Legend XII – The Apprentice of Smoke

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In the depths of autumn, when the trees count their last leaves and the light hangs between them like golden dust, in a hut made of stone and moss lived a little goblin named Trinkar. He was neither evil nor good, but curious—and that, the ancients said, was the most dangerous of all. Trinkar had a talent no one had taught him: he could read smoke. Not the ordinary gray smoke that crept out of chimneys, but the kind that rose from stories when they were kept silent for too long. When he lit his pipe, images, faces, entire worlds danced from the vapor. He called it "the memory of fire." His only companion was a black cat named Nyx, whose eyes shone like two moons in shadow. She never spoke, but she understood every word he murmured. And sometimes, when he read, she would put a paw to her side, as if to show him where the truth lay hidden. One evening, as the wind blew across the fields outside, Trinkar sat before his cauldron. The room smelled of old wood and sweet smoke. In his lap lay a book he had found in an abandoned mill. It bore no title—only the imprint of a hand on the cover. "If a book breathes," he had once heard, "it contains a soul." This book breathed. When he opened it, a thin plume of smoke rose, spiraling, humming softly. Words began to move, peeling from the paper and dancing in the air. "I seek my name," a voice whispered. "Help me before I am forgotten." Trinkar frowned, puffed on his pipe, and blew the smoke against the floating word. The whisper took shape—a tiny shadow, half man, half wind. "How can one find a name that has forgotten itself?" he asked. "In the smoke of memory," the voice answered. "There where things pass without dying." Trinkar nodded. He took a pinch of ash from the cauldron, mixed it with a drop of wax and a hair from the cat. Nyx hissed, but she remained. Then he spoke soft words older than himself, words not thought but breathed. The smoke rose, forming images: a forest, a lost star, a child laughing before disappearing. Trinkar saw that each image was a name—and each name a story that had been forgotten. "So you are none, but many," he murmured. "And you?" asked the smoke. "Do you know who you are?" Then Trinkar paused. He had never thought about it. Goblins are rarely asked about their nature; they are simply there, like mushrooms after rain. But suddenly he felt that there was smoke inside him too—memories of places, of voices, of times when he might have been someone else. Nyx purred, the cauldron gurgled, and the book's pages whispered on. Trinkar understood that some questions don't need answers. He closed the book, and the smoke settled, peacefully, as if it had finally rested. From that evening on, every night, a faint glow shone in Trinkar's hut.