Anup/Sourang 10 (Patreon)

The anup/sourang romance scenes were a clear winner in my earlier poll (Tori came in second, and both Kanti and Max tied for third) and I don't mind that at all. I love writing about Lunside and Ckkkrt.

So here's a short scene of the two. I've got a long weekend on my paws, so as soon as I post this, I'll go back to working on the next one.

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Lunsdie waved as he climbed from the truck. Sbarrie just stared with fists on her trim hips. “What in the name of the denouncer is that monstrosity?” she shouted.

“It’s my new stand!” said Lunsdie. “Isn’t it great?”

Sbarrie started to approach, but when she spotted the sourang, she shouted in alarm and raised her span. “Whoa! What the—”

“Oh! This is Ckkkrt,” he said. “She’s my new … um, mentor, I guess?”

“Oh, um, okay,” said Sbarrie, the insides of her ears still pale. “Does it talk?”

“I do,” said the sourang, ignoring Sbarrie in favor of the produce waiting for them.

“Ckkkrt, this is my best friend in the whole world, Sbarrie,” he explained.

“Hello, Sbarrie,” said the sourang before turning back to her apprentice. “Do you buy all your produce here, or do you visit multiple farms?”

“Just here,” he explained. “Sbarrie grows enough of a variety that I can fill my cart with one stop. She doesn’t sell meat or grain, but you need a special butcher’s license to sell meat in the market, and I don’t have one. Grain is more trouble than it’s worth. Only the vendor with the lowest price sells any grain, so it’s not a market I want to compete in.”

Ckkkrt turned and stared at him for a moment. “Very good, apprentice! I am proud of you for realizing that.” She patted him on the back. Sbarrie gasped at that, but Ckkkrt focused only on Lunsdie. “Grain is called a ‘commodity’. Customers don’t prefer one source over another. We call the price of commodities ‘inelastic’. We will stick to products where they will pay more for better quality.”

Lunsdie grinned at Sbarrie, feeling proud. She rolled her eyes at him.

Turning back to what she’d laid out, Lunsdie grabbed an armload of the best-looking leafy greens, five bags of root vegetables, and a selection of cut flowers. But when he started grabbing flats of dragonberries, Ckkkrt stopped him.

“These look better,” she said. “They’re brighter, rounder.”

Lunsdie waved a paw. “That’s because they’re not as ripe. The tastiest dragonberries are a little darker, a little squishy.”

He reached to grab some flats, and she stopped him once more. “These will sell better.”

Lunsdie shook his head. “These are better. They taste better. The customers will be more happy with them and they will come back to me next time.”

“Fine,” she said. “We will run an A-B test.”

“A … what?” he asked.

“You have a symmetric display,” she explained. “We will buy half and half, put the prettier berries on one side and the riper berries on the other. You will not encourage the customers to purchase one over the other unless they ask which taste better. At the end of the day, we will see which side sold better and which did not. Agreed?”

Lunsdie stared at the sourang for a while, not certain how to react. He really didn’t want to spend any of his savings on inferior goods just to prove a point. He looked to Sbarrie, but his best friend just shrugged. “All right,” he finally agreed. “We’ll A-B test it.”

There was, however, a little friction between the two when Lunsdie paid for his purchases. Ckkkrt wanted him to negotiate the best price he could get. “A coin saved is a coin earned,” she explained.

“I suppose,” Lunsdie said, “but Sbarrie needs to earn a living also. We will take our money from our customers, not our suppliers.”

To his surprise, Ckkkrt relented and allowed Lunsdie to pay full price for their produce without a fight, but once they had left the farm, the subject came back up.

“Is she your girlfriend?” asked the sourang.

“What? No!” protested the anup. “Sbarrie has a mate. His name is Djebri.”

“I see,” she said, thinking in silence a moment. “So, she is cheating on Djebri with you? That is why you will not negotiate with her?”

“No!” He wanted to turn and stare but refused to take his eye off the road for long, so mostly he fumed and glared straight ahead. “No, we’re not sleeping together,” he finally said. “We’re friends, not lovers. But she charges me a fair price and I’m not going to jeopardize my single source of produce by trying to save a few shekka. Our success should directly translate to her success. We should not be successful at her expense.”

The sourang was quiet a very long time. “Perhaps this is why you are poor?”

“Perhaps it is,” he agreed. “But I’d rather be poor for the right reasons than rich for the wrong ones.”

At the market, the new display took a lot longer to set up than the old one had, but when it was finally ready, it looked stunning! Taller and broader than the other stands, Lunsdie had plumbed a water pump and reservoir inside it that gently sprinkled water over all the leafy greens, then drained the run-off away to be recirculated once more. Ckkkrt had even planted live clover between each section of the display, giving the illusion that the plants were still growing, that they hadn’t been picked yet.

The customers had never seen anything like it, and whether they bought from him or not, they all had to come by his stand to see. Best of all, even at the end of the day, the leafy greens still unsold looked great! In fact, the running water had perked them up and they looked better at the end of the day than they had at the beginning.

To keep from scaring off the buyers, Ckkkrt kept her distance throughout most of the day, roaming around the market’s walls and roofs. Though she kept close watch—not just on Lundie and how he handled his customers, but on the other stalls as well, taking careful note of which competitors sold a lot and why.

At the end of the day, the sourang returned and helped Lunsdie pack up his shop. Sales had been great and there was precious little for them to bring home. In fact, Lunsdie decided to buy the two of them meals cooked by another vendor, since the leftovers wouldn’t feed them both. Besides, it seemed like an appropriate way to celebrate their first successful day as a team.

They laughed and talked throughout dinner, both standing at a table that had been meant for one. Other anup stared as they walked past, but they paid them no attention. When they were finished, Lunsdie returned their plates.

“So much for your A-B test,” he said with a grin as they drove home, “both sets of dragonberries sold—”

She didn’t let him finish that thought. “Should I pretend that I didn’t notice how my berries sold out long before yours did?”

He grinned wide and slapped the dashboard a few times.

“You can if you wish,” he said at last. “You can if you wish.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WTE9uYh_TE_QUs4lIaN2o-1taF1csWT-_-Vi8wS63Bs/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?