Slender Oaks

Newcomers were a common sight in Slender Oaks, as many wealthy fishing enthusiasts came to the town in search of its famous lures and hooks. As Soerd approached, he was greeted with smiles and waves. Children ran through the street, playing some sort of game that apparently involved flinging acorns at each other, and more than a couple fishermen could be seen bringing baskets of small brown crabs back from the river. A hawker ran up to Soerd, giving him a gap-toothed grin.

"Welcome, traveler!" he said, gazing up at the taller man. "Can I interest you in some lures? I have many fine lures, finest in all of Slender Oaks! Come look, come see! Bart Booker, by the way. It's nice to meet you, newcomer."

He held up a small wooden board, to which he'd affixed a selection of elaborately carved fishing lures. Each one was painted in bright colors, and sported a selection of sharp, barbed hooks. No two were quite alike, although they all shared the same general shape and size.

"Don't you listen to that crazy guy," said another hawker, running across the street. "My lures are the best! Just look at them! If you didn't know any better, you'd try to eat them yourself! Mine aren't some mere painted toys, they're handcrafted perfection itself!"

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he produced a board of his own, this time covered in much more realistically-painted fish-shaped lures. The first man glared at him, but said nothing. Both lure-sellers stared expectantly at Soerd, clutching their display boards and smelling strongly of old fish.

Both men's eyes lit up at the sight of the gold, and they immediately snatched their respective coins and sequestered them away into hidden pockets. Soerd would find his hands filled with an assortment of lures, each one covered in a dangerous number of razor-sharp barbed hooks.

"This one is for trout," said the gap-toothed man, "and this one is for carp. You'll want to flick this one like a dragonfly, but that one works best if you pull it around like a minnow. This one is for mudfish. Don't eat mudfish. They're terrible and taste like dirt. I don't know why you'd ever want to catch a mudfish, but if you want to, this is the lure to do it with!"

The other man, meanwhile, took the time to wrap a few lures into a folded paper envelope before handing it to Soerd.

"There's a list of instructions inside," he said. "Follow those, and you'll be able to catch anything from a tadpole to a sturgeon with these lures. Trust me, I've caught a lot of tadpoles. You can fry them, you know. Quite tasty, really. As for lodging...well, the Bluebottle Inn is down the road, over yonder."

He gestured vaguely down the main road with a wave of his hand, eliciting a derisive snort from the gap-toothed salesman.

"No, no!" said the gap-toothed man. "That inn is too expensive, and the barmaid is ugly. Go to the Whistling Frog, it's down this road over here. Go down the road until you see the mushrooms, then turn left, but not too far left, and then head up the path where the cobblestones look like Old Man Crumble's teeth. Head up that way until you're about to trip over your feet, then go down the alley that smells like fourteen-day-old-carp. Once you're through there, head down past where the Jopkins used to live, walk down for about five minutes, and you'll be there. If you see a yellow cat with a mean glare, you've gone too far. That's the best inn in town, or my name isn't Bart Booker!"

As Soerd walked in, he would be greeted by the sound of boisterous, drunken singing. Several town guards were seated at a table, singing a loud and largely off-key song. Clearly, they were celebrating something or other, although exactly what it was had yet to be seen.

"There once was a man, 

From the south of Medan,

And the women he knew called him Three-legged Dan

This man had no horse,

But he carried a lance

Eight feet of steel stuffed right down his pants"

The song continued in a similar fashion, accompanied by a cacophony of boot-stomping and table-banging. Meanwhile, a waitress gestured for Soern to take a seat at the bar, rolling her eyes at the singing.

"Welcome to the Bluebottle, sir," she said. "Sorry about all the ruckus, they just won a rowboat race on the Weasletongue. That's pretty much all that we've got in the way of excitement around here, so they'll carousing all night long. It's all very silly, if you ask me. Can I get you something to drink?"

Oddly enough, the waitress bore a striking resemblance to the gap-toothed lure-seller. She too had a rather short stature and broad gap between her teeth, although she lacked the almost-deranged glimmer in her eye.

As the waitress hustled off to fetch Soerd's food and drink, the door to a small broom closet opened. A most peculiar sort of man stepped out, making his way across the room. He wore a two-pointed hood and a white mask, as well as long gloves and pointed boots. Despite the fact that the bar was almost entirely unoccupied, the odd man made a point to sit right beside Soerd, intertwining his long, pointy fingers as he leaned against the counter.

"I do so love this town, don't you?" he said, his voice entirely flat and devoid of emotion. "The entrepreneurial spirit is strong here. Everyone has something to sell, and there's plenty of potential customers running around. How about you, Mr. Soerd? Are you a buyer or a seller? Merchant or a customer? Hawker or a rube?"

He tilted his head to the side like a curious pigeon, and the points of his hood stood straight up like a rabbit's ears. His smile was fixed, painted onto his mask, and nothing but darkness could be seen through the eyeholes.

"Have you got anything to sell?" he asked. "Or, perhaps, are you looking for something?"