Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
I turned for the work shed. As I crossed the threshold, I heard muttering coming from the supply closet. Clearly Raz was still in there, now calming down. Hopefully he hadn’t broken much.
I set about picking the burnt flower petal apart. That done, I crushed it with a pestle and mortar. Here again the fragrant aromas drifted up, so pleasant. I wanted this smell for my cottage. Maybe to transform it into a perfume. A candle, even . . .
Yeah, right. Granny would never let me waste my time on something like that. Candles didn’t bring in the kind of gold my product did, and if I was in the work shed, I needed to be making sellable products. Those were the rules.
I wondered if I could make candles at home . . .
I poured the crushed petal into a jar to keep it safe, helping the last remnants in with my fingers. Once it was done and lidded, ready for me to work with it tomorrow, I sat back and finished my tea.
“It’s got my leg!” Raz screeched. “Help me, it’s eating my leg!”
“Fuck’s sake,” I murmured. “You took way too much. Way too much.” Then louder. “The beast will sleep when you do! Show it how to sleep!”
I rubbed an itchy nose, scenting the Moonfire Lily again. My fingers smelled a little too much like it, actually, like pollen when all the flowers were in bloom.
My sneeze quieted Raz for some reason. Small miracles.
As I finished my tea and set my cup down, I hauled myself up. Raz was in charge of taking the nightly satchel to Granny when she was in town, a trip she made every few months or so. Given he was not fit to exist outside of that closet, let alone interact with his boss and benefactor, that left me. If it didn’t mean I’d get to see and chat with Granny, I’d have been severely annoyed.
I tidied everything up before stopping by the unused front workstation. It would’ve been nice if we could’ve found someone to occupy this space and help me with the creations, but sadly no one else showed an affinity for the technical aspect of the job. Not even Raz. He was primarily the plant guy. He had a few helpers in the garden and we both had a few runners for supplies, but otherwise the duty to make the product mostly fell to me.
So far, that was fine. I was keeping up, albeit barely. Hopefully orders didn’t continue to increase. I was already working every day, often sun up to sundown. Given I didn’t have family and no one would suffer my friendship, I didn’t mind. It gave me something to do. Besides, I owed Granny everything. I’d reach for the moon if she needed me to. But if orders continued to increase, I knew eventually there just wouldn’t be enough time in the day. At that point, I’d need to bring in some help. I’d have no choice.
A fern-green, velvet sack waited on top of the workstation, tied with a pull-string at the top. I pulled it open and filled it with four new products, two of which I’d adjusted from the original version for a better experience. That brought our total to twenty products, including everything from a sleep aid to a relaxant to the fun-time hallucination creation.
Not all of these were explicitly against the laws of the land. The sleep aid, for example, rivaled something the dragon kingdom sold. Mine worked better. The relaxant? The faerie product couldn’t hold a candle to it, try as they might. Those really could’ve sold in the more medicinal markets. The other stuff? Well, those were the reason Granny sold everything through the shadow markets. Guilt by association, I guess.
It was fine. Even the unlawful stuff wasn’t expressly dangerous or life-threatening. Not like some of the other items in the shadow markets. None of my product’s effects would linger after the drug had worn off . . . except for maybe a questionable life change like Herold becoming “Razorfang.” For the nightmare journeys there was the “way out” I’d devised. I’d told Granny to pass that on to everyone who sold the product, and for them to pass it on to anyone who bought it. My conscience was clear. I didn’t lose any sleep at night over being a criminal. And if I did? Sleep-aid!
“My life is definitely not a fairy tale,” I murmured, picking up the velvet pack.
Under it, a scrap of paper held Raz’s handwritten scrawl: “Don’t veer off the path.”
My brow lowered as I read it again.
My eye started to twitch.
“Very funny, Raz,” I said, not caring if I excited the little beasties in his brain again. “Very fucking funny. It was only the one time, by the way.” A thud sounded against the wall in the closet. “Just the one time and everyone is a funny guy, huh? No one is going to let me forget it. You get stuffed in a closet, for fuck’s sake, and this is the thing everyone remembers?”