Chapter 4: Chapter 4 – Dirt in the Salt

 

"Hello, Gei." Lise smiled. The child in front of her was a precious child, and even though she didn't talk, she was polite, was well as a really hard worker. She never begged, although people could easily see she was starving to death in front of them. She asked to do small jobs that she could earn a few silver to buy food.

The inn would let her sweep their exterior, and eat some leftover foods from time to time. She also braved the forests in search of wild herbs, berries, or roots that could be eaten.

"Look." Lise was a bit surprised she spoke. Gei put her pot on the counter. Lise frowned slightly, but looked into the pot.

"This is...." She took a small pinch. "Salt!" She said in shock. "It's so pure!" She looked into the pot, and at Gei.

"Sea." Gei watched as Lise paled. "No ask."  Lise was still going to ask when an older woman elbowed Gei out of the way and put her sack on the counter. Gei's eyes glowed red, but no one noticed her anger flare.

"Lise, what kind of crap is this 'salt'?" The woman said angrily. Lise sighed.

"Madam, you know full well what the Inaris sell to us 'commoners'. I can't make even a dime piece on it, and only have it because people still need to buy it." Lise said firmly.

"But this is worse than normal!" She opened her sack and let it pour out. Gei looked at the salt.

"Add dirt?" Gei asked her. The woman looked down.

"What are you talking about?" She asked angrily. Gei pointed at the pile.

"Lise not greedy." Gei said firmly. "Half dirt!" Gei held out her hand towards the 'salt' pile, while Lise watched in amazement as the dirt dissolved, and left only salt behind.

"What did you do to my salt?" The woman screamed. Gei grinned.

"Dirt. Not salt." Gei's smile quickly left, and her eyes started to glow red, a sure sign of a powerful elementalist. "Lise friend. Cheat friend." The woman started to tremble.

"Please, I didn't add much at all. I wanted her to admit how bad the quality was." She said as tears entered her eyes. If she had known that Lise had a friend who had so much power, she would never have attempted to get all her money back after using just enough to make a stew. She frowned, and the tears faded.

"Wait, it's pure?" She looked into her bag. "I don't believe it." She whispered. Lise took a deep breath. Though she needed each customer, she didn't need bad ones.

"I know what you paid for it, and can return your silver, but don't expect to buy from me in the future." Lise said firmly. She picked up a small handful from Gei's pot. "This is the quality I will have in the future. Do you understand?"  The woman nodded quickly.  A regular merchant would have access to clean salt, and she wasn't yet banned from buying.  "It will priced just a bit higher, as it will be pure." The woman nodded quickly and scooped her salt back into the sack. She couldn't help but start to smile.

"I can use this to salt meat now! It won't go moldy, and I don't have to get it from 'those' people!" She scuttled away quickly, and though she had been frightened, she was a lot happier now.

Meat from any animal, rabbit or deer, was expensive for folks like her, so if her husband could hunt one, she could salt it and preserve it for a lot longer. Her children might finally not have to go hungry. She couldn't face her ancestors in the afterlife if she had to sell her children just to be sure the others were fed.

"Can sell?" Gei asked her. Lise looked in the pot.

"Easily. I have to buy it at four silver a pound. Is that alright with you?" Lise asked.

"Four?" Gei frowned. "That lot." Gei said with a slightly confused look in her eyes.

"I won't lose silver now, Gei." Lise looked at the salt and smiled. She swallowed a lump in her throat. "I can sell this at five silver a pound, which is close to what I sell the other impure stuff at." Gei pursed her lips.

"Three." Lise's mouth fell open. "Not cheat Lise. How much need? Oh, need sacks." Gei said with a smile. Lise looked around.

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"Can you purify what I have? I will lose on the volume, but I want to use pure from now on. I will make it up in a couple of weeks with yours." Lise smiled.

"Yep. Clean salt. Get strong." Gei said and went around the counter to where Lise stored her salt.

She didn't see Lise's face when she said that. It cramped and twitched a bit.

As far as Lise was aware, elementalists used energy to do things, but Gei could now get stronger by using her abilities? How could that be correct?

Lise also noticed that Gei did not have an elementalist's gauntlet, or a staff with a fusion crystal embedded. As far as she knew, skill users needed a gauntlet to not only absorb their element, they needed it because it filtered out all incompatible elements that could poison them. The gauntlet also measured the amount of power they had stored within their body.

A magical speaker needed a staff with a fusion crystal embedded, or in the case of a staffer, they needed a core as well, for the same reason. The crystal allowed them to absorb their element, while the core was for a person who was not able to form a core within their body.

How was it even possible that Gei could do something like this without either?

 

* * *

 

Venn watched as Gei approached the south gate with a few full sacks in her hands, and held them like they weighed nothing at all. He could see that they bulged and pulled at the neck of the sack with their weight, but she carried them like they were empty.

After she walked out, she seemed to squat a bit, as though she lowered herself down a few inches, and before their eyes, she disappeared. Venn's eyes bulged in fright.

"Drom? Drom?" Venn called out fearfully.

"Calm down. She just ran so fast, the dust got stirred up so you couldn't see her run off." Drom said as he climbed down from the catwalk. "Although if I was down here, I might have shat myself in terror."

Venn moved and saw that his friend was correct. There was a trail of dust stirred up as Gei ran into the wasteland.

"What should we do, Venn? We saw her come in from the wasteland, and now she left. She showed she has a lot of power." Drom said quietly. Venn closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Add it to the report." He let out his breath slowly, and took one more deep inhale and exhale to calm himself. "If we leave it off, and someone questions it, we'll have a huge stinking pile to step in."

"I hear ya. If you ask me, this is still a huge stinking pile. That girl might be ten years old, but I know what her family did to her. You see how skinny she is? Starved nearly ta death. Her family is absolutely useless in my eyes." Drom said angrily.

"Yeah, but nothing we can do about it. We have a job to do. Not sure if I can handle all this excitement." Venn said with an eye roll.

"Not in your old age." Drom grinned, and received a punch on the shoulder.

"Nugget of beast shit."

 

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