The Old Cook

Back in the early days of the Cazaxanes Emperors, a kindly old cook worked diligently in the marketplace of Piot Alenky. He had been a scribe in his youth, working just as hard for the aldermen and lawcrafters of the city, but as he had gotten older his eyesight had begun to fail, and he had no choice but to leave that profession. Dropping from city scribe to the status of lowly cook was a blow to his ego, but he had leaned into his new occupation and by this time, had become a master of this task. He crafted amazing stews, delicious cabbage rolls and marinated meats, and sold them from his small stall in the Piot Alenky marketplace.
One day an evil Warlock came to buy food. He had heard of the man's craftsmanship as well as his blindness, and decided to cheat him out of a free meal.
"Hello, uncle - I hear you used to be a great scribe of the city. What has happened to lower you to mixing cold water and warm meat for scraps and single coins?"
The old man replied without malice or guile. "Simply the weight of years, good friend. My eyesight failed long ago, yet my hands - and my nose - still work perfectly."
"Surely there are other jobs you could do, even half-blind? I might hire you myself, if you qualify. You see, I work for the Archivists, and I make large signs for them to keep their libraries organized - they are large libraries, with signs hung very high, and large writing so people can see them."
"Oh, I could never work at a job like that - I could never see where to hang such signs," the old man said, adding spices to his cooking.
The smell of roast rabbit with parsnips and horseradish was almost too much for the warlock to bear, so he continued with his deception. "Certainly that wouldn't be your job, hanging the signs, uncle. We get young men to do that, with strong backs as well as fine vision. No, what I need is someone with a scribe's skill, but who can write letters very large - the size of that stew pot would be fine. Tell me, as you're stirring it there - can you move the spoon in the shape of the letter Aleph? Large and with a circular flourish at the end."
The old man felt there would be no harm in it, and it felt good to make the letters; of course he remembered perfectly well how to do so, and he made the shape.
"Excellent, excellent. Why, my apprentices struggle for years with that one. How about the Hermetic triangle - surely you know it?"
The old man did, and made the symbol - it was an obscure one, a cone in a cube, representing how the same thing can look like a triangle or a circle depending on which side of the cube you look into - perspective creating its own truth.
"Incredible - you matched the corners perfectly, that can't be easy if you can barely see what you're doing. Now, last of all, is the symbol of the Infernum - I'm sure you understand that the archivist's guild has to categorize a great number of things that common people would consider profane."
"Indeed I do know the Infernum; I worked with laywers, remember." He made this symbol as well, and several others.
When he had completed these motions, however, a fat and burly demon appeared, just as the Warlock had intended; he had been having the man cast a conjuration without even knowing it. The demon, interrupted from its demonic delights which are probably fairly rare and precious, reared back immediately to slay this fool who had brought it fourth from its leisure without any sort of protective circle.
But the old man simply looked up at it and smiled. "Oh my, I'm so sorry sir, in my blindness I didn't see you standing there in line. Here, you can have this stew on me."
Before the demon could respond, he found a bowl of piping hot rabbit stew in his hands, proffered freely and without any contract or bond by the old man. The demon looked at the stew, and the cook, and the warlock. The warlock frowned and pointed at the old man.
But it isn't every day that a demon gets a bowl of stew without obligations. A few days later, the old man found that his eyesight had returned, but he had grown to love cooking so much, he never went back to scribing. Occasionally, a fat and burly man would come back to his line, and remembering an earlier rudeness, the old cook would always give him a bowl of stew without asking for payment.
And the Warlock was never seen or heard from again.