A Second Chair

[Dove Brown]

20 Winter 515

It took a few weeks before Dove managed to find enough spare bells at once to visit the Carpentry, but she didn't forget what Ferrin's visit had taught her. Now she noticed how little she had, how empty it was. It hadn't mattered before then. It had just been her, and she needed so little... She saved her mizas carefully, almost miserly. She still wasn't used to having enough to live on, let alone enough for extras, but with the supplies she had bought back in Fall, the single chest she had was getting cluttered and crowded. The final straw was when she reached for crockery and nicked her finger on a knife that wasn't where she thought it had been. "Shyke!" she muttered, and stuck her finger in her mouth before it could drip on her clothes.

The taste of blood curdled on her tongue and she blinked back the memories of the riot and the smell and taste of blood in the air. Pulling her finger out, she looked it over, but it didn't seem to need a bandage, so she left it, and used her other hand to extract the bowl she was after. She set it on the table and went back to the soup she was making. The dried peas were almost cooked through now. She chopped chives, bouncing the knife off the table to get them finer, then added a pinch of ground cumin and grated the edge off some ginger with her knife. The seasoning went into the soup. She cracked an egg on the edge of the pot, emptied the contents into the soup to thicken it, and stirred vigorously until the egg dissolved into flecks of white in the yellowish soup, and the soup itself turned from thin to gloopy. She swung the pot off the fire and dished herself up a bowl. As she ate, she looked around the inside of the cottage, working out what she most needed, and where to put it.

[Dove Brown]

She mostly needed more storage, she decided. Somewhere to keep the knives and forks where they wouldn't stick into her, somewhere to keep clothes and blankets away from the food (and the insects the food attracted) once the weather warmed. And another chair. Maybe two. If she had another visitor, she didn't want to be shamed again by not having anywhere for them to sit. She shoveled the last of the bowl of soup down her throat, wiped the bowl clean, and set it aside to dry.

New chest - by the bed. Old chest - moved over to the hearth wall, perhaps. Chairs by the table, of course. Maybe some shelves against one of the other walls... She sketched it out in her mind's eye, moving around the cottage to pace off sizes and gaps. Finally satisfied, she pulled on her boots and cloak, counted out what coins she could afford to spend on this, and went out to the Carpentry.

Sawdust stirred around her feet as she ventured inside, and she smelled it - a gentle scent in the back of her nose - and a tang of wax and oil. Theobold, the owner, looked up from sanding a table top smooth and nodded to her. She returned the nod and he went cheerfully back to his work as she looked around. The furniture here was well-made but plain, designed for functionality rather than looks, as everything in Mithryn was. Dove found a blanket chest that smelled sweetly of cedar and would keep the moths away, then a pair of golden pine chairs with slab-like backs. A smaller box with interior compartments for different kinds of knives caught her eye and she found the pricked finger creeping back to her mouth. She pulled it away and laid her hand on a set of darker brown shelves.

She eyed the stuffed furniture - arm chairs and pillows and couches - with a wistful eye, but they were well out of her ability to afford. "These, please," she said, indicating chest, chairs, box, and shelves. "To be delivered. How much?"

[Dove Brown]

Theobold put down a cloth full of sand and came to look. "The chairs are 7 sm a piece," he said, running his hands over them, "And that set of shelves is 5 sm. The others are more." He eyed her farmer's clothing and weathered face, clearly pegging her as a Mithryn resident, but unlike in the Bazaar up at Syliras, that didn't go against her. "Call it 1 gm for the large on and 2 gm for the small. Small is more complex and takes more time. And since you're resident here - you are aren't you?" He waited until she nodded in assurance and acknowledgement, then went on, "delivery won't be far or much. Call it 1 sm for time and effort, they'll need a cart."

Dove added up the costs as he spoke them, and pulled out the 5 gold mizas required. She tried not to wince over the delivery cost, but it was needed. She didn't haggle over it for once. Not that she had enough knowledge to haggle properly anyway. "Here, I think this is right."

He took the coins from her with a smile, tied tags onto her new furniture, and marked them with Dove's name so that they wouldn't get sold a second time. "Pleasure doing business with you, ma'am. Now where exactly is your cottage in the Commons?"

Dove grinned as he treated her like any other customer with money to spend and explained where her cottage was in the tightly packed collection known as the Commons. Then she slipped out again and ran all the way home to make sure everything was perfectly tidy when the delivery arrived.

Receipt1 shelf set, average - 5 sm
2 chairs, average - 14 sm
1 blanket chest, average - 1 gm
1 knife and cutlery box - 2 gm
1 delivery fee - 1 sm

Total paid - 5 gm

[Samuel Longwell]

Grading Complete Please edit your grade request thread so that it's obvious that it's been graded. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions/problems with your grade. Name: Dove XP Award: Medicine 1 Cooking 1 Planning 1 Organisation 1 Observation 1 Socialisation 1 Mathematics 1 Lore: Loose knives cause injuries Wishing for stuffed furniture Notes: Enjoy your grade!