1.4 Farthest From Nowhere

“Five hundred and sixty-three pounds (255.3 kg) of sweet corn kernels. Plone always brought the best produce and other farms have been slacking in quality this season. I can give you a silver per pound, but come back in early summer and I’ll probably do double that. Add in one thousand, nine hundred and sixteen pounds of smoked Piedmontese. Would have been better if you brought a live bull, a few restaurants pay premium for organ meat, but I can smell hickory and it looks like good quality. Three silvers a pound, but understand the price of cattle goes down drastically when ranches herd through here later in the year. That equals…”

“Six thousand, three hundred and eleven silver,” Qastael said, excited for her first sale and making sure the math added up in her head. “How much is that in tung?”

Old Man Choggir patiently flicked his abacus, making a few notes in his ledger before nodding agreement and removing his spectacles. An aelf of advanced years, his clothing was the old style of green robes over a tunic that even Qastael thought was out of fashion. Stooped at his desk, his ears drooped atop large puffs of white hair, head bald on top but braided white locks down his back, hands shaking whenever he stopped moving. Dark gray eyes remained sharp and his smile belonged on a younger man. “Guessin’ you haven’t been in Faluss long, we don’t handle much of that southern money. Gold is the standard, and fifty silver equals a medium gold coin, the most common denomination we use in these parts for large sales.”

“A hundred and twenty-six medium gold with eleven silver, then.” Qastael licked her lips, not wanting to appear as some kind of unlettered rube, but she honestly never dealt with any coinage, only asking about the rectangular tungsten coins of Yrlmuh because she was trying to sound savvy. They were around back of Choggir’s shop where he stored stock and kept the large scales. At least, Qastael’s head was snaked inside the warehouse, the rest of her crouched uncomfortably outside in the open loading lot while three of Choggir’s grandsons moved the final barrel off the scales, making quick work to empty the grain and return the barrel into Qastael’s sack. Realizing her mistake, she huffed a bit and shyly asked, “Is that a lot?”

“Its a goodly sum, but I wouldn’t call it a lot,” Choggir chuckled, stepping lightly around his desk to a lockbox and opening it, counting out coins. “Plenty of families in town could live easily off that much for a few months, but farms are greedy masters and you’ll put in a lot to get a little bit more back. I also imagine feeding yourself is a titch more costly than feeding a Falussan family. Gold used to be worth more years ago, too, but the war ‘tween the Cliffs has inflated costs severely. Never you mind those spectacles you want ordered will amount eighty medium gold, and the closest place I can get them made is Stoborn on the east coast. I reckon you’ll have them by the end of the year or early next, depending.”

Really needed those spectacles right now, the irritable woman thought, tallying up other costs in her head and not liking her sums, though all she had to go on was guesswork at the moment. Trying with difficulty not to growl, Qastael should have kept to eating more trees and bushes, realizing the six empty barrels of corn and even the lambs could have increased her profits exponentially. It hurt her physically in her gullet understanding her appetite would be the biggest cost for anything she did moving forward. How can she feed herself, or more vital, feed Little Mouse when she hatches?

“Well, I don’t know much about farming, but if you like I can offer some advice.”

With a start - a careful start, not wanting to break the old man’s warehouse - Qastael realized she must have spoken out loud, her scales reddening a tinge as she blinked moisture out of her eyes. “Yes please.”

“As I understand it, farming is all about growing the right crops and selling them for a profit or folding them into livestock to increase those yields.” Choggir finished counting eleven silver and forty-six medium gold, stacking them into a simple leather valise with a sales receipt for the spectacles. “A kernel can grow into enough corn to almost sell for a silver in one season, but it takes constant work, fertilizer, maybe a few thaumatic chants if needed. Either you sell that corn for the silver, or you replant it for a thousand stalks that get you a thousand silver next season, or you feed it to a cow and that same silver of food turns into five silvers of quality beef. So the goal of farming is like any other business: learning the best use of resources to find a product that will derive the most net profit from your gross effort.

“Your biggest disadvantage is your size. Everyone’s got to eat, and I imaging you eat a lot. But it is also what makes you valuable. I’ve heard tell farmers spending months driving oxen to plow their fields in preparation to plant in the spring, only able to get an acre prepared in a day. With claws like you have, I imagine it would only take a few minutes to do the same. Whole farms have been wiped out when a bad metareality storm rides up from Wylo, but you likely have little to worry about from something all other farmers would fear. So don’t worry too much, just realize what you have and use it.”

Qastael turned silent as she slid her head outside, Old Man Choggir following and handing the valise over with a young and appreciative smile, his eyes not a bit ashamed snagging an ogle of scaled and furred feminine. The large woman was flattered, but she was also more appreciative of the advice. “Thank you. I didn’t realize how hard this would be, but I think it is more manageable now.”

“Advice doesn’t cost coin, no worries,” Choggir said, waving his hands in front of his face. “You be sure to bring all your goods to me from now on, you hear. I won’t promise you the best prices, but I’ll always give you honest ones. Can’t say as many others in town would do the same for you.”

“I’ll remember that,” Qastael said, looping her neck in a tight corkscrew and sharply cracking sixteen vertebrae like a small rockslide, her floppy ears picking up a few startled shrieks from surrounding populous. Sighing in relief, she stood slowly onto her hind legs and nodded, looking over roofs to see if she could navigate through the city of dollhouses towards her next stop.

It took a few hours under the hot suns, not that weather affected Qastael much. The vast majority of the Falussans were from Breenan stock, otherwise known as humans. In all her travels, by far the most common of races, but with Dark Cliff demonics living up north, the mixed coalitions out of Libertania to the west and Yrlmuh in the south, even the vast caverns underground of Heheim, Qastael thought the continent of Bronelle would be different than Yerm or the unending empire of the Potentate. Not everyone ran away screaming when she hunched down to politely ask directions, but many either ignored her or said things that were impolite or crass.

Qastael took it in stride, used to this kind of response, straightening herself after a group of young boys more intent on leering than being afraid pointed her down a narrow alley. She tried dusting the incessant sand grinding between her scales and mucking up her fur, but the effort remained futile as another breeze gusted up dirt from the road into her nostrils and along her body, making her want to sneeze and scream in equal measure. It got worse when the sneeze never came.

“I remember a big crater out near the farm,” Qastael said to herself, sidling between building while holding her tail up to squeeze through the alley. “I wonder how hard it would be to dig into the aquifer and make my own personal swimming lake.” Gazing again at all the people around on the streets, she noticed most wore long leather coats or cloaks and broad rimmed hats, realizing the fashion wasn’t just because they were cold. “Maybe a coat and hat?” Clothing was still a foreign concept to her even if she knew what many of the coverings were named.

“Come on out, ya loose bunter! Get yer scabbed butter boat inta the street so everyone can have a go!”

For a moment, Qastael was miffed townsfolk were still calling her names, then realized as she stepped near a cramped cul-de-sac that for the first time today someone wasn’t directing vitriol her way. She was still in the alleyway and thought herself unobtrusive so long as nobody glanced upward. The houses were closer and taller in this part of town and built with lower quality, but to her acute nose the air smelled cleaner of odor. Mostly. The crowd of twenty-odd human men clustered in the street stank of spirits and were generally unwashed. Most held loaded crossbows or other weapons, the leader shaking a sword at a large mansion styled house painted red with a green sign reading in a lurid script The Silken Embrace.

Front double doors of the mansion slammed open, a dark skinned arachne woman with poofy black hair wearing white corset and nothing else over orange and crimson furred carapace skittered into the street, four sets of dark eyes on an otherwise human shaped face glaring into the harsh suns, thrusting prodigious bosoms like she meant to bludgeon the whole lot of befuddled males out of town. “Blow it out yer limp pecker, Gowk Miksoli! Everyone from here to the Boiling Salts knows you cheated on Thexi. The fact you accused your innocent wife of sleeping around town before you threw her sideways with signed divorce papers just shows your small character! How else was a girl with nothing supposed to feed herself if not at my house?”

The man in front backed up but didn’t back down, keeping his sword steady like he knew how to use it. Qastael noted he wore clothing of a higher quality than those she had seen in town, more at home in one of the courts back east with lace, velvets, a thick mane of blond hair and no hat. From her angle she couldn’t see his face, but he sounded indignant and nasally. “How dare ya accuse me of anythin’, insect! I own this town! My mines are the only reason desperate cucks pay to custom any of yer monster dollies in the first place. So either ya fetch my wife out here where we enact a bit o’ justice fer treatin’ me wrong, or we board up yer doors an’ burn yer sin factory to the ground!”

The arachne woman hesitated, not moving but neither replying. Qastael noted women of various common races peeking and peering through windows or further inside the entryway. A tension was in the air, ratcheting as the mob steadied hands on weapons, a few taking aim. Dry winds stirred the dry dirt, heralding a kind of silence no one wanted to break. Until, that is, the lips on the arachne woman firmed in a hard line and she glared eight eyes down on the belligerent man, her voice a loud whisper.

“Thexi ain’t your wife anymore,” she said, her mouth grinning abnormally wide as fangs descended into place and pumped full of dark venom. “Now I suggest…”

“Stop! Wait! Don’t hurt them, Gowk!”

A girl not much past puberty ran out of the house, panting as she held up burlesque styled white-laced dancing skirts hiding nothing of the black-laced undergarments. Skirts matched with a black and white striped corset, though the younger girl didn’t fill it nearly as much or as well as the arachne she halted next to in the street, gasping for air from a short run. Qastael wasn’t much of an expert in the common races, but the girl appeared shorter and more plump than many of the women observed throughout town, especially in the hips and posterior. Also, not human, which surprised Qastael if this was the girl in the center of all this drama. One of the rabbit or hare races, from the tips of her long ears, past legomorph nose and whiskers, down to oversized pawed feet meant for hopping rather than walking, she was covered in a splotchy mix of plush fur either pastel green or pastel pink. Overall, her melodic soprano voice fit nicely with the rest of her into an adorable bundle of cute trying very hard to intimate lacking lusciousness.

Better than a theatre troop, Qastael thought, wanting to know what happens next.

“Glad ya decided ta show yer gutless, faithless whore face, Thexi,” Gowk said, gesturing grandly to the mob around him, a few of the sycophants chuckling. “Bad enough ya spread yer legs when ya lived under my roof, now ya clap uglies fer a few silvers in a shack.”

“You cheated on me and left me with nothing!” Thexi said, showing a bit of backbone even as the rest of her body quivered. “You divorced me when I did nothing wrong! What else was I—”

*slap!*

“Liar!” Gowk screeched, shaking his open hand from backhanding Thexi’s cheek, the other hand raising his sword high faster than either the arachne or stumbling Thexi could react. “Nobody does this to me! Nobo—”

*SLAP!!*

Qastael’s tail whipped around, sending the irritating dandy tumbling thirty feet into the air, flailing wildly until he smashed serendipitously through a saloon’s window further down the street. His sword - spinning straight into the air - fell and landed point first, quivering in the dirt before the towering Qastael placing herself between mob and women. Unfurling four working wings and flapping them sharply directly into the cowering men, many fell off their boots in pure terror. One managed to fire a crossbow bolt, bouncing uselessly off her uninjured side as she stretched her head overtop of them all.

“Ya see, in this world there are two kinds of people,” Qastael growled, affecting the local vernacular while searching for the right Breath inside her body, blue flames licking up and out the sides of her maw. Huffing out a cloud of conflagration, heat washed over the cul-de-sac like an airborne inferno as she lowered onto her haunches and bared all her fangs, intentions clear. “Those who breath fire, and those who get eaten.”

“D-d-d-dragon!” one of the men squealed, falling over himself as he and the rest scrambled and screamed in their efforts to flee certain calamity.

Qastael’s eye twitched, breaking the tableau as she lost her cool. “Not a dragon!” Qastael insisted irritably, snapping down on the idiot who stuttered the slur but too slow (not to kill him, just nip off an arm or something), loosing him in the scattered rush. The hazard from using her Breath simultaneously choked her throat with blood, a hard strain for her to keep from spilling carnage while suppressing coughs unsuccessfully. “…cgh!…stupid inbred termites, do I look like a fat, brainless lizard flapping…cgh! hhhck!…I am clearly a Kuri’ma, from the divine ancestry of…ggrrgh!…come back, ya gutless yokel…!”

Glugulating past her uvula, Qastael hacked out a glob of blood despite efforts otherwise, slumping as her arms shook to keep upright. Her side burned more than earlier that day, infection sapping the rest of her strength when citrine eyes rolled up and she crashed to the ground, unconscious.