Wandering Dwarf Name Generator

The story

Hedra saw the third walking stick before she saw its owner. It leaned against Voll's pack with a neat little leather tag, the sort she would normally have admired and immediately wanted to improve. Instead she counted the sticks again. Her own made three. Voll greeted her with excessive brightness and introduced Pell, a colleague from his new workshop. Pell said he had heard so much about her. Hedra wondered whether any of it had included the fact that she had packed for a holiday with one other person.

She and Voll had taken small trips together for twelve years, when work allowed. This one was two nights at the lake inn and a paid morning walk with a local guide. They had booked one room containing two beds. Neither considered a shared room a universal duty of friendship; they had simply known each other long enough to agree on this particular arrangement. Pell was someone Hedra had never met. He was carrying his own money, spare socks and the entirely reasonable belief that he had been invited to a place where there was a third bed.

Voll said the inn would work something out. Hedra asked what the confirmation actually said. His reply began with a description of how accommodating country people were. Pell took the paper from the outside pocket of Voll's pack and read it aloud: one room, two adult guests, two beds. No floor place, folding bed or third-person permission had been agreed. Voll admitted he had not asked. He had told Pell that the extra bed was arranged because he expected a small alteration would be easy. The alteration was another person's sleep, space and permission.

They were at the crossroads from which the lake road went west and the town road south. Both were useful roads. One kept the original inn and guided walk; the other reached a town with ordinary lodging and a market, without access to the lake excursion before morning. Hedra could still take the west road alone using her half of the arrangement if Voll agreed how to settle the reserved room. Voll and Pell could seek their own rooms elsewhere. Nobody was stranded outside a closed gate, and nobody needed to accept a stranger in a bedroom in order to remain sheltered.

The town innkeeper, Mera, was loading purchases beside the crossroads shop. Asked directly, she confirmed three separate small rooms at four coins each for the two-night stay. She had their three keys with her and authority to take the bookings. They could actually reserve them before leaving, not merely hope that a distant inn had vacancies. Pell asked whether he could buy just one. Mera said certainly. He said this was useful to know before everybody decided how friendly he was supposed to feel about a problem he had not made. Hedra liked him a little for that.

The lake guide tickets had cost five coins each for Hedra and Voll and were already paid and nonrefundable. Pell had never been booked on the guided walk. The original two-bed room, by contrast, was twelve coins payable on arrival, not twelve coins already lost. Its written terms allowed cancellation before four with a separate two-coin cancellation charge. Going south would lose the actual ten coins spent on the outing and require real new lodging; it would not produce a twelve-coin refund. Voll read those distinctions twice before putting the paper down.

Hedra had a teaching record in the same pocket as her tickets. Her maker name credited Orna, who had taught her a particular shaping method when she first worked leather fittings. Her own guild teaching season was now active. She had arranged this two-night break with pupil Dess in advance, with the next actual lesson booked for the morning after her return. The holiday was real time she had kept for herself, not time stolen from a pupil expected to wait indefinitely. Neither changing roads nor paying an extra lodging bill would complete that remaining season.

Voll asked whether she was angry because he had made a new friend. She said she was angry because he had booked her an arrangement without asking and described his guess to Pell as a fact. She did not want to choose his colleagues or demand that their trips always remain exclusive. She did want the arrangement she was sleeping in to include her actual answer. Pell said he had been looking forward to meeting her but would rather take a room alone than become the evidence in an argument about an old friendship. Voll apologized to both of them without adding that they were making a simple thing difficult.

Hedra took a short walk as far as the signpost and back. When she returned she said she would prefer the town, if they each genuinely wanted that. She did not require a whole weekend together as the price of agreeing to change roads. Pell chose his own room and said he would enjoy one market afternoon, then wanted the next morning for a separate walk. Voll accepted that plan. Hedra wanted an independent morning too. Mera took four actual coins from each and handed each person a separate key. The three keys were a much less ambitious agreement than a promise that everybody would enjoy every minute.

Voll sent the lake inn its cancellation through the crossroads courier before the stated cutoff and paid the two-coin charge himself, receiving the receipt when the carrier returned. Hedra did not count that payment as compensation for her lost guide ticket; her five coins stayed lost, and Voll lost his own five as well. Pell had no imaginary lake ticket to reimburse. The unspent twelve-coin room price remained an avoided payment, not money that had returned to anybody's purse. They reached the town with enough for ordinary meals but less freedom to buy unnecessary souvenirs than Hedra had planned.

In the market she learned that Pell collected badly painted animal mugs. He selected one with a creature the seller called a deer and Voll called an underfed cupboard. Hedra refused to make a professional judgment on holiday. They ate outside the inn and argued about the mug until its owner threatened to name it after the first person to insult it again. For an hour their company was easy. Later Hedra went to her own room while the others stayed below. Nobody followed to ask whether she was secretly displeased. She was tired, still mildly angry and glad to have her own door.

The next morning Pell took his own walk, Voll visited a mill and Hedra followed the short public river path. They met for supper because they actually asked one another to do so. The lake remained beyond the other road, with a guide showing somebody else the places they had paid to see. Hedra returned home on the day arranged and found Dess waiting for the next lesson, not a story about how a holiday had made her wiser. She put the town key receipt beside the lost outing ticket. One recorded what they had newly chosen. The other recorded what that choice had not given back.