4 – Local Yokels

When I first arrived at the village, making my way up to the Iudex’s estate, I had taken the time to examine the wooden signs that loomed over the stores and businesses of Tiode. Though they were all written in the eastern language, the Babel stone translated them for me. I only had to stare at the text for a brief period before the magic kicked in, rewriting and shaping the words into something I could read.

I noted a blacksmith, a general goods store, a dye shop, a tanner, a pawnbroker, a butcher, a fishmonger, and a tavern. All things one would find in a small village out west.

They even had a temple on the eastern edge of the building, distinct for the bell tower off to one side and the red tiles of its roof. The gods back home had never done me much good, and I doubted the gods of Tsukio would change things for me.

The pawn shop was my first stop, the old woman behind the counter watching me with eyes that pointed off in different directions. She didn’t have a large amount of money, nor could she buy anything she did not think herself capable of reselling, but I was still able to get some extra coinage by giving her a pair of pearls from the depths of my bag.

I’d have to make it to a city if I wanted to make real money off pawning goods, and she’d said as much to me herself.

“Where’s the nearest city to here?” I’d asked the old woman as I counted my coins.

“You speak our tongue like a drunkard,” she’d said, sighing and shaking her head.

I frowned at her. “Not what I asked.” And again I had to remind myself that choking people for displeasing me was not an appropriate course of action.

“Low Moon would be the nearest to our village, but it is a journey of several days. And risky, with bandits and wolves being rife these days.” She had pulled an ornate pipe from her robe, filled it with crushed black herbs, lit it up, and stood blowing thin streams of dark smoke from her nostrils while she puffed upon it. “I ain’t a cartographer. The goods store might have a map for sale, one with the roads and such on it. But that’s on you if you are interested.”

I’d left her, then, and went down the village’s main road toward the general store. I had business there, after all, even without factoring interest in a map.

The wooden door creaked as I pushed my way inside, and my eyes quickly took in the abundance of… stuff on display. The shelves that flanked me on either side were laden with goods. Herbs in mason jars, tinned goods, alchemical reagents in corked bottles, bags of dried meat.

This place didn’t have everything, obviously, but it had more than I would have thought from outside. My gaze drifted to the counter at the back of the store, where a young woman sat leafing through a leatherbound book.

She looked up, briefly, at my approach… then, seeing me, she did a double take and nearly dropped the book entirely from her fumbling hands. “Great Goddess, there really is a giant westerner roaming about!” she gasped, as if she had just seen a mythical creature walk through the door.

I frowned, ducking under the doorway and making my way inside. “I’m not that giant.”

“Compared to the ones I have seen and known? You’re something else!”

She must have been in her late teens, by my reckoning, with an almond-shaped face and dark brown hair worn in a loose bun. She was short and slim, and her emerald eyes gleamed with mirth.

“This your shop? You seem a touch young to be a merchant,” I said.

She smiled at me, a twinkle of mischief in her eyes. “This shop… belongs to my father.” There was no shimmer from the Babel stone, to my shock. She had spoken those words in heavily accented Yvigrosian.

“You… know my language?”

The girl shrugged at me. “A little,” she said, returning to her native tongue. “Father has had dealings with westerners over the years, usually those who sell goods in our port, I have picked up words and phrases from them. I am Mikan. I had heard a westerner bought land outside the village, but I did not think such a thing to ever happen.”

I grunted, glancing over my shoulder. “Judging by the looks I have been getting, I’m sure you’re not the only one,” I said.

Mikan chuckled, resting her hands on the varnished wood of her counter. “Don’t take it too personally. An outsider, and a foreigner at that, moving in is just… a surprise to people. I’m sure people will get used to you if you don’t do anything to offend them.”

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Easier said than done, by my reckoning.

“I’m Eamon,” I said. “I was hoping to buy a map, one that shows the roads over to this Low Moon place I’ve heard about. And… I was wondering if you could direct me to the nearest stone mason and carpenter.”

“I suppose a house doesn’t just sprout from the ground,” Mikan teased. I watched as she stood upon a stool, reaching for a shelf behind her. Several scrolls were upon it, and she browsed a few of them before seeming to find the proper one.

I leaned in for a look, noting the roads drawn in fine dark ink. Low Moon was many leagues northward, passing a few other small settlements, distinct on the map for its size. And, further north still, there seemed an even larger city called High Moon.

“This is good quality,” I murmured.

Mikan grinned broadly, giving a glimpse at a small gap in her front teeth. “We know a good cartographer.” I slid a few coins over the counter and folded the sturdy canvas into my satchel. I could make it to Low Moon quick enough on foot.

“So… you’re a cultivator, right?” Mikan asked.

I raised a brow at her, my mouth set in a frown. “Cultivator?” Now that was a new one to me.

Mikan glanced to the ceiling, as if in thought, then she snapped her fingers. “Wizard! That’s the term!”