SOMD Ch31: Fixing Up A New Life (Patreon)

Alice had a restless night.

This had nothing to do with sleeping in a new place as she had gotten used to that over the last few weeks. It also had little do with the fact she lay on ragged stuffing that had once been a bed. As lumpy as it was, its soft fabric was much better than the straw mat in the General Laborer barracks. The straw had likely been older than Alice, and had long ago broken down.

Her bad night's sleep had everything to do with Fixie banging around and making noises downstairs. The little dragon was a maniac for work, heading down there the moment she could get away.

Finally, tired of her other dragons grumbling, and longing for rest of her own, Alice called her back up to the loft and told her to lay down for the night.

"There will be enough for you to do in the morning," she assured her.

The little dragon looked at Numi with big, appealing eyes. Numi turned to Alice. "What if she promises to be quiet?"

"She certainly has not been quiet so far," Prim grumped. "Do as Alice says."

Finally, everybody laid back down.

But the newest of her dragons crept off again during the night while everybody was asleep… or pretending to be asleep, as Alice expected Numi had been.

The sound of things falling downstairs made Alice sit up in bed, practically flinging Prim off her and sending Iggy bristling, with fire gathering in his nostrils.

"What the—" Alice looked around, catching Numi's guilty expression. "Fixie again?"

“She really, really wants to fix things,” Numi said sheepishly.

Alice called Fixie back up to the loft again and this time gave her a thorough scolding. She felt awful at the way her tiny dragon slunk down, her belly scraping the ground, and her spectacled, bug eyes downcast.

Her scolding, however, was nothing compared to Prim’s when Fixie crept away and woke them up for the third time.

Prim flew down to the main level, plucked the little dragon up and scolded her in her ear the entire way.

Alice groaned. "Why can't I have been She of Many quiet Dragons?"

Dawn came all too soon. When she trudged downstairs at the first light of dawn, she looked around the main level and blinked. The entire shop had been roughly organized.

All the shattered and destroyed belongings had been sorted into piles, separated by kind and, at first glance, whether they could be fixed or not. There were piles of clothing, knickknacks, odds and ends, metallic items, wooden items, paper, and other miscellaneous things. Fixie had been so thorough that large parts of the floor were clean, which certainly hadn't been the case before.

Excitedly, Numi showed off her assistant's work. "That's the junk pile, those are the clothes, and I think those are the tools, yeah?" She confirmed with Fixie, who nodded absently.

The little dragon was perched on an upended table — how had she managed that? She was barely as big as Alice's spread hand — and busily sewing a pair of slashed overalls.

Alice looked around, feeling a mix of guilt and amazement at the amount of work the little dragon had managed to do.

There was a squeak of fear and a burst of flame as Iggy and Sparks chased a fat rat across the room. Apparently, her fiercer dragons were on duty as well.

Alice and Prim exchanged a look. It was time for Alice to get to work as well.

"Was Fixie able to find any clean clothing about my size? And perhaps a purse?" Alice asked.

Numi eagerly went over to the clothing pile and started searching for anything worthwhile.

****

Back up in the loft, Alice found a hairbrush to reorder her hair. Then she wriggled into the new clothes. Finally, she filled the purse with coins from the strongbox.

With Prim on her shoulder casting an illusion to make her a little taller and more refined, Alice went to the City Hall.

She was far from the early riser. The single main street was busy with horse traffic and people walking to and fro. Unlike her last city, these were mostly tradesmen of different sorts, and Alice caught a couple of stares her way. She supposed that apprentice merchants weren't often seen.

The City Hall was easy to find, as it was smack in the middle of the city with a grand sign that proclaimed: City Hall.

Entering, she saw several people sitting behind desks and immediately spotted the clerk Melinda had told her to avoid. He had to be the one who was having a loud argument with a cart-master.

"I don't care what other townships allow," Alice heard the man snap, "Your cart-wheels are not positioned the regulated length on the axle. Do you want to destroy our roads before we have even gotten them properly cut in?"

Alice slipped by him, happy not to have attracted that man's notice.

The other clerk was a woman, perhaps a few years older than Alice, who perked up when Alice asked if it would be possible to purchase Sim’s old store.

"Oh, to have a trading store here again…" The clerk sighed, then her face fell. "Yes, that building is currently for sale, and you have to pay that… But you should be aware that the lien on the property must be taken care of as well. The mining company owns that, of course."

"Mining company?" Alice asked, to cover her confusion. What in the world was a lien? "What does a mining company have to do with the store?"

The woman tittered nervously, as if Alice had just asked a stupid question. "Well, they do own everything here, don't they?" She said lightly, opening a large book. "So the total, for the building and to pay out the lien will be, oh dear…" She looked at Alice. "Three blue steel."

Alice had certainly enough for that, but she got the impression from the clerk that this was an extraordinary amount for the building. Perhaps even an unwise amount.

She hesitated, and in that hesitation, the mean clerk, who had finished his conversation, slipped in. "You want to reopen the trade store?" He looked Alice up and down with barely disguised sneer. "Are you sure? Sims didn't have much luck there, and you are only an apprentice merchant."

Prim, hidden under an illusion on her shoulder, hissed her anger in Alice's ear.

Alice's spine stiffened. "And you are only a clerk," she said sharply. "Are you telling me what I should know of my own class?"

The man's face fell. "No… No, miss, just… higher ranked merchants than you have passed on the property, you see, and…"

Alice ignored him, and reaching into her purse, plunked down the three blue steel. "I have the money."

She had to sign a few documents. Because her handwriting was terrible and unpracticed, she made it a scrawl and faked her last name to be Sims as well, inventing the story that the man had been her uncle.

The nicer clerk stamped it and returned copies back to Alice. "When will the store open?"

Alice felt a little light headed with what she had just done. "Give it a couple of days.”

With the contract in hand, which stated that the building was hers, she walked down the street back to the inn.

There, she received a second shock.

"You're buying the store?" Melinda squealed upon seeing her and quickly guided Alice to a table.

"Yes… How did you know?"

"Well, news like this has wings, of course. I'm so happy we're going to have a trading store again. When do you think you'll be able to open it up?"

It was just hitting Alice all over again that she had no idea what she was doing. All she could do was shake her head. “I have… a lot to do before it opens. Can I order some of those meat pies?” she asked, abruptly, and pointed to the next table over who were enjoying a heavy breakfast.

All she wanted to do at that moment was retreat back to the store – her store now! – with her dragons.

****

Balancing four meat and gravy pies in her hands, Alice came through the back door to the store and stared.

Fixie fast asleep, which wasn’t a surprise considering she hadn’t stopped since last night. The real shock was the size of the quilt she had somehow sewed, using scraps of clothing that was too damaged to be sold again. But under the dragon’s nimble claws… it looked comfy and beautiful. A design of colors that was a work of art.

“Alice!” Numi scuttled up to her. “Fixie made this for you. She felt bad for keeping you up all night, but she must fix things, you see?"

"I… do. Poor thing, and she hasn't eaten at all,” Alice remembered. “Not from the moment she hatched.”

"Oh, just give her a coin, she'll be fine," Numi said.

Putting the pies to the side, Alice reached into her purse and pulled out a silver coin. She placed it right underneath Fixie's nose. The little dragon blinked awake and immediately snatched it, gobbling it down.

It seemed that the dragon was coin-powered, much like Numi was.

The outline coin was visible as it went down Fixie’s throat. But then immediately she popped back up and scuttled away to some sets of wooden tools that had been snapped into bits. How she planned to fix those, Alice had no idea.

Well, Alice had plenty of coins. Perhaps she would be able to get the store up and running within a few days after all.