Rowena sat on the wooden stool behind the counter, pouring over the handwritten receipts. Though her store was fairly small and cramped and the wooden stool was rickety and hard, she basked in the comfortable familiarity of the setting.
She was never happier than here, quietly tallying up the day’s sales, the story of the day neatly laid out in front of her to be organized, analyzed, and packed away in case they ever needed to be examined again.
They never did, though. Tunehlan was a quiet town, with hardly any major Events, not even a dragon attack, for as long as Rowena could remember in her nearly sixteen years. Well– she supposed even she could hardly be expected to remember anything from her first three years of life. So in at least thirteen years, then.
She gathered up the receipts, confident that they’d been entered into the ledger perfectly in her neat, small handwriting, and shuffled them together with precise movements of her delicate hands before stowing them and the ledger in the large lockbox underneath the counter. It was nearly the end of the month, and the tidy receipts were near to bursting. Before it came to that, though, the whole thing would be transferred into long term storage.
“All done?” Her father Tomas’ booming voice called down from the upstairs where the family lived. “Ouch!”
Rowena turned and looked up to see her younger brother Tommie clinging to his father’s back, his mousy brown hair sticking up awkwardly as he grappled for a better grip. She sighed, feeling that her respite was coming to an end.
“All done,” she said with a quiet nod, a small smile settling on her face despite the intrusion.
“That’s my best assistant– whooops–” Tomas grinned broadly as he swung Tommie over his shoulder, catching him under the arms just before he hit the smooth wood of the landing.
Rowena felt a slight bit of annoyance at being called an assistant when, in reality, she ran the entire shop, but then again, it hardly mattered what anyone called her. Facts were facts. She knew what she did for their family– and she was sure her father did, deep down, and that was enough for her.
“RORO!” Tommie squealed, reaching down for his big sister.
“Ro! Have you seen my blue dress?” Her younger sister Calla’s voice was as forceful as their father’s, though pitched higher.
Rowena caught her father’s gaze for a moment and he shrugged his massive shoulders.
She let out a sharp breath, pursing her lips tightly before calling out in a surprisingly loud and sharp voice considering her slight frame, “NO. And if you want to ask for my help, you can ask me in a civilized tone of voice.”
“Ro!” her sister stormed out of the back room with a towel clenched around her body. She was fifteen, ten months younger than Rowena, but was already taller and fuller than her older sister, resembling much more their father’s WARRIOR side of the family.
“Calla,” Tomas started, still wrestling with his five year old son, who was straining towards the stairs to the shop, “Leave Ro alone. She– she still has to finish the accounting for the day.”
Rowena looked gratefully at her father and he winked.
Calla stomped her foot but turned to go. “Fine. Green matches my eyes better, anyway!”
“Come on, goblin,” Tomas snatched the back of Tommie’s roughspun shirt affectionately. “Let’s let your sister finish up.”
“I’ll say goodnight to you before bed, Tommie,” Rowena called up. Her little brother was a handful; he had been since the day he’d come into this world and her mother had left it. She’d always done her best by him, but–
She just needed a few more minutes of quiet.
Her father whispered a few words, and Rowena knew that he was using one of his Abilities to calm his son down, probably Calm Child or Foster Understanding, both abilities that he had begrudgingly learned in the wake of his beloved wife’s death. She frowned slightly. Her parents had never used Abilities on their children before, despite both having, of course, achieved the Parent Subclass when she was born.
Her father preferred, he had always said, to parent the ‘natural’ way, though the System had been in place for hundreds and hundreds of years so, as far as Rowena was concerned, it may as well have been natural. Her mother had also declined to build up her Skills in that Subclass, though Rowena believed that that was more out of a desire to focus her leveling on her career Subclass rather than anything else. OTHER - Merchant, of course, Rowena thought with pride. Not just a simple Shopkeeper like most small towns had. A Merchant. Just like she would be.
She felt a warm buzzing in her cheekbones– not unlike that time she’d accidentally drunk the fermented rather than fresh cider– as she thought of it, letting her chin fall into her cupped hands as she stared into nothingness, daydreaming about the Selection process that would begin in two day’s time.
She couldn’t wait to finally walk up to the Heartstone, make her choice, and receive the two Sigils identical to her mother’s. She’d wear them with pride, no matter if it was only one of the Selections lumped under that rather less than glamorous Class of OTHER.
While most young people dreamed of becoming either a WARRIOR or a MAGIC USER (or a ROGUE, though that was usually just to anger their parents), the fact was that almost everyone ended up too anxious to select anything but one of the myriad OTHER options– Servant, Innkeeper, Smith, Cobbler, etc-- often following in a parent’s footsteps.
After all, you couldn’t change your Class once selected, not ever. Should a WARRIOR - Soldier decide he or she no longer felt the pull to die for their town or Kingdom, they were welcome to start a new profession… just without the perks and abilities that came along with the Class, so they usually didn’t do as well as those with the Class assigned. So most kids just ended up going with the safe option.
There was an old ROGUE of some sort who ran an inn in town, Rowena knew. She didn’t listen to gossip and, being a local, had no need of an inn, but stories of the old man, Leo, and his ramshackle and suspect accommodations had reached even her ears. And of course, her own father was a retired WARRIOR - Soldier who’d managed alright once he’d found his Merchant bride. It had never made him very helpful in the shop, however.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
As she sat deep in thought, enjoying the quiet, the front door creaked open, letting a gust of wind rush through the little shop.
The bell didn’t ring, she thought in confusion, even as she looked up and saw the stranger saunter in.
She stared for a moment, lips slightly ajar before she gathered herself. “We’re closed,” she said in a thin but firm voice.
“That’s alright.”
Rowena couldn’t quite make sense of the man who stood before her. He wore fairly standard, if minimal, adventuring clothes– tights, tunic, belt, cloak– though they seemed made of finer materials than Rowena offered even for her most well-to-do customers in Tunehlan. She didn’t recognize what it was, only that it was dyed dark as the night sky and seemed to move noiselessly in the breeze. Because of this, Rowena would have presumed that the man was some kind of ROGUE, and her throat caught, but something about him didn’t add up. He seemed imbued with an inner magnetism that didn’t seem like it would have stood a sneaking thief in good stead– he almost twinkled with mockery or arrogance, like a cold, bright star.
Rowena swallowed hard and sat up perfectly straight on her stool, glad that she was safely behind the counter. “No, it’s not,” she managed to retort. “I can’t do business after close of day.”
“Not even for a new friend?” The man said hopefully, taking a few more steps into the shop.
“Is that what you are?” She said with as much force as she could manage. Her heart began to pound, though she logically knew that if this man had entered the shop with genuine ill will, her father upstairs would have been notified by his Detect Threat Ability, one of the few benefits of having a Soldier class in this sleepy town. “Then why won’t you show me yourself?”
The man looked confused for a moment, and then laughed. “Do you still do that here? Gods, this really is a quaint little town.”
Rowena said nothing. She held her hands clenched tightly in her lap.
With a flourish, he flung back his cloak and exposed his left arm, holding it upright so that she could see the inside of the wrist. He wore one of the specially designed wraps that covered the entire inner arm where his Sigils could be found, and tugged it down slightly so she could see the MAGIC USER emblem emblazoned on his wrist just below the heel of his palm.
“Hail!” he said rather dramatically, clenching his fist and pumping in the air slightly.
Not a ROGUE, she thought with a sigh of relief and stood, leaning forward onto the counter. “That doesn’t tell me much. Why do you keep the rest of your arm covered?” It wasn’t unusual, exactly, as plenty of people liked to keep their Subclasses private (no sense in letting others see them in the event that, say, your Spouse or beloved hobby’s Sigils were less than well-developed), but for a stranger in a new town it was considered the height of suspicion to keep such things under wraps.
The stranger cocked his head and held his hands palm up in a shrug. “Well, you haven’t told me anything about yourself.”
“I’m not the one in question, here!” Rowena said hotly, feeling her cheeks begin to flush. She inadvertently looked down at her naked wrist and the stranger followed her gaze.
“Ahhh,” he said with a teasing tsk. “I thought you looked young. Pretty, but young. Can you please send for your employer? Parent? Whoever? It is rather important.”
Rowena’s face burned as she met his green eyes and noticed the hazel flecks inside of them. The man was barely that– he couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old despite the confident aura he projected. I’m nearly sixteen! she thought, and for some reason that seemed to matter to her as it usually didn’t. “As I said, the shop is closed. Come back tomorrow.”
A flicker of true frustration seemed to pass through his face, but it was almost immediately replaced with the mocking geniality she was beginning to grow used to.
“Alright, alright,” he said, holding his hands up as he backed toward the door. “You win.”
He hadn’t quite reached the door when it swung open again. This time, Rowena noted, the bell rang out as usual.
“Sorry, sorry! We’re going to be late again, I know, and it’s my fault. I don’t know why we have to go to these meetings anyway,” Kieran, her oldest friend, stopped his rambling short as he nearly ran into the stranger. “Who are you?”
“A friendly lot, aren’t you Tunehlans?” the man said, turning to face the newcomer. “Can you just tell me where the nearest inn can be found?”
Kieran stared at the man mischievously. He flashed a look at Rowena and she saw the corner of his mouth twitch. “Take a right out the door, first right, six streets down, take a left, four streets down. The Jellied Eel. Ask for Leo.”
“Thanks, lad.” And with that, the mysterious stranger swept out of the shop as silently as he’d come in, bypassing the surprised looking Kieran.
“Ro? What the–” Kieran stared after the man, then shook his head. “No, tell me on the way. Martha will blame me if we’re late again.”
“As well she should,” Rowena said absentmindedly.
She ran her hands along her hair, which was plastered back against her head in a tight, low bun so that not a single strand of the thin, blonde length got in her way. A sensible hairstyle for a shopkeeper, yes, but one that made her already somewhat prominent ears seem to stick out even further. She frowned impatiently. Why should she begin to think about her hairstyle right now?
“That wasn’t very nice of you to send that man to Leo’s,” she added. “Artemisia will be furious if she finds out. They haven’t had many guests in a while.”
“Rowena? I thought I heard–” Calla came out to the landing once more wearing her green dress, her own blonde hair flowing in locks down her shoulders. In her arms she held Tommie, who seemed tuckered out by his earlier antics. “Oh, it’s you.”
Kieran gave Calla an exaggerated bow. He had black curls but kept them cropped almost bald and dark freckles speckled his already dusky complexion. “Milady. Sorry I’m not the handsome stranger–”
“What handsome stranger?” Calla said with delight, her green eyes lighting up. She shifted Tommie to her other hip uncomfortably.
“Nothing,” Rowena snapped. “We have to go. Make sure Tommie gets a good, long night’s sleep tonight, okay? You know how he likes to wander.”
Calla sat down on the top stair with a huff, cradling the little boy. “Fine. But I don’t see why I can’t come with you.”
“You won’t be sixteen until next year’s Selection,” Kieran pointed out. He came up to the counter and grabbed a sweet out of the jar. “Put it on my tab.”
Rowena gave a hmph, and reached down to double check that the Lockbox was closed before smoothing her skirt and walking to the front of the store.
“I know, but I may as well be turning sixteen now,” Calla said as she examined her perfectly painted fingernails and gave Tommie a little kiss on the top of his head. Tommie, in turn, stirred slightly. “Don’t they give special dispensation for tragic cases? A year early for orphans?”
Rowena turned with a snap and shook her head. “You’re hardly an orphan.”
“Plus,” Kieran added, “You get a whole ‘nother year to think about what you’re going to choose, and build up your resistance to Martha’s lectures on familial duty and whatnot. Go be a circus performer or something.”
“Why do you even bother going?” Calla said in a tone that Rowena could just tell was accompanied by an eyeroll. “You’ve known your boring Class since you could first toddle your way to the countertop!”
“And I’m proud of it!” Rowena said in reply, turning to open the door. With each reassuring clang of the bell, she felt further away from the strange interaction, as though it may just have been a dream.
“It’s more moral support for me, I think,” Kieran said ruefully.
Rowena peeked her head outside and looked around. All normal. Still– “We’re off. Calla– lock the door behind us, okay?”