It began, as so many strange mornings do in Ren’s life, with an interpretive dance in the radish patch.

  The troll, whose name was—through no fault of his own—Bramblethump, had recently taken up a residence next to the farm. Not in a cottage or burrow like any sane creature might. No, Bramblethump constructed what he proudly called a “soul yurt”—a squat circle of moss-covered logs woven with vines and positivity. Every dawn, he emerged from this leafy shrine to perform what he claimed was an expression of “the grieving spirit reborn.” To the untrained eye, it looked like a mud-covered mammoth pirouetting through an earthquake.

  Ren, naturally, welcomed him with fresh bread.

  “He’s finding peace,” Ren said one morning, placing a warm, honey-glazed loaf at the base of Bramblethump’s newest dance circle, which had once been a thriving squash patch. The troll, mid-somersault, gave a contented sigh and extended one toe toward the sun.

  “He’s finding excuses to traumatize vegetables,” I grumbled from my perch on the porch railing. “That last move disrespected gravity, good taste, and possibly interpretive dance itself.”

  “Healing isn’t linear,” Ren replied with a smile that could melt an armor. “It comes in all shapes.”

  “Yes, and this one comes in spirals and dramatic lunges.”

  Mimi had been watching the entire performance from the shadow of a shrub. She hadn’t blinked in what felt like a full lunar cycle. Her eyes tracked every movement, her ears flicking in the kind of hyper-alert surveillance mode normally reserved for royal guards or particularly judgmental librarians. At some point, she’d produced a small, leather-bound notebook and was now taking notes with a piece of charcoal clutched between her teeth.

  I didn’t know what alarmed me more—that she was doing reconnaissance, or that she was doing it so professionally.

  The true spiral into chaos began just before noon, when Ren found a wheelbarrow overturned near the edge of the woods. A broken handle, a scattered trail of lemon bars, and a woman grumbling in the underbrush. She had managed to get her shawl tangled in a bramble bush and was smacking it with a wooden spoon.

  “Do you need help?” Ren asked, already crouching to untangle her with the gentle precision of someone unaccustomed to letting others suffer in silence.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Bah. Curse these old thorns,” she muttered. “Can’t carry sweets without a full ambush these days.”

  Within minutes, she was seated at Ren’s garden bench with a cup of mint tea and a fresh bandage on her scratched elbow. She introduced herself as Old Malda, a former innkeeper of the Shaded Fern Inn, just over the rise beyond the eastern trees.

  “I have sold pies, stories, and questionable stews for forty-two years,” she said, cradling the teacup like a relic. “But the place is too much for these bones now. I have got an offer to turn it into a storage barn. Practical, sure. But the walls still hum when the fire’s lit, and the floorboards remember laughter.It just doesn’t sit right, letting it all go dark.”

  Hmm?! What is this? Some stupid philosophy class? I have had people executed for way less!

  Ren’s brow creased with thought. “You ran it alone?”

  She nodded. “Ever since my brother passed. I have no kids, no heirs. Just me and the ghosts, really.”

  With a face like that? No wonder....

  “The good kind?”

  “Oh yes,” she said with a half-smile. “Mostly.”

  I should have recognized the look blooming on Ren’s face. The soft-focus gaze of idealism. The dangerous curve of compassion edging into commitment. I hummed a low, warning vibration.

  “Don’t do it,” I muttered. “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.”

  But he already was.

  “If you’d like,” Ren began carefully, “I could visit it. Maybe help tidy it up a bit. You know, just so it feels less forgotten.”

  Old Malda blinked, surprised, then softened. “I’d like that. It deserves someone who listens.”

  Later that evening, after a tour of the inn filled with creaky floorboards and stories that clung to the curtains, she stood in the doorway, silhouetted by lantern light.

  “If I were to sell it,” she said quietly, “I think I’d want it to go to someone who understands homes aren’t made of walls, to someone like you.”

  Ren said nothing, just held the deed she’d quietly passed him and looked at it as though it weighed more than gold.

  “I don’t need much,” she added. “Just a good promise and the occasional lemon bar delivery.”

  Ren reached into his satchel, and withdrew a worn leather pouch. He opened it on the table, revealing the totality of his savings—neatly stacked, modest, and painstakingly gathered over seasons of frugality. Every coin was laid out like a prayer.

  “That’s everything I have,” he said, voice low but clear. “I’d rather spend it on something that matters.”

  She looked at the pouch, then at Ren. And without another word, she placed the deed in his hands and patted his cheek with a trembling, flour-dusted hand.

  “That place always needed a bit of hope,” she murmured. “Now it has a heart.”

  Later that evening, as the sun bled gold over the garden, Bramblethump performed a celebratory spin that flattened half the basil. Mimi observed from the hilltop, jotting down territorial expansions in her notebook. And I—cursed, sarcastic, utterly bewildered—lay silent for a long time on the porch.

  “He’s done it,” I finally muttered. “The muffin prince owns an inn.”