Broken Mirrors

Chapter One

The sun rose on Esura just like it did any other day. Light found it's way in-between the branches and leaves, landing upon two devilkin, Karius and Creed Nova and their adopted fire genasi child, Misha having cart trouble. They were travellers, part of a bigger group of wandering merchants selling their wares to whatever village, town, city or plain old passers by who would be interested in pelts, handcraft jewlery, cured meats or hand-stitched clothes. They were approached by the leader of their guild, a middle aged half-elf woman named Astura, who's hair was just beginning to give up it's colour. There was an immediate sense of anxiety in the air, this family did not enjoy the presence of the woman.

"What's your damage, then?" said Astura with little empathy.

"We really had to swerve to avoid that buck, Astura, the side the cart landed on did not take the damage well." answered Karius, "Thanks for your concern by the way, my husband and my daughter are fine!"

"Right," Astura continued, "And your stock?" turning her focus to a box of broken wooden, painted toys.

The bigger of Misha's two tiefling fathers, Creed, finishing his inspection, stands up and answers, "It looks like most of Karius' little creations survived the crash, bar one crate, but the wagon is beyond repair."

"I see. Well, that's unfortunate. You've got a week to arrange a new cart, I trust you'll be able to manage that?" asked Astura.

Karius furrowed his eyebrows, "Pardon me, Astura, you didn't just say a week, did you?" he said, with a grimace.

"That is when we're moving on, you know this? We settle down near a town, we go down on market day, make money and move on, you've been doing this for years." said Astura smugly, crossing her arms. Misha did not appreciate her demeanor, thinking that she must have thought of her family like braindead ogres.

The fire genasi went to speak up, "Now listen here you-!"

Karius raised a hand and stopped his daughter mid-expletive, "Misha, control your temper, please, Ember." He turned back to the half-elf, "That said, Astura, I understand Misha's anger, a week is not long enough to gather up funds for a new cart, the profits we make won't even cover half, and that's not even considering your tax!" 

Astura sighed and shook her head, "Once again, Karius, that tax covers food, clothes, medicine maintenance costs and the privilege to travel with this merchants guild my mother painstakingly set up."

Karius became visibly frustrated, but he took a deep breath, and responded, "Then, surely the tax can pay for our new cart, Astura?"

Astura smiled smugly, and pinched the ridge of her nose, "It's a tax, not insurance, Karius, the cost of buying you that new cart might mean we won't be able to afford something else, you don't want the children to go hungry, or our elderly to go without medicine to ease their aching bones, do you?"

"Almost sure you're cheaping out on all that shit," Creed muttered under his breath.

"Sorry, would you like to speak up, dear Creed, I can't hear you?" asked Astura, turning to the Tiefling who looked like he was growing agitated. He grunted, then pulled Misha in to walk away before she started to lose her temper as well, as she was known to, and she could feel it.  

"Your papa is better at dealing with these things than either of us are, we best stay out of it for now or we'll end up making it worse," said Creed to Misha with a frustrated sigh. Misha looked back, meeting her gaze with Astura as she debated with her father Karius over how to proceed with their cart situation. She felt disgust toward their leader, and had for a while now. Misha and her father's had been quite close with Astura's, mother, the former leader of the Esuran Travelling Merchants Guild, who made the effort to make sure everyone had what they needed to continue their trades and live comfortably whilst doing that. Astura, unfortunately, did not share the same sentiment, and when her mother died, much changed about the camp. Astura decided that rather than relying on the stock the merchants produced for provisions, they would be provided by Astura and her husband, and paid for by tax, which, on paper, everyone thought was a fairly good idea, and signed an updated contract agreeing to the terms. As it turned out, the food was bland, the clothes were poor quality, and the medicine was expensive, but due to having to rely on Astura to obtain permission from the various councils of Esura's towns and cities, they quickly found they had no choice but to stay. The situation infuriated Misha every day, and she wished she could make change, but she was just one person, only just twenty years of age, the perfect age where you're old enough to be listened to, but not old enough to be taken seriously. 

"Why do we keep letting her treat people, hell, keep treating us like this? Everyone I've ever spoken to about Astura agrees she's awful, she's nothing like her mother," said Misha, clasping her fists in anger. 

"She's the one with the contacts, and ultimately at this point, the money to get us our permits, little ember. Trust me, I've had arguments with your papa about this, if it were up to me we'd have packed up shop and headed up to Marquet within a week. Until we see a better alternative, we're just going to have to stick with it," replied Creed. Misha appreciated his empathy, at least.

She gave an exasperated sigh, "We might have no options at all if she gets her way, dad, what do we do then?"

Creed took Misha by the hand, which made her feel reassured, "You know your father is good at negotiating, it will be fine, don't worry about us, little ember."

Not long after, Karius returned to his husband and Misha to give them the score. "Alright, loves, I managed to wear her down, a little. I reckon we will need about thirty-five to forty gold pieces for a new cart. If we increase our mark-up a bit on market day tomorrow and sell most our stock, we'll have about twenty gold pieces, add that on to our five gold in emergency savings, we're definitely getting there. Astura has agreed if we can manage that, she'll make up the difference, and we can pay her back through paying higher tax for a couple of months. It's not perfect, but, it's better than being left behind."

Misha sighed, knowing that her papa was right, it was the only real option they had. She wondered if it would be better to suggest just leaving the guild all together, but that wasn't fair, to her fathers or herself. The guild was all her little family had ever known, and they would be giving up all of their friends all so they didn't have to put up with Astura's insufferable leadership.

"Alright. Well, we'll just have to make it work tomorrow morning," said Misha to Karius.

Creed smiles and placed a hand on Misha's dark-grey face, "That's all we can do, Misha. There's no point worrying about it tonight, let's just eat, erm, whatever Astura is calling food tonight, try to get some sleep and we'll deal with it in the morning.

Misha smiled at her big, muscly dad's gentle touch, nodded, and went with them to gather for whatever meal the camp cook had managed to rustle up from the cheap ingredients Astura had obtained. The toys her little family made would hopefully be enough, but she then began to think, this is one situation that might require use of her other skills. Skills that her childhood best friend, Varda had taught her when she was younger.