The mage listed anything strange that he had in mind that happened in and around the village for the last three months, which was a hard task, as, quite the opposite of what the villager had told Sonder, the mage didn't really care about it.
There was little that happened around him that he paid much attention to that wasn't his own affair.
He kept to himself, living a cozy and lazy life, which is what he strove for the most, and everyone else kept out of his way, due to his own doing.
He thought long and hard for anything that seemed out of the ordinary.
It wasn't like he had absolutely no knowledge of what went on around him.
His magic specialty was animation of inanimate objects.
"I don't go out much," he said. "Never saw the point. But I do keep… records."
He snapped his fingers, and a small wooden box slid itself out from a still-attached shelf from the wall. It opened itself in front of him and revealed stacks of paper and parchment, each filled with scribbled script.
"Quills," he said, "and pens too. Easy to enchant. I set a few around the village: the square, the roads in and out, and taverns."
"Spies?" Sonder raised an eyebrow.
"Observers," he corrected. "Spies require effort. They just report." He waved a dismissive hand. "I don't read most of it. Once a week, maybe. Only if I'm bored."
That much Sonder believed completely.
"And?" she prompted.
"And," he said, "here's everything that needs to be known."
He reached into the box and pulled out a single page, holding it between two fingers.
"Livestock refused to cross a river. Tools breaking for no reason. A cartwheel snapping in two without rot or strain. People hearing strange noises at night. I ignore most of it. Things break, and people imagine things, often. The villagers are very good at that."
"But...?"
"But one report stood out to me. It would have been a few months now. Four, maybe. Something was found."
"Found what?" Sonder's posture got more intense.
The mage leaned forward now, elbows on his knees, the chair creaking beneath him.
"Pieces of something. Not big ones. Scattered along the eastern roads, past the old goat paths. At first I thought it was glass. Clear, but not quite. But it was too heavy for glass." He grimaced. "Didn't feel like metal either."
"Shards," Sonder said, though the mage didn't know what she was speaking of.