Ch 5. Coffee Table Dwarf

John slowly pushed the door open, his still hot kettle clutched in his other hand as he looked around. There weren’t many people or not people that would break into people’s places of business in Avalon, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. John saw that the rug in the center of the room was disheveled and the small coffee table appeared to be shaking with two large boots sticking out of the end of it.

John moved to the table and peered under it, seeing a young dwarf with a full black beard and his eyes squinted closed. He carefully placed the kettle on a smaller side table by the couch, deactivating the heating rune, and sat down on the floor leaning down to look at the shaking dwarf at his level, or at least as close as he could manage.

“Mr. Treebeard, I assume?”

“Th-that’s me,” said the dwarf.

“First of all, thank you for making it to your appointment on time. A lot of new clients are usually late.”

“You're welcome,” he responded, starting to open his eyes a bit and peer around, seeing John waving a hand gently at him.

“Secondly, why are you under my table?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll come out if you just give me a few minutes.”

John shook his head. “No, that’s fine. If you’re more comfortable there, you can stay there for now. I just would like to know why you chose to be there?”

“I don’t want to fall into the sky.”

John stayed silent for a moment. That was the fear. He really wished he wrote that down. Still, it seemed far more serious than he’d’ve thought.

“I know it’s stupid,” said Gnost looking at the floor. “Everyone’s already explained to me that won’t happen. But every time I look up, I start to feel like I’m just going to drift up into that awful blueness and die.”

“Phobias aren’t rational,” said John. “For certain fears, thinking through them and reasoning them out can help, but when the fear is great enough, no amount of reasoning is able to get rid of it. You aren’t the only person with this phobia either; even where I’m from there are people with fears of wide open spaces.”

“Humans get this too?”

“Any odd fear any race has of anything, a human has almost certainly also had it at some point.” John sat up for a moment to stretch his back. Hunching over was starting to become painful. “I’m actually very impressed you got all the way here dealing with this kind of fear. How did you manage it?”

“My uncle, Stone, has a covered wagon. I buried myself under some old wooden crates and faced the ground the whole time, then ran inside here.”

“That must’ve been very difficult.”

“It… it was.”

“It’s good that you were able to do that. It means you have a strong drive to get better. Some people need a big push to reach that point.”

Gnost was silent for a few moments.

“So, if you’re afraid of the sky I’d guess you’re not from Avalon originally?”

He shook his head, his beard picking up a few crumbs from the rug as he did so. “No, I’m from the Bronze Mountains, in Sommer.”

“How’d you wind up here?”

“I’m a fourth son, and had no one to apprentice with in the mountains. My uncle Stone needs help running his shop here so offered to take me on. When I found out, I was excited. I didn’t know that I’d…I’d be so afraid.”

John nodded. He could tell by his tone that he felt immense guilt, likely for not being able to help his uncle as well as he wanted to.

“Well Gnost, I think I’ll be able to help you with this, but it may take some time.”

“How long?”

“Months most likely. Maybe a year. Treatment for this kind of thing takes time.”

“Is there no way to, I dunno, have a wizard poof my fear away?”

John shrugged, “Maybe, I honestly don’t know everything that Avalon has to offer. There may be a wizard or warlock or angel or demon that can solve this problem more easily for you. I won’t take it personally if you shop around and decide you want help from someone other than me. There is one thing I can guarantee that I have over all the others though.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m cheaper.”

That got a small smile from the dwarf. “Well, I do appreciate a deal.” He let out a long breath, "I think I can come out from the table.”

“Are you sure?” asked John, though he was secretly grateful for the chance to get off the floor. His back was killing him.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Hmmm, give me one minute. I may be able to make this a bit easier for you.” John stood up and moved to the windows at the front of his office and drew the curtains. Once he was done with that, he went into his office and did the same. The front of his office was on a level street, but the back hung in the air with a small balcony on a second story. The geography of Avalon was… odd, to say the least. He returned to the waiting room to see Gnost already pushing himself out from under the table and looking around.

He was trembling a bit, but didn’t seem in nearly as bad of shape as he had before.

“Come on into my office. Would you like some water? Some tea?”

He walked carefully, keeping his eyes on the grounds as he made his way over to him. “Do you have any mushroom teas?”

“Yes, actually. I have one that was a gift from another patient.” He walked into the waiting room to grab his kettle and started heating it as he moved back into his office, passing the slow moving dwarf twice as he did so, but careful not to rush him. By the time he’d made it into the office and managed to sit down on the couch, John had his tea ready and handed it to him.

“You saw another dwarf? What for?”

On Earth he’d say something about confidentiality, but on Avalon he didn’t exactly have the same restrictions. Still, he kept it vague.

“He was having lady trouble. Needed some help getting over a woman that hurt him.”

“Back home we only have arranged marriages. It makes things easier.”

John smiled. “He’d had an arranged marriage too.”

“Oh,” responded Gnost, sipping his tea as he kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “This is very good actually.”

“Isn’t it?” asked John, though honestly to him it tasted like drinking hot dirt. To each their own though, and he wanted to make sure Gnost was as comfortable as possible.

“So, what will you do to help me? Is it some kind of spell? Or potion?”

“I will be sending you to a local alchemist for a potion that will help, but it won’t cure you so much as take a bit of the edge of the fear off. He’ll give you very specific instructions on how much to drink and when to drink it that you’ll need to follow to the letter,” John moved to his desk and started to write out a note for an alchemist named, appropriately, Herb who had helped him to create ‘medications’ for other patients in the past. On Earth he’d’ve needed an MD to do any prescribing, but things were a bit loose on fantasy worlds where dragons could pass overhead at any moment and you could occasionally run into a skeleton getting his skull polished at a barber shop.

“The other part will take much longer. We’re going to be doing something called exposure therapy.”

“Exposure…” muttered Gnost, looking fearfully at the window.

“In your case the name is a bit more literal than it usually is. What we’ll be doing is confronting your fear in small, controlled steps to gradually make it easier to deal with. At the same time, we’ll be talking through how your phobia affects you, working on exercises to help you handle your anxiety, and helping you figure out some ways to work around it in the short term. It’s going to be a lot of hard work, but if we follow through and work on it together, we should be able to bring you into the sun.” John looked Gnost in the eyes, trying to reassure him. “Are you willing to give it a try?”

Gnost took a long deep breath. “Aye, I am.”

John held out a hand, and Gnost took it in his massive dwarven fist and shook it firmly.

“Do uh, we need to start today?” he asked.

John laughed. “In a way, you already did. You made it from your uncle's covered wagon into here; that’s a great first step. Only one more thing you need to do for today.”

“Make it back to it?”

John smiled. “Exactly.”