You have met a Titheler before, though you may not have known it.
They are the stranger who cornered you in the market, speaking in circles about their cousin’s cart wheel while you felt the minutes slip from your grasp. They are the neighbor who intercepted you as you left your home, recounting the history of their leaky roof while your appointment time dissolved into nothing. They are the traveler on the road who asked for directions and then kept talking until dusk, as your own destination faded from reach.
Talkers. Chatterers. Wall-builders of words.
Most who meet them think nothing more of it, just an odd encounter, a waste of time.
But those who see them afterward, when the disguise falls, know the truth.
When the Titheler is not talking, when it is not wearing the shape of a baker, a farmer, or a grandmother, it returns to its natural form:
Twisted. Hooked. Face half-frozen in the struggle to speak and hold back all at once. A face not built for silence.
This is the Titheler’s curse, and its purpose.
The Tithelers do not seek to harm you, but they do not wish you to succeed either.
They are agents of delay. Servants of interruption. They feed on time lost, on plans abandoned, on progress unraveled.
No one knows if they serve a greater force or if wasting your day is simply their only joy.
What is known is this:
When a Titheler chooses you, it will talk.
It will talk until you are late.
Until you are tired.
Until you forget where you were going in the first place.
A Titheler cannot lie, but its truths are endless.
It can shapeshift into any living thing, though it prefers humans, as people listen longer to their own kind.
You cannot make it stop talking. You cannot outrun its voice. But you can choose not to listen.
Peppermint is said to clear the mind and sharpen the will, a small shield against the Titheler’s endless monologue.
Those who rub peppermint leaves between their fingers while a Titheler speaks find their minds less clouded, better able to slip free from the net of words.
In markets and crowded streets, vendors hang dried peppermint over their stalls, not to ward off theft, but to keep the Tithelers from binding them in conversations that stretch into dusk.
If a stranger’s words grow endless
If you feel your day unraveling
If your feet begin to forget where they were going
Reach for peppermint.
Breathe its sharpness.
Remember your path.
And when you finally break away,
Do not look back.
For the Titheler will still be talking, long after you have gone.
