian? If Barnaby’s spine isn’t perfectly aligned, he won’t be able to effectively protect the… the *scrap metal*!”
Barnaby, roused by the shouting, lifted his head just enough to give Joric Groat a doleful look, then promptly flopped back down, pinning Tamsya even more securely.
Joric Groat, clearly taken aback by Korsen’s fervent, if bizarre, defense, hesitated. He glanced from the massive, inert dog to the equally inert woman beneath it, then to the wildly gesticulating Korsen. This was not the simple open-and-shut case of laziness he’d expected. He knew Korsen Dael was an odd one, but threatening an officer of the valley with a heavy spanner over a dog’s spinal alignment was a new level of eccentricity. “Fine,” Joric bit out, scribbling furiously on his clipboard. “I’ll… make a note. But this is temporary. I’ll be back. And if she’s not *contributing*…” He glared, then retreated, slamming the door shut.
Korsen lowered the tool, puffing out his chest with an air of triumphant belligerence. “He’s gone,” he announced to Tamsya, as if she were a delicate, fragile thing. “Protected.”
Tamsya, who had barely registered the commotion beyond the vibrations it sent through Barnaby’s fur, hummed contentedly. The village, however, was clearly not suitable for her long-term needs. The constant threat of inspectors, the clamor of the Board, the potential for an unexpected argument – it was all too much. Too much noise. Too much *life*.
“Korsen,” she murmured, her voice muffled by Barnaby’s fur. “Where is the quietest place in Morndell Valley? The place where no one ever goes?”
Korsen scratched his chin. “That would be the Crag of Oakhaven, I suppose. Bare rock, no soil for farming, too steep for logging. Worthless, really. Why?”
Tamsya adjusted her head against Barnaby’s flank. “We should buy it,” she declared, her eyes already envisioning a hammock, strung between two sturdy trees, on the most isolated peak of the valley. “Immediately.”