Franclan and Robard sat in their tattered shack of a house. It consisted of only a single room which contained two cots crammed in the back corners and a crumbling fireplace centered on the opposite end. An outhouse in desperate need of repair leaned precariously against the house. Their shack was run-down, even by the meager standards of their village. Plath was a poor, sad place on the outskirts of the great city of Caldrith. It was home to only a few hundred poor souls, and it seemed that anyone who could be something at all would move away never to return. But this was their home, and their village, and their circumstance.
Winter had arrived in full force and snow blew through the gaps in the walls and the wind threatened to topple the entire thing. The so-called village wise man predicted that it wouldn’t arrive for three more weeks, but here it was, waiting for no one. Caught without much fuel for the fire and not inclined to labor, Franclan and his inept sidekick found themselves in a predicament.
Franclan sighed and looked at the meager fire. “We need to find some fuel for the fire, I don’t think the storm will subside until the morning.”
Robard looked out the window. “We are surrounded by trees, can we use those?”
Franclan rolled his eyes. “It has to be cut, split and seasoned, dummy. Stand up.”
Robard hesitated. “Why? What do you have in mind?”
“Just stand up for a second, dummy.”
As soon as Robard stood up, Franclan promptly grabbed the stool he was sitting on and tossed it into the dwindling fire.
Robard looked horrified as his old, dry stool quickly caught fire: “What the hell Frac?! That was my stool and I’ve had it for two decades!”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Asshole” Robard muttered under his breath, looking away to avoid Franclan's uncaring gaze.
Franclan sat back down in his chair, shifting his shoulders back and forth to adjust comfortably. “Well it’s mostly your fault that we’re in this situation to begin with. Your stool was a necessary sacrifice.”
This was untrue, however, Robard accepted his new circumstance and sat on the floor.
A trusty, solid stool with two decades of use on it. ‘Necessary sacrifice’ my ass. Robard Thought
Franclan grinned “Look on the bright side. Thanks to me we have 4 pounds of delicious sausage. You should be grateful.”
“Thanks to Hogbert and his swineherd, you mean. And that’s uncooked sausage, might I add.”
Franclan looked slightly offended. “Well I still had to steal it. You think that was easy? All I needed you to do was gather enough wood for us to be able to cook it.”
Robard glared at the fire as the last of his stool was devoured. “The stool is already burned up, Frac. Why don’t you toss your chair into the fire? Then we would be warm and full of sausages.”
Franclan looked at Robard like he said something absurd. “I’m not gonna throw my chair into the fire, then I’d have to sit on the ground looking like an idiot. Besides, I just got this last week. Sometimes you say really dumb shit, Robard.”
Robard leaned forward and, using his steel rat-catching tongs, gently poked the fire as if it would somehow make it burn longer or hotter. It did not.
Franclan leaned back in his chair: “Ok dummy, I know you aren’t going to like it but we need to do some rat catching to earn firewood. Just enough to make it through the evening and into tomorrow, then we can figure something else out.”
Robard sighed. “Gee Franc, you know I hate doing door-to-door rat catching. And in this weather? These stingy bastards probably won’t even open their doors for us.”
“This is the best rat-catching weather there is, cause it’s cold as shit out there and all the rats are trying to get warm. Stop being lazy, grab your tongs, bundle up, and let’s go”.