Interlude One: A Lesson in Pettiness

Introduction
Welcome to Dreamwalker’s Diligence, a biweekly, bite-sized fantasy serial about a magical antiques shopkeeper with a penchant for mysteries.
This is a short story taking place between the first and the second season of the serial.
If you are new to the story, here is Episode One. You can also check out The Complete Guide for episode and character lists.

Faolán is habitually unable to not notice when a mage enters Goode & Son: Magical Artifacts, but he now knows that most people in the city do not have as acute senses as his. When he was younger, he assumed human mages did, but that turned out to be wrong. Human mages certainly know when magic is being performed. And given their abilities within the field, they can sometimes sense when an extremely powerful mage is in the vicinity regardless of whether that person is actively doing magic.

For Faolán, it is much clearer than that. He knows the instant someone gets close whether they are a mage or not. Just as he can easily tell whether there is any magic on an object, which is, of course, a handy skill to have in the magical antiques business.

So when the bell at the door jingles as someone opens it, Faolán immediately knows the visitor is a mage.

“Hello, Suri,” he calls out without looking up from the books he is sorting because he also recognises the magical shape of this particular mage. When they were young and studying together, his human friend would complain that they were never able to sneak up on him.

“Hi,” Suri replies. “Is now a bad time?”

“No,” Faolán tells them. “In fact, you have come at a most opportune time.”

Suri snorts, not entirely unamused. “What do you need me to do?”

Faolán finally turns around and flashes a grin in their direction. “You wound me,” he says. “I would never take advantage. But now that you are here, do you mind pulling that box off the top shelf?”

Suri rolls their eyes, but they cross the floor of the crammed shop, squeezing past the table where Faolán has piled the day’s workload. They stand on their toes and wiggle out the dusty box high above Faolán’s head.

When they met, Suri was a lanky youth not much taller than Faolán himself. They were surprised to hear their master was taking on a new apprentice, but as soon as they learned what he was and why he was there, they grew as curious as their teacher. Could a dreamwalker learn human magic? Could a human learn dreamwalker magic? The answer to the first question was, at least in Faolán’s case, yes. Quite easily, in fact. But even well-trained human mages had a hard time grasping dreamwalker magic. Faolán never managed to teach Suri anything except theory, and their teacher fared little better.

Now, Suri is decidedly taller than Faolán, and although they are fairly slender, they have bulked out over the years in ways that dreamwalkers don’t. They are an adult now. And from here on out, Faolán is painfully aware, they will age so much faster than he will. He is nearly fifty years old, and Suri is in their thirties, but even city-dwelling dreamwalkers often make it past a couple of centuries. Right now, though, Suri is still young and has a healthy glow to their golden-brown skin.

“Thank you,” Faolán says and relieves Suri of the box. He puts it on the table, pushing aside other items, and turns to Suri again. “Now, what can I do for you?”

Suri shakes their head with what Faolán chooses to interpret as a smile of fondness. “I’ve done some research,” they say in the way that other people may say, “I’ve had the most delicious cake!” Suri’s brown eyes light up at the subject. They live and breathe for magic and for research. They work for the city council and have access to the grandest library in Lowengeport. Sometimes, Faolán wonders if perhaps he is taking advantage of that, but honestly, why should he deprive his closest friend of the joy it brings them? That it just so happens to make Faolán’s own life a little easier is nothing but a convenient side effect.

Faolán gestures to the only free chair in the shop, his own chair, and Suri takes it with a nod. And since Faolán doesn’t have to keep up an air of dignified poise around them, he moves a stack of books to an empty spot on the floor, places his hands on the table and boosts himself up so he can sit on it while he listens.

“All right,” Suri begins. They take a small cloth bag out of their waistcoat pocket and then a ring out of the bag. It is a modest gold band with a clear, green ornament that is a lot less valuable than a first glance may suggest. Suri holds it up between the two of them.

“Oh, Suri,” Faolán gasps. “This is so sudden.”

“What? Oh.” Suri sighs and shakes the ring at him with an expression that suggests they are not particularly impressed with his flippancy. Once, they would have blushed furiously, but ten years and several romantic interests, sometimes simultaneously, later, Suri has certainly grown out of that. “If I ever decide to propose to you, it will not be with a former nightmare-inducing ring pulled out of a dead pig,” they say flatly. “Now, do you want to know what I found out or not?”

“Please,” Faolán says, “Carry on.”

“All right. Our story begins some fifty years ago with a mage called Cathal. You have probably never heard of him, but I thought the name was familiar, and it turns out he wrote a book on harnessing wind as an alternative energy source that I read years ago. He had the right idea, I think, but he lacked the technical abilities to make it work. What we are doing now with the water to power devices instead of magic is …” Suri trails off as they notice Faolán’s expression. “Anyway, Cathal was also very interested in dreamwalkers and mares and he actually managed to convince a mare to work with him for a while. He was never able to use dreamwalker or mare magic himself, but he was trying to achieve some of the same outcomes with human magic.”

Faolán leans back on his hands. He had a feeling it was going to be something like this from the moment he touched the butcher’s ring a few weeks ago. “And so this Cathal character managed to create a nightmare and connect it to that ring?”

“We’re getting to that in a moment,” Suri says. “Apparently, he had a falling out with the mare. The sources I’ve tracked down are highly biased, but if you want my opinion, he was going in a direction with nightmares that even the mare wasn’t comfortable with.”

“I can imagine,” Faolán says. Mares aren’t that different from dreamwalkers when it comes to intent. They might feed on scary dreams, but they do not seek to force anyone to live the same nightmare over and over.

“Now, Cathal had a childhood friend called Gráinne. And he was infatuated with her. I think she might also have had feelings for him at one point, but they didn’t last into adulthood.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Faolán mutters. “He sounds like such a delightful person.”

Suri makes a gesture of agreement. “Gráinne fell in love with someone else. Cathal declared his love, asked her to marry him, and she declined. Cathal grew furious. Not with her, but with the woman who had, according to him, stolen Gráinne from him. I could find no evidence that this other woman used magic or any other kind of force to convince Gráinne to fall in love with her, by the way. There was no foul play involved.”

“She probably didn’t dabble in questionable magic. That is an attractive character trait,” Faolán comments dryly.

“Indeed. In the end, Cathal pretended to be resigned. As a token of his good will towards the happy couple, he gifted Gráinne a ring.” Suri inclines their head at the ring they are holding as if anyone present would consider any other ring. “He told her to give it to her lover. This is an aside, but Cathal also told her it is an emerald, but I took the liberty of examining it, and you are definitely right that it is coloured glass. Well, lying about the value of the ring is hardly the worst of his sins, of course. Gráinne thought it was a gesture of reconciliation and gave her lover the ring. And you can probably guess what happened when she put it on.”

“Yes,” Faolán agrees. “A bit naive of them both if you ask me. So … Since it was intended for Gráinne’s lover, I assume the woman in the dream was made in Gráinne’s likeness?”

Suri’s expression is that of a teacher who is pleased their student has paid attention to their lectures. “Precisely,” they say. “Imagine that. Forcing someone to dream about the person they love turning into a monster and eating them every single night.”

Faolán crosses his arms over his chest. People can be petty. People can be cruel. He is too old to be surprised. Apart from his own experiences, he has also walked into too many nightmares grounded in other people’s past to be shocked. But what really bothers him is the fact that a human mage had the gall to step onto the turf of dreamwalkers and mares and turn dreams into something ugly. Something crude and vile. “I’m sorry Cathal is dead,” he says.

“Why?” Suri asks, caution seeping into their tone.

“I’d have liked to show him how a real dreamwalker works,” Faolán says, not even bothering to hide the venom in his words. He can feel his magic, dreamwalker and human, flare up in a silent threat.

The shop is quiet for a moment. Suri looks a bit taken aback at this blatant display.

“Anyway,” Faolán quickly continues, “How did the ring get off Gráinne’s lover’s finger and end up in a pig’s entrails?”

“I can answer your first question, but only theorise about the second,” Suri says. “Gráinne’s lover couldn’t stand it for long. It was not exactly hard to figure out that the ring was connected to the dreams, so the two of them begged Cathal to take it off her. Now, one of my sources speculates that he had no idea how to do that, but others assume he just didn’t want to.”

“Honestly, I would not be surprised if he couldn’t. Undoing a spell or a curse isn’t always as simple as it sounds,” Faolán mumbles.

“I have never done anything I couldn’t reverse,” Suri says.

“That’s because you are a good scholar. And you take responsibility for your own actions.”

“Thank you.” Suri flashes him a smile, then continues, “In any case, they ended up cutting off the lover’s finger. That got rid of the ring and the nightmares.”

Faolán sighs. “That is so ... infuriatingly stupid. Why didn’t they just do what the butcher did and find a competent person to help them out with the ring?”

“Believe it or not, Faolán, you are rather unique.”

He shrugs. It’s a fair point. But surely most dreamwalkers would be able to do what he did. They wouldn’t have to be trained as mages, would they?

“Please stop,” Suri says and runs their fingers through their dark brown mane of hair. “You simply can’t hold others to your standards. For all we know, they might have tried. It might be your understanding of human magic that made you able to help William. But regardless, the story ends there. They got rid of the ring. There are no records of it appearing again. My best guess is that they flung it into a river, and it somehow ended up in that pig’s food decades later.”

Faolán nods. It is a bit frustrating that there isn’t more to the story of the ring after that. Almost as much as the fact that it was all just a wounded man’s unjust and petty revenge. “That sounds plausible. Thank you, Suri. I owe you one.” Even if research is more of a treat than a chore to them, they still deserve his gratitude.

Suri waves his thanks away. “My pleasure. But I came for another reason as well. Ithnea told me to invite you for tea.”

Faolán snaps alert. “Oh? Is that tea or ... Tea?” He knows their teacher too well to assume it is merely a social call.

“It’s Tea with a capital T,” Suri confirms, knowing exactly what he means. Ithnea has a tendency to use tea as a pretext to discuss serious matters. “Apparently, there is something she needs to talk to you about as soon as possible.”

That could mean anything, but most likely it means trouble. Regardless, Faolán is certainly not going to turn down her summons. “When?” he asks.

“Tomorrow evening. I am not privy to the details, but it seems to be urgent.”

Thank you for reading! If you are enjoying Dreamwalker’s Diligence, please consider sharing, commenting or liking. Next up is a Q&A with Faolán, which will be published on August 13th 2026.