Very rough first draft. I hope you all enjoy!
Cole Emporium -The Family Business
An elderly old man, sitting on the edge of a wooden bench, leaned heavily on a well-worn walking stick. Firelight flickered in his steel blue eyes. Though his body may be old, his eyes and voice were still very lively. “Long time ago, in a land not too far from our humble establishment, our great-grandfather was a famous knight.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Do we have to hear this story again?”
“Yes!” her mother glared at her. “Knowing your family history is very important!” Chloe slumped down, placed her elbows on the dining table, propped her face with her hands and pretended to look interested. “Poor mother”, Chloe thought. “Such a fall from grace. She needs to feel that she made the right choice in marrying father.”
The old man, Marten Martlette, her mother’s uncle, cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention to him once again.
The story the old man tells begins to fades away into a blur. Chloe loses herself in her own thoughts of adventure and exotic people.
Chloe thought, “Who wants to inherit a store? Please! There is such a big world out there. Just because I am a girl doesn’t mean I can’t travel to strange lands and meet new people!” Chloe imagined what the Brudvir must look like in person; towering, strong, animal smelling humans. She envied her brother, Richard Jr., as he worked with father in meeting new trading partners, bringing in exotic goods from around the known world such as spices, furs from strange animals and weird and odd trinkets.
Richard Cole Sr. made a very good living – a wealthy merchant. Enough so that he could marry a low noble born girl, Marianne Martlette. Her family had title and land at one point but Marianne’s grandfather lost it all. Who knows how. The stories vary from gambling debts to a take over from an illegitimate child who won a casus belli and now rules those lands. All we know for a fact is that her parents moved away in disgrace and broke and stayed with distant cousins in these lands.
Chloe sighed as her great uncle Marten droned on about the killing some sort of winged lizard that breathed snow or fire or some such…
Now that Chloe was out of primary school, her days consisted of tending to the store. She cleaned and dusted the fine wood and glass cases that contained precious jewels, knives and expensive odds and ends. Some people, the “peasantry” as her mother would say, would just come in to see the “boxes with glass”, never mind the valuable and rare trinkets within.
Other chores were sweeping floors, beating the carpets once a week to rid them of the dust and dirt of the many feet that walked through the elegant store. She would count inventory every week with her mother. Sometimes, she would sit with her mother and learn how to manage the accounts, about money, lines of credit – the bookkeeping. Travis, her mother’s half-brother, would be responsible for collecting money past due on accounts. She often said her brother was only good for two things: beating up people and lifting heaving things. He was a wild creature her half-uncle, often sleeping in barns or in the pens with animals. “Touched in the head, that one is,” her great uncle Marten would say. Everyone in the family agreed he must be half Brudvir or wolf. No one knew who his father was and his mother, Marianne’s young sister, died giving birth to him.
The only excitement was when her father and brother came home. Oh the goods, animals, food and drink he would bring! And, the many stories! Stories of tall, fearsome men wearing feathers and chasing down big cats and only killing them with their bare hands! Bears as tall as hills and the color of snow. She could listen to her father for days. But, with his home coming came the work of cataloging, inventorying and pricing everything.
It wasn’t just organizing all the things that came in. You had to know what was in demand and what wasn’t. Was there a massive fire in the woods up north? Well the price of wood goes up. Are the miners not working because of restless spirits, the price of coal goes up. So how do you know all this? Richard Jr, always hung out at the taverns and anywhere the younger local working crowd would go for entertainment. Father would attend to civic events, hob-nob with lower nobles and was on the city council. Mother chipped in by being the head of the Charity House, which gave shelter and food to the poor and displaced. She also ran the “Women’s Circle”. Men thought they ran the town. “Let them think they do,” mother would say, “But it’s us women that put the right ideas in their heads.” From all these sources, one could piece together a picture of the ‘need for things’ and so, that was how prices were established at the Cole Emporium.
