Everywhere. On the floor, on the table, at the end of the bed, on boxes and books, there were boats. For the most part they were no bigger than the length of her hand, in height also. The scraps of thin flat wood were ideal for the boat portion, and the thin sticks made for good masts, most of which had a leaf impaled upon them for the sail. Just ten copper a piece, and proving popular already. She even had begun experimenting with using scraps of cloth as sails, but it was early days yet.
Oddities and curiosities were all good and well, but once you sold one, it was gone forever, but the boats? She could keep making them as long as the customers kept buying. Same with the bits to do with love, the books, the scent in its vials, the pouches of lavender fragranced oats that went in a bath, the combs, lace edged hankies and all. She lay there, on her bed in the dark, not a flicker of light to be had, and she thought.
The days had been odd, the nights stranger. She worried about Thadirin, how he had become hurt when trying to deal with brigands, how she felt about him, regretful but also comforted. She thought about Wist, and such thoughts always made her smile, for she was like a force of nature bundled in a little package. Calum came to mind, their boat race, the time shared together and his kiss when they said goodnight. Tilton, their shared supper and the item she sold him, a fertility statue carved from a questionable piece of stone troll. What occurred that very night with Solveij, Calum and the Magicman, the latter who upon her wish after an offering of ale, produced a bed for her, bringing it to the inn, only to dispose of it on the outskirts of the town so as the owner and guard would not find it. It had been a strange, wonderful, worrying, humorous time.
She could start with a market stall, it would be easier than carrying her pack all day. She'd need a handcart though, and a place to keep it. Luckily nothing she had was terribly big, even the oddities would normally fit in her pack, so it need only be small, perhaps a wheelbarrow. Who knew, if business continued to grow, she could possibly look at better lodgings, something safer, warmer, something of her own. It was a pleasant dream, one she mused on from time to time, but when sleep claimed her exhausted body, her actual dream was filled with something quite different...A giant chicken, the size of the inn, roaming Bree.
