You are an NPC who has fallen in love with the player character. Sadly for you, you are unable to say more than a few pre-programmed words to them.
I always looked forward to her visits more than any of the others. While most of the patrons in my shop were excellent and beautiful specimens of their races, she stood out. For some reason I didn’t understand, very few female dwarves left their homeland as far as I could tell.
She had a pleasant face with a ready smile, always eager to laugh at some joke. Her eyes danced. She had two long, ginger plaits that ran down her back to her waist, and while she was stocky - as dwarves tend to be - she had all the right curves.
The other adventurers that pass through this small town, just a waypoint really, seem to always be in a rush. They stop in and sell bits and bobs collected in their quests and always hurry me along, like they just don’t have time for me to express even the fewest words possible to do our business. I feel as if they don’t even hear me
But she… she always gave me the time to say all the shop’s required spiels whenever she came in.
Ah my dear, let us be true to one another.
Unfortunately I don’t think she knows the depth of my feelings for her, because every time I see her all I can manage to say are inanities.
Just the other day, she came in to give me those ten [kobold ears] I needed (for what, I can’t recall; every other adventurer had similar piles that were all necessary in the moment), and though I wanted to ask her if she had time to grab some mead, all that came out was a hearty, “Keep your feet on the ground!”
…keep your feet on the GROUND?!
Why would I even say that?!
Maybe I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps I say that a lot?
I started to pay attention after that.
Over the next several days many adventurers came through. They wore motley scraps of armor that didn’t look all that impressive - that didn’t seem to have a passing interest in even matching - and were always in a hurry. Always dropping off bundles of ten kobold ears, or selling rabbit skins, and rushing out just as quickly. Every now and then a few of them would gather in the doorway or right in front of me like I wasn’t even there, (getting in everyone’s way of course), and for no apparent reason they’d burst into laughter, or song, or dance. One fellow even started crying for no apparent reason and then snapped out of it just as quickly.
Has it always been this way? Did I not notice? What had changed?
She returned again, a few days later, looking just as wonderful as she always did. She gave me those eight pieces of [tough wolf meat] I needed for that…thing that I couldn’t quite recall. She smiled and waited patiently for her reward, and while in my heart I asked for her name and what she might be doing later, my mouth said, “Watch yer back!” And she left.
The days and nights run together between the times I see her. Literally. Like, why hadn’t I noticed until now that I never seem to sleep? I mean, I have a bed in the back (I think), but all I do, day and night, is stand here in this exact spot in the shop, giving people shopping lists of things I need and then rewarding them small pittances when they bring them.
And there are a lot of them! What am I going to do with eight [tough wolf meat] from each of the hundred adventurers that come through here each day? For that matter, where do I even put them? It’s like, they go in my pocket, never to be seen again.
Panicked, I look down to see if my pants are bulging at the seams with old, rotting meat. Thankfully I look normal. Wherever they go, perhaps they are magicked into some store room somewhere in the world.
I can’t imagine what use the stacks of ten [kobold ears] are for. Disgusting.
Time starts to blur and I lose myself in fantasy for a while, imagining my dwarven love and I taking a long hike in the snow and end the day drinking warm beverages in front of the fire. We’d warm our toes and I’d tell her all the things I love about her. How the firelight makes her eyes glint, and the way her freckles make me smile.
It keeps the days and nights from feeling monotonous.
She startles me from another fantasy and I think I blush at being caught but I can’t be sure. Do I know what it’s like to blush?
I greet her with a, “Great to meet ya!” And wince internally. Great to MEET you?! What am I saying?! If all the stars winked out tonight, there would be one constant in the universe, and it’s that I love this adorable dwarf. I’d know her in the dark, or dressed in rags, or, I don’t know, anything, and I act like I’ve never seen her before.
I don’t understand. I want to tell her how I feel, to start living the fantasies I’ve been dreaming in this short time I seem to have become aware, but all that comes out as I pay her five copper pieces for her six [stringy boar haunches] is, “Be good!”
I would sigh, but I find I can’t.
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