“Welcome home dear.”

Kain had just gotten home, his mother already had dinner prepared on the table; one of Kain’s favorites, baked potato with ix meat. Kain smiled, placing his satchel down he moved to get the utensils.

His mother stopped him, “Oh! Don’t worry about that, go put your bag in the room first.”

Kain looked at her confused, “Huh?”

“Sandra and Mark are coming over tonight, I want to keep the living room neat.”

“Ah, alrighty.”

Kain turned around and picked his satchel back up. While it was somewhat odd that his mom wanted him to move it immediately, he didn’t worry about it too much. Intent on just tossing it on to his bed, he walked over to their room. Opening the door…

“BOO!”

—————

“You should have seen it mommy! He was really REALLY scared.”

Sandra giggled, “I don’t think I’ve seen Kain afraid before.Tell me all about it.”

Riley enthusiastically detailed her brilliant plan, making sure to omit all the parts Kain’s mom helped her with. When she got to describing Kain reactions, she was especially energetic. It was also the part of the story she exaggerated the most. She would have you believe Kain jumped back in horror, his face losing any sense of courage, his arm clutching his chest for dear life, his yell a shriek of terror. In reality, Kain merely stepped back with his arms raised.

Kain lightly yelled, “That's not true Riley! I didn’t scream at all. I...breathed loudly.”

Even that was a stretch of the truth, but Kain wasn’t going to ruin the fun Riley was having telling the great tale of how she scared the unscareable. He enjoyed seeing her happy smile.

So too did his mother, the real orchestrator. The statement about Sandra and Mark coming over was very much the truth, but the need for him to go put his bag away was a ploy. Sandra and Riley had come over earlier, during their visit Riley said she wanted to wait for Kain to come home. It didn’t take much to convince Sandra to agree, but she would need to leave before he got back. Mark would get home within the hour and she needed to prepare dinner for him. With little need for deliberation, it was decided Riley would stay to play with Kain when he got home and Sandra and Mark would come pick her when they were done with dinner. Somewhere in between all of that, a wicked scheme to scare Kain popped up. Kain couldn’t figure out whose head it popped into first though.

Mark, not finding Kain’s supposed moment of weakness amusing, sought to change topics, “Did Sandra tell you about the odd man that visited her shop today?”

“Odd man? No, I don’t believe so.”

Mark looked particularly agitated, “Some rich gentlemen decided it was a good use of his time to harass her about bandits.”

Sandra tapped his thigh, “Oh stop it, it wasn’t harassment. Plus, it was his job.”

“Wait. What happened?”

Sandra cut Mark off from replying, “Nothing serious, some guy contacted Mark and said he would like to see what my store had to offer. He paid ten turlis just for me to open my shop a bit early.”

Kain sat down next to his mother, on the couch next to Sandra and Mark, quite interested in this ‘odd man’, “Wow, what did he buy?”

Mark jumped in before Sandra could stop him, “Nothing! He walked around, had the audacity to insinuate Sandra employed bandits, then further insulted her by dropping a dir coin and leaving.”

Kain and his mother were visibly shocked. Kain especially so, his head twitched to the side like a cog that was malfunctioning.

“A dir coin? And he didn’t buy anything?”

“No! He thinks he can insult my wife and just pay it off.”

Sandra roller her eyes, “Honey, it's fine. It wasn’t anything serious. A dir is worth far more than the little misunderstanding.”

Currency in most of Ethel was still coin based. The concept of paper money had come into being, but the few places that implemented it had resounding failures. Bigger nations, with more to lose, forewent even attempting it. The tiered coin system worked just fine for them. The Alden Empire’s ‘krwn’ was a perfect example.

Lysken and many parts of the surrounding continents exclusively used the coins produced in the Alden Empire instead minting their own. Their economic supremacy made their currency far more stable and commonplace than others. The level of standardization also gave them an edge over their would be competitors. Each of their coins was roughly the same size, roughly the same thickness, and had the royal family’s seal on one side and a large print of the first letter of the coins name on the other.

The term ‘krwn’ came to be because the insignia for the Royal family featured a large crown. Over time, with their coins seeing widespread use, their currency began being referred to as crowns. It didn’t take too many years for the emperor to make the name official. Terming their currency ‘crowns’ however, posed several issues. As such, it was stylized as krwns.

One krwn was deemed to be worth one turlis. Turlis coins were the most commonly used of the bunch. They were also directly in the middle in terms of value. At the bottom of the pyramid there were bits, brown coins worth basically nothing. 10 bits was worth 1 dree. Dree coins were black in color. 100 dree was worth one krwn, or one turlis. 100 turlis was worth 1 dir, a gold coin. At the top of the pyramid there were lyte coins, worth 100 dir.

Lyte coins were almost pure white. They were practically mythical existences to the common folk. 90% of the population would never see one, talk less of being wealthy enough to own one. Only the most lavish of expenses would call one to make use of it. For countries however that kind of money was constantly being thrown around. The ease in which business at that level could function with the existence of lyte coins made them a must have. For noble families, it even became something of a culture. Owning a vast amount of lyte coins showed one’s power and influence.

The wealthiest men in the world were even rumored to be in talks with the Alden Empire about making another coin worth 100 lyte coins. A coin made purely from the metal that plated lyte coins, lyte. It would be something only the Alden empire could accomplish. They, as luck or maybe fate would have it, owned 40% of the lyte mines in the world.

————-

“Bye Riley!”

Kain and his mother were waving the Thornes goodnight. They had a fun evening; the adults drank wine and talked about life in town while Kain kept Riley entertained with a host of weird games. It was the second time today Kain had played with Riley and he was disliking how much he enjoyed it.

“Alright, time for bed. Put the wine away for me, please. I'll get the glasses.”

“No problem.”

Without a pump to get water into their kitchen, Kain’s mother washed the dishes outside in a small tub. She used to do it out in the open using the streetlights to see, but Kain had demanded a shed with a lantern in it be built around it for her. Heading there, she suddenly dropped all the dishes in her hand and quickly ran back inside.

“Kain!”