Chapter 60 - The Farm in Irttat

 

Chapter 60: Harvest and Hibernation 04

Autumn was almost here, and lately they had been kept busy cutting and drying grass.

Round after round of forage was left to sun-dry until it reached a tough, leathery texture, the kind that made a dry rustling sound when you lifted a handful and shook it. Then it was stacked in the storage house.

Several thin wooden slats were laid in a crisscross pattern on the floor first, with an oilskin spread over them to separate the dried grass from the ground and prevent moisture from seeping back up.

Then the grass was sorted into bundles of roughly even thickness, bound with a long strand of dried grass pulled from the pile itself, and stacked onto the hayrick.

Fortunately, they only had five small lambs, and the amount of forage they needed was not large. Two more stacks gathered over the following days were enough.

The townspeople had grown very fond of the storage spaces. Word spread that Lucita was back, one person telling ten and ten telling a hundred, and customers began trickling in again one after another.

Lucita could now open a one-cubic-meter space with ease, fifty times the twenty-liter capacity she had started with. Beyond that, the stability of her spaces had improved considerably as well.

With capacity and duration both up, prices naturally rose to match, and the range of what she offered had expanded significantly.

She carved a price list on a board outside the small shop.

A two-hundred-liter storage shell necklace: thirty silver coins each.

This capacity was positioned as a replacement for a small frost-box, capable of meeting the basic needs of someone living alone or with one other person.

A five-hundred-liter storage shell necklace: fifty silver coins each.

This capacity was larger than most of the big frost-boxes currently available, suitable for most multi-person households, and also useful for hunters going into the mountains to store their catch. 

A space this large could hold an entire butchered deer along with other game such as rabbits and roe deer. It could also carry fresh vegetables, bread, and soup into the forest, sparing hunters from a repeating diet of freshly killed roast meat and foraged berries.

Finally, the one-cubic-meter capacity: one hundred silver coins each.

This could hold several butchered deer and was designed almost exclusively for hunters venturing deep into the distant mountains for days at a time. Beyond that, vegetable farmers, butchers, fisherwomen, and other traders dealing in perishable goods could all make use of it.

The stability of the spaces she could currently open was already very high, and the duration very long, too long to measure accurately through testing. Even if she were willing to run the tests, it would have been of limited value. In the several months it would take to measure stability, her spatial abilities would likely have multiplied several times over.

Moreover, after breaking through the world's barrier, she had been able to reach deep into every layer of the world, understood the world's underlying rules, and was no longer constrained by the limits of innate talent. 

In terms of measurable ability, this had manifested as explosive growth, and was still ongoing.

So Lucita could only estimate the duration of her spaces by feel.

For anything going out for sale, that estimate had to be conservative, better to err low than high.

She had a sense that the spaces she opened could hold for four or five months without difficulty, and the smaller the space, the more stable it was. In practice, the number would only be higher.

To be safe, all her product descriptions listed a three-month use period.

Lucita had also considered the fragility of shells. Using them as vessels for goods worth several hundred silver coins was bound to make people uneasy, and so she introduced a custom service.

People could bring any item they liked as a vessel, and Lucita would apply the desired capacity to it. The price was the same as for an ordinary shell necklace.

Sure enough, as prices went up, people grew concerned about fragile shells as vessels and began bringing their own items for customization.

At first, the objects people brought were a wonderfully varied assortment: music boxes, vases, honey jars, and all manner of odds and ends, though the most common were handcrafted wooden ornaments.

Before long, the carpenter Skloot spotted an opportunity and carved a small batch of simple wooden decorative pieces from her offcuts, marketing them as home "frost-box" vessels under the label "Space Vessels" and putting them up for sale.

Very quickly, on account of their low price, appropriate size, and durability, these ornaments became a sensation throughout the town.

People were happy to spend a few silver coins on an ornament and then come to Lucita to have the right capacity customized into it.

The hunter's market was a different scene entirely.

What hunters most often brought for customization was an animal tooth.

Hunters tended to have plenty of animal teeth in their possession, portable, durable, and handsome, and even without being turned into a storage container, wearing one around your neck was a symbol of courage.

Now that tooth necklaces could be given a storage space, it was quite simply the best news imaginable for them.

Lucita now opened spaces with ease and without strain, nothing like the overwhelmed feeling she had experienced when she first opened for business with too many clients and too little energy. Supplying the entire town was no problem at all.

On the other hand, Lucita's pricing was also very reasonable.

Taking a small frost-box as comparison: one frost-box wasn't difficult to produce, and at thirty silver coins the price matched Lucita's rate. But one mustn't forget that the frost-heart plants grown inside required upkeep, costing another ten silver coins a month. And the larger the frost-box, the higher the monthly maintenance cost.

By comparison, Lucita's thirty silver coins bought a storage space with a minimum three-month life, which worked out to about ten silver coins per month.

But a frost-box only slowed food spoilage; a storage space maintained complete temporal stasis, with zero risk of any decay whatsoever, and even preserved the warmth and state of food exactly as it was. 

Factor in portability as well, and Lucita's storage spaces won on every count.

Accordingly, the frost-box market collapsed entirely not long after she reopened, and nearly every household in town began using Lucita's storage spaces.

The market settled quickly.

Irene, who had previously sold frost-boxes, took it in good stride. She actually made a tidy profit from the increased demand for decorative ornaments.

As for frost-boxes — their sales cycle had always been very long to begin with. The town's population was small, and one frost-box could last many years, making it more of a supplement to Irene's business than a main product — something the town needed but didn't need often, and one she could take or leave.

Now that Lucita had introduced her storage necklaces, Irene simply adjusted her positioning for the frost-box accordingly.

Customers sometimes mentioned this to Lucita: "Who would have thought that even something like a frost-box would be overtaken by the times."

Lucita made no particular comment.

Her ability to open spaces that ordinary people could use stemmed from her own nature as something beyond human. No one else could replicate it, including many dragon half-bloods with spatial gifts who had tried and invariably failed.

In a sense, using an ability that could cross the layers of the world to produce frost-box substitutes for profit was perhaps a case of using a great sword to kill a chicken. But she didn't mind.

As for frost-boxes themselves… they were the genuinely universal product. Find a way to lower the cost of frost-box upkeep, and there was real potential for widespread adoption.

Lucita ran this business, and for the past half-month had been taking in several hundred silver coins a day. The financial pressure lifted all at once.

The household began stocking up on farmed boar meat and lamb. Sugar, spices, and honey became plentiful again. The food had become very good, and everyone was visibly happier for it.

But this level of income wasn't something she could maintain every month. Once this wave passed, the next income peak wouldn't come for another three months.

She lay propped on the windowsill going over her accounts, resting her chin in her hand and thinking slowly.

By then, her spaces might hold for six months, or even longer, and would gradually become something people relied on as a permanent fixture.

And Lucita had no plans to raise prices gradually as the durability of her spaces increased.

At the end of the day, she only needed enough silver coins to live on. Her original intention had simply been to make life more convenient for everyone while living comfortably herself, not to use this to get rich.

Besides, an industry that depended on a single person fostered a certain laziness of ingenuity in people, not a good thing for civilization's development.

She put away the day's ledger, watered the flower pots, and pulled the small shop door shut with a creak.

Dusk was settling. The lamps had gradually come on. Violet was still in the herb bed, cheerfully loosening the soil around the herbs.

A couple of days earlier, they had harvested a batch of magical herbs, sappanwood, white hellebore, and some of the brown pot marigolds that had been sown earliest, and dried and stored them in the medicine box for later use.

The current batch had shifted to autumn varieties. The anemones sown just recently had barely sent out sprouts, and Violet looked in on them every day, as devoted as a new parent.

Lucita called to her: "Dinner!"

Dinner was stir-fried smoked ham with garlic shoots, a large basket of steamed green crabs, and two slices of raspberry tart, with mung bean soup served alongside.

Dishes like the stir-fry and various soups were things Lucita made from memory. They had been met with unanimous approval, and the habit had naturally continued.

The ham came from Aurora's grain store. Cured meats like this were rarely available for purchase. Every household made their own in the lead-up to winter, and there was almost no demand in the market, so naturally the grain store didn't stock them. Ham fried out its own oil, and paired with the fresh, clean fragrance of garlic shoots just lifted from the pan, it was a perfect combination.

One crab each. It was not yet the prime season for eating crabs, but an occasional indulgence was still a pleasure. The sweet, delicate crabmeat was its own reward.

The mung bean soup had been chilled in the frost-box for an hour and had turned into a slightly icy, grainy texture. Yes — Irene had increased the planting density of her frost-heart plants, driving the temperature in the frost-boxes down further, and Lucita had taken advantage of the last stretch of summer to buy one, which she used for chilling food and making ice.

As for the raspberry tart, it was a summer-limited treat Lucita had made herself.

Late summer was nothing like autumn with its broad harvests, but the season still offered its own quiet surprises.

The various wild berries growing in the forest had ripened unhurriedly in the final days of summer. Wild rose hips and golden cloudberries, sea buckthorn, blueberries, blackcurrants, and raspberries fell from the branches with no one to harvest them, only the birds of the forest could enjoy this feast that lasted several days.

Of course, much of the sweet flesh and juice ended up on the ground, becoming food for ants and nutrients for the plants.

These berries were things hunters brought back from the mountains when they had extras to spare, and what was surplus went to Aurora's grain store.

Thanks to Lucita's storage spaces, the berries brought back this year had been especially plentiful, and every last one of them reached people's hands fresh.

These two slices of raspberry tart held not just raspberries but blueberries and cloudberries as well, half-nestled above the surface in round little clusters.

She had first baked the pastry shell to a golden, firm crispness, then filled it with a custard made from eggs and milk, heavily sweetened with honey and sugar, chilled in the frost-box until it set into a smooth, refreshing pudding filling.

Chilled tart and soup, sweetness and freshness, the two together wove the taste of summer.

The table was set. Linnea had already washed her hands and come out of the study without being asked.

She had recently enrolled in the elves' hunting course at the community school, and spent every day going into the forest with a group of classmates of various ages, returning each evening covered in mud and leaves, changing her clothes with unusual frequency.

And Delphine, curious about absolutely everything, had of course not missed a single opportunity to observe elves on the hunt, and went along every time.

When others were around, she followed in spirit form. When they were alone, she materialized and played with Linnea.

For a child Linnea's age, a mysterious secret companion was irresistible. With Delphine in tow, she had the feeling of having a cool secret no one else knew about, and she was excited about it every single day.

They had none of the human world's rules about not talking at the table. Linnea and Delphine took turns describing the funny moments from the day's hunt, each setting up the other's story, both thoroughly animated.

Linnea mentioned her group instructor, Daisy.

"Daisy?" Lucita caught the name immediately.

"Yes. Teacher Daisy is a warrior of the elven people, she's amazing..." Linnea went on, but Lucita's thoughts had already drifted.

If she remembered correctly, Daisy was Sophia's mother.

Thinking of Sophia, Lucita's mood grew a little heavy.

The last time she had seen Sophia was a week ago. They had run into each other at Lily's tavern. Sophia had looked thinner again, her mental state worse than when Lucita had last seen her before leaving for Grande.

Everyone had spent the past several months preparing for her passing, a slow-cutting blade rather than a clean one. Lucita didn't know whether a drawn-out parting or a sudden one was easier.

From the moment Sophia had followed that lying man away ten years ago, her fate had never touched happiness or peace again. Captivity, pursuit, near death. A curse, transformation into a nightingale, almost losing herself entirely.

In the end it seemed like a happy ending, but everything had come far too late.

Lucita still remembered the faintly melancholy smile on Sophia's face after she had recovered: "My true spirit is spent."

A girl still young, watching herself walk toward death.

In a sense, Lucita's premonition had come true.

She had been thinking of Sophia just the evening before, and the next day the message-quill box delivered a letter.

A white slip of paper from Mavis:

“Lucita:

Hello.

It is with regret that I inform you that my friend Sophia passed away last night, at thirty-three minutes past midnight.

A funeral will be held on the twenty-third of July. You are invited to attend.

Your friend, Mavis”

That day was the twentieth of July.

Lucita looked out the window at the clouds, then at the luo flower tree in the back yard — its flowers no longer blooming — and the sofa where Sophia had once sat, and felt the ground slightly uncertain under her feet.

The spring they had drunk together in February seemed still to be before her eyes. For the first time she felt that time had passed this quickly.

She had not yet seen this place in winter snow. And now she had already lost forever the chance to share that snowfall with a friend.

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