---
title: "Don't Thank the Gnomes"
date: 2010-05-19T12:00:00-07:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2010/05/19/dont-thank-the-gnomes/
author: Les Orchard
tags: [fantasy, ficly, fiction, flashfiction, gnomes, kindness, urban]
---

# Don't Thank the Gnomes

<div>
  <p>
    I started the morning by sneaking into a strange house through an unsealed milk door. There was a broken shoe heel on the second floor—its <em>wrongness</em> drew me up the stairs as sure as a cord tied round my ribs. It was done before the lady of the house could sigh.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    <!--more-->
  </p>
  
  <p>
    The next house was brick and so I, being of the Earth, could slip between the cracks. Modern wiring was a bitch, but I managed. Here, a child’s handheld game machine had met a bath. Though not an electronic-smith, I’d long ago lost my fear of iron—my will could right the wrong nonetheless.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    The third house spelled my doom. I’d been there before, but had somehow forgotten. I’d made a believer out of the household son. He waited for me, sat with milk and honey beside a broken pair of spectacles.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    Gratitude and fear swelled both in my chest. His glasses I fixed, and his offering I supped. Long unused to the proper rites, I confess I spilled some in my beard.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    “Thanks,” he said, habitually, mistakenly.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    With that, I began a century spent as stone.
  </p>
</div>