Silent Pain

20

Marie gets her stand set up between the red gate and the ceremony site, Miranda gave her the okay since she is doing it during the weekends when everyone is out anyway. The villagers stopped and would ask if she would need help but she said she was fine, setting the signs up and such.

Prices were her most complicated subject, Marie was intelligent in many ways, artsy and creative but math was never her forte. She wrote down the prices and sighed, "Need some help?" She looked up to find Miranda, "Uh," she sighed and looked defeated, "Yeah... It can't figure up prices." Marie mumbled, "Alright so four simple things. Write small, medium, large, and custom." Marie did what Miranda said and Miranda smiled her golden claw looking at the well-made design of the stand, "Did you craft this yourself?"

Marie looked up, "Yeah I did." "It's beautiful. Alright next, how long does it take you to do a small craft?" "About a week, give or take." "So write down 4 lei." Marie wrote the number next to the word, "Medium is usually two weeks." "So 6 lei." "Large usually takes me three or four weeks depending on what it is." Miranda hummed, "So do... 10 lei." Marie nodded and followed what Miranda said.

"Not only will you get a profit out of it, but with you being a lord and saving the people that one time, I'm pretty sure all the stands know who you are now, yes a couple are skeptical but they will still give you this discount for being a lord, which gives the money to you. Where do you get the wood from?" "Usually Duke supplies me, or Donna if she has what I'm looking for."

"For custom, I would write underneath the word, bring materials and price determines size." Marie nodded, "Reasonable, so if I don't have the material now and they give me say a mahogany wood and ask for a small piece I can still create it for them in a week and send it back to them." "Exactly, if you have some wood left over you can have an area where you keep extra wood pieces and a list of what you have for people who want to know what you can do."

"Seems like a reasonable outcome, unless they want the wood back." Marie leaned down and wrote, "Extra wood will be kept unless instructed otherwise." She hung up the sign on the edge of her stand and smiled, "Now, could I be your first customer?" Miranda asked, "Sure. What do need?"

Miranda gave her a huge log of oak wood, "A goat, with a wobbly head that moves back and forth. My last one got broken and it's been a while since I could get it replaced. Just a small one. Nothing fancy." Marie smiled and Miranda handed her the lei for it, "Thank you, Mother Miranda."

Marie got set to work and started carving the bark out and working on the tiny goat statue. "Hey, are you busy?" She looked up and smiled at the blacksmith, "Of course not, what could I do for you?" "I was wondering if you do wooden sword handles, for kids. I brought you some material, I work mainly with metal but I'm hoping this birch would work for a sword I'm doing for my niece."

"Of course, do you have the size measurements and everything?" "Yeah, here's the information." The blacksmith smiled and handed her the small notebook with what she needed, "Thank you." She handed her the lei and wood, "You can keep the wood for other projects." The blacksmith wandered back to her area as Marie got to work on the sword handle.

It wasn't hard, just time-consuming. Before she knew it she had a list of extra wood already made, how much lei she made that day, and a list with what projects needed to be done, from whom, and where to drop them off at when they were done. By night time she had about 110 pieces of lei, 10% would go to the stand payment. Leaving her with a good portion of what she wanted to do with it.

She grabbed the small basket that Donna let her borrow and the small bag with her lei, dropping the 10% off with Miranda who smiled and patted her on the head, going off to the manor. She stopped at a couple of places on the way, getting meat for dinner and some materials Donna wanted her to grab.