It was Day of Thunder, 10th the Month of the Sun when he came in. At first, I thought it was a joke, quickly going back to the forming mound of papers upon my desk. But then he seated himself in front of myself, and from beneath a tangle of wild hair came the glint of two, slightly inebriated emerald eyes. He was a dwarf, and by the reek of chemicals and liquor an alchemist, claiming he wanted me to record his life’s accomplishments before he got ‘blasted’ and forgot them all. Some of them were very mild, such as finding his left shoe under a bed, some were far-fetched, such as being the offspring of a dragon and a rock, and others were just odd, such as his claim to have wrote every drinking song under the three moons.

I was reluctant to agree, but his stench began to embed itself into my office walls of stone, and that hastened my will to extract the being from my office, so I began writing, my intellect doing what his could not. At first, his accent was difficult to work with, but in time I think I understood him.

‘Muh name is Billka. ‘so known ‘round dese parts as Billaco. I ‘ail from the city o stone, Brulan, and serve da forge with muh blood brother Roncohl. Meh hobbies include not bathin’, drinkin’ until meh beard looks like a cat ‘aught in a rainstorm, and ah enjoy takin’ stuff apart, seein’ ‘ow it works, then eating ‘ome parts of it den puttin’ back together at see ifat still ‘orks.’

He took a few moments to collect what wit he had, then got distracted when a few rodents fell out of his hair, running into the street after them and waving his arms. He was rather odd, and while he did not pay me for writing this, and I’ll probably see him in a gutter somewhere one day, I decided to store this paper away in my files, hoping it would find some use, or feed the moths in my archives.