SARAH

It was Sarah waiting for Grandmother when she came down for breakfast the next day. There was a stack of books on the table in front of her. She and her sister worked hard into the night getting them ready for this review. Sarah was a better artist than Ellen, so she went through all the images and updated them. She drew a new image for tailoring among other things. She’d remember the wind symbol in the inscriptions that signified the throwing finish move. Together the two of them tried to remember as many of those symbols as they could. They defined the symbols in the section of end symbols and then repeated the symbol on each of the spell ribbon pages.

Her stack of books included the two Ellen showed Grandmother yesterday. It also included books on utility spells, warrior skills and enchanting. There was a copy of their book of spells, which held all the ribbons. Also in the stack was the book that Sarah was the most proud of, the map book. Sarah’s world map was rolled up to the side.

“Good morning, Sarah,” Grandmother said as she settled down into her chair at the table. “I see you have brought me more books to look at. Have you and your sister rented a shop yet?” Sarah was glad Ellen was in such a rush to get the shop yesterday.

“Yes, we have,” Sarah replied. “It’s the one between the butcher and Alex’s shop. I think it will work out very well.”

“That is good news,” Grandmother responded. Only now did she reach out to take the first book off the stack. “I will have to tour it after breakfast.”

“Great!” Sarah said enthusiastically. “I can tell you our ideas for our displays.”

The first book on the stack was the spinning book. All the changes were done except the date. As Grandmother paused on the title page, Sarah asked, “We weren’t certain of the date. Is it forty eight years since landing or forty nine?”

“Forty nine,” Grandmother replied. She also gave the earth date. Sarah pulled the next book off the stack and opened it to the title page. She wrote down under the author’s name: year 49 after landing, Earth year 2972. She closed the book and put it back on the stack. “This part is different,” Grandmother observed. Sarah glanced over. She saw that Grandmother was on the page that said how to color the finished thread. “I don’t remember this reference to white yesterday.”

“I went out with Alex yesterday and found a spool of white thread. We tested it and with that thread as a starter, you can dye more. We wove cloth from the white thread and were able to dye more cloth white with it as a starter,” Sarah responded. “I also found a utility tool that binds vellum into notebooks,” Sarah continued excitedly. “It uses thread to do it. That’s where I found the white thread.”

“Very good,” Grandmother said, clearly impressed. “You should consider selling sets of colors. You could bundle seven spools of thread together or seven swatches of fabric, one of each color and sell them as a package.“

“That is a good idea,” Sarah said. She pulled out her diary and made a note in it. “We will need a lot of spools,” she mumbled.

“I have some in my inventory you can buy. You can pay me when they sell,” Grandmother said.

“That would be great,” Sarah said. “How much do you want for them?”

“How about this, if you sell them alone, I want half the sale price. If you sell them bundled with something else, like the thread, or a book, I want a quarter.”

“What if we bundle them with multiple things. Like thread and a book?” Sarah asked.

“I still want a quarter,” Grandmother responded. “But if you sell multiples together I just want the quarter not multiples of it. So if you sell seven spools with thread and a book, I still just want a quarter, not seven quarters if you get the idea.”

“I do,” Sarah responded, “If we sold a loom, a spool, thread and a book and we got just the spool from you, you expect a quarter of the sale, so we are better off selling a spool we already own with that package.”

“Yes,” Grandmother responded. “That or get the loom from me too.”

“Do you have any looms?” Sarah asked, then shook herself. This was Grandmother. Of course she had looms. She was obsessed with gathering crafting gear, which Sarah always considered really weird since Grandmother didn’t craft anything herself. All she ever made was hand sewn leathers, no magic involved.

“Yes I do,” Grandmother said. “Of course they are in my inventory so they will have a little wear on them.”

“That’s ok,” Sarah responded. “We will just be clear to people that they do. Ellen showed me a way to keep inventory items in the shop separated by crafter. It is a way to give bonuses to the apprentice whose wares sell the best.”

Grandmother worked her way down the stack of books through the delivery of her breakfast. She asked a question or two after every book.

“Are you planning to sell this with these spells included?” Grandmother asked. She was holding the utility spells book. It included how to make the water in the sink hot and cold and the fact that it also changed the temperature in bathing pools. Also included was a third spell to set fire to a piece of wood.

“Yes,” Sarah responded. “Nearly everyone already knows the first two and we thought the third one is a great illustration of how starting and ending symbols are used.”

“Are you going to include a spell in this one?” Grandmother asked when she reached the end of the warrior book. There wasn’t any spell currently included.

“We want to,” Sarah responded, but we didn’t know which one. “All of them end up fixing a person’s magic color. We are afraid that if we put in the ice spear, future generations will all end up blues.”

“There is a light blade skill,” Grandmother responded. “I never use it. It is one of the few spells that only work with integrated weapons.” After literally years of writing down every spell Grandmother mentioned, Sarah was once again not surprised to find out she knew another one Sarah never heard of. “Do you have an integrated knife?” Sarah did. She pulled it from the sheath on her belt and handed it over to Grandmother.

“Let’s see, it has been a while.” Grandmother held the knife vertically. She slowly executed the start symbol for weapon imbuing. She followed that by a single squeeze of her hand. For a finish move she twisted the knife while keeping it vertical. The blade exploded in light, temporality blinding everyone in the room. Or Sarah hoped it was temporary as she blinked frantically trying to clear her vision.

“Sorry everyone,” Grandmother called out to the room. “I didn’t remember it being so bright.” Sarah supposed it wasn’t when Grandmother last cast it at tier one or two. Sarah’s vision finally returned when Grandmother was asking questions about the enchanting book. Luckily enchanting was her specialty and she could literally answer the questions blind.

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“I like how you have divided this book by type,” Grandmother commented after looking through the master spell book. They’d numbered all the pages and left blank pages in the center between spell types. “Although you probably will have to use different books for each type to have enough space.”

“We think so too,” Sarah conceded, “Although that bookbinding tool I found may be capable of binding larger books than what we find. We don’t have the loose vellum to really test that out. We are concentrating on using the supplies we have at the moment. We agreed to investigate making our own books after the store is open.”

“What is this?” Grandmother asked. She was on the last book in the pile, the map book.

“It's a map book,” Sarah said excitedly. “I pulled the map sections for each square from my map using Companion’s method.” She pulled out a blank sheet of vellum and copied one of the map sections from the book onto it. She handed the copied map to Grandmother. “You can load that up into your own map,” she said. “We tested it and it works.”

“Interesting,” Grandmother said as she fingered the vellum. She loaded it into her own map and the vellum went blank. Her map didn’t change, since she already visited the area, but it did recenter on the square in question. “Do you have a plan to inform your customers on what locations are available?”

Sarah unrolled her world map, showing the finished product to Grandmother. “I plan to put this on the wall. Do you think I should take off the selkie settlements?”

Grandmother looked at the world map. She remembered Sarah saying she was working on one. The map was hand drawn so it couldn’t be uploaded into Grandmother's integrated map, but it possessed the benefit of showing the location of settlements across many floors at once. The integrated map showed one floor at a time.

“Leave the settlements on the global map, but don’t sell the map sections,” Grandmother offered. Grandmother pushed her empty plate away, and closed the map book. “This is all really excellent work,” she told Sarah. “Pass that on to Ellen too. The illustrations are beautiful and the steps are logical and clear. Have you thought about how you are going to make copies for sale?”

“If you have a notebook with the same or larger number of pages, the copy spell works on the whole thing. We plan to keep a master of each book in the back,” Sarah explained.

“Excellent,” Grandmother said. “Let me run upstairs and grab a couple things. I will meet you at your shop for the tour.” Sarah agreed and gathered up her books and map as Grandmother headed to the stairs. She found her knife sitting on the table and realized she was blind when Grandmother returned it. She needed to record the spell in her diary before she forgot it. She was itching to learn it herself, but she was still working on mastering the tier three chained lightning. Hopefully Ellen wasn’t working on anything and could learn it. Sarah could see how helpful it would be. She remembered when they ended up in pipes with no light panels. Grandmother cast night vision on them, but a glowing knife would have lit the way just as easily.

Sarah carried her stuff over to the shop. She juggled the books and map a couple times before she managed to get the door open. She stepped inside to a transformed space. The sisters didn’t make it back down last night to see how the changes looked. Sarah dumped her pile of books on the counter and gazed around in wonder. She picked up her books and put them on a shelf, side by side with the spines looking out, just as Ellen described to her. Sarah could see how the writing on the spines made it so you could still identify the book. She looked at all the shelving. It didn’t seem like very much when it was on one wall behind the counter. Now with it wrapped around two walls and her small handful of books barely occupying one shelf it seemed an impossible task to fill them.

She reached out and turned the first book, leaning it against the wall behind the shelf so that the front of the book was easily seen and displayed. They could display them that way. She could put additional copies next to it, properly shelved. There were vertical risers every so often in the shelving which split the units into rectangles. She could put a new book in each square, spreading their stock out.

Sarah heard a tap and realized Grandmother walked up to the door behind her. Sarah rushed to the door before Grandmother could leave, since the windows were set to opaque Grandmother wouldn’t know Sarah was already here. She held the door open and ushered Grandmother inside. Grandmother was followed in by Companion who was carrying three full gathering bags. The bags were a pure violet color, so Sarah knew they didn’t belong to the selkie.

“Oh, I like this,” Grandmother said as she walked around the tiny space. She went through the door to the back room. Sarah followed. The back room seemed enormous after the tiny front room. Grandmother checked the room, even opening the door to the little restroom. “Companion,” Grandmother called. The selkie came wandering back from the show room. Sarah wondered what he was looking at out there. He still carried the violet bags. “You can dump those bags over here,” she said to the selkie. “I’m sure I can trust Sarah to do a count later.”

Companion said something about, “Unpaid lesser fish.” The notes bore a familiar tone to it. Sarah was pretty sure it was an idiom his people used that she heard before. Grandmother smiled. Sarah thought the old woman was just grateful the selkie wasn’t calling her a god again.

“Set me up as a supplier and I’ll transfer a couple of the larger starter items over from my inventory,” Grandmother said as she returned to the show room. Sarah followed Grandmother back to the front, but not before she saw Companion release the ties on the first bag. Small starter crafting tools sprang from the opening almost like they were under pressure.

Sarah setup Grandmother as a supplier and authorized user of the shop interface. She handed the interface over to her. She picked up her world map and started fiddling with it as she waited. She was wondering how she could get it to stick to the wall.

“Can I see?” Companion asked. He held the three empty bags in one hand. He set them down on the counter next to where Grandmother was searching through her inventory.

“Sure,” Sarah replied. She rolled out the map on the floor. Companion danced around the vellum, tilting his head to look at the drawing from different angles. Sarah suspected his vision was different from their own, that his eyes were more suited to seeing underwater.

“This here?” he asked, pointing one flipper at the dark black square representing Home Square. It was the farthest south of the human squares.

“Yes,” Sarah told him.

“Is this my selkie home?” Companion asked. Pointing to a square even farther south. It was twice the distance from Home Square than Home Square was from the northernmost human settlement.

“Yes,” Sarah said. She pointed to the other square shown in the south. “That is the selkie settlement we stumbled upon before we met you.” Companion made a clicking sound that wasn’t quite his fear sound.

“I didn’t know you found Fishtown,” Companion commented.

“I can take them off the map if you want,” Sarah said to her friend. “We were a bit surprised when we found the selkie settlement. It easily could have gone wrong. I am hoping that by letting people know your people are there, it will reduce the chances of an accident. Honestly I don’t think there is anyone in this settlement with the strength to cross bear country without Grandmother's help.” She pointed at the large region between Home Square and the Selkie settlements that Sarah labeled bear country. “Grandmother thinks maybe Control has placed the bears there to keep us apart.” Sarah didn’t mention Alex’s theory that they were there to increase tensions and cause a war between their two races.

“No,” Companion replied in his high voice, “bears are always there. They guard the transportation entrance. We selkie have a different entrance than you humans, but it is similar.” Companions explained. “I visited three other squares in my youth, you add?” Companion asked.

“If you are sure,” Sarah responded, “I am planning on putting this up on the wall.” Companion confirmed that he was certain. “Where are they?" Sarah asked, pulling her ever present stylus from her pocket.

Companion surprised her by going to the shelf. He pulled off the map book. He must have looked at the books earlier when Grandmother was surveying the back. He opened the book to the first blank page and copied a map section off of his own map and told Sarah the name of the settlement. He repeated this two more times before handing the book back to Sarah. Sarah wrote the names of the settlements on the page facing them. She noted they were home to selkies.

Grandmother finished up soon after that. She and Companion left the shop, heading in the direction of the inn. After they left Sarah noticed that Companion placed two spools, a spindle, a pair of shears and a strip of vellum with pins stuck through it next to the spinning book. They were arranged in a pattern that echoed the drawing on the front of the book, although the pins in the drawing were through a piece of cloth. Sarah loved it. She thought about setting up a table with a mixed display like this, she wondered why she didn’t consider putting one on the shelves. She packed up her books and map to head back up to the apartment, but she left the little tool display to show Ellen.