The inner workings of Cop’s Copper Cleaning were… Well, he didn’t know if they were strange, per say, he didn’t get out much either way.

  People would come in with stubborn dishes, old instruments, and other oddities, leaving them on the table and writing down on a small ledger who they were and what they had left.

  Sometimes Cop would be there, sometimes she wouldn’t. Either way, his only job was to clean the easy stuff. He’d handle the dust, mud, sawdust, and general grime, while she would handle the stranger things that would crop up, like tarnish and rust, among other, stranger conditions.

  He really did not want to know what could make copper rot, the way a fungus-speckled mug that had been brought in in a plastic bag was.

  The mushrooms sprouting from the metal seemed to drink it in, leaving it green and pitted, each sprout a gleaming green, marked with polkadot black.

  Still, whether it was burnt or shroom’d, tarnished or crusted with bone, Cop seemed to know her thing extremely well, taking the hard ones in her hands, and using tools, her hands, or that magical ‘Chi’ she had been talking about.

  Mushrooms were killed with acidfruit juice, and clipped off with stainless steel clippers.

  Tarnished copper received a scrape with some kind of chisel, followed by a scrub with salt, until it shone brightly.

  The bone-crusted pans, meanwhile, got more of the acidfruit, diluted in water until Cop could safely use a ragged piece of wood like a mortar to scrub away the cemented material.

  He wasn’t idle though. His back hurt like hell, his fingerpaw joints were aching, and going so long without a good sitdown and nap was rough on someone who had the mental constitution of a coughing baby.

  Eventually, he too received tools of the trade, a tiny pocket-knife greatsword, for scraping off hard clay, a mug of nasty-tasting woodbeer with a straw, to hydrate, and a little scrap of cloth, to cover his nose and mouth for the dustier pieces.

  Wipe, scrape, apronmagic it away. The cycle was mindnumbing in a familiar way, like a long game of Fabricave, quarrying out crates of obsidian to make drills, or burying coal in lava to make diamond blocks.

  Cleaning had the same kind of vibe to it, albeit with the more frustrating aspect of actually having to do physical work in what his friends would have referred to as ‘meatspace’.

  Once he reached the end of the first shelf, Cop finally called it quits, bidding him over with a quick “Hey kid!”

  He pushed the little angel statue back, making sure it wasn’t too close to the edge where it might fall, before scurrying over to the counter to see what she wanted.

  By the time he had, she had quickly noticed his leftover mug, and quickly went to grab it, putting a waxy cap on it.

  “So, first day, any trouble?” she asked, to which he shook his head.

  “I guess not?” he attempted to be polite. He had tons of trouble, of course, but she had that twang to her accent that made him feel like the question was more of a polite rhetorical one.

  “I do kinda wonder, though, why all this? I mean, a lot of this seems like people could wash this stuff at home, right?” he mused. “Little bit of water, some soap.”

  She hummed. “Few reasons. Big one is, we don’t like any loose water here in Sunnymeat. We keep the humidity low, so none of the wood rots or bends. It’s really hard to fix that, compared to things splintering or breaking,” she explained.

  “I break a stick, it’s going to be even stronger. I bend a rotten or wet stick in half, it doesn’t,” she continued, miming the action.

  “Second, we have to be really careful about sickness. We can break a fever, and some of the Dro- Beach Elves, can scoop out sick, once they get you all liquidy with their special ability, but bugs and parasites are harder. You can’t even heal them away, since they’re made of carbon like the rest of us,” she shuddered.

  “Screws with all the jerky racks outside too. Most copper here actually goes to another guy, who cleans dehumidifiers,” she remarked. “It’s summer though, so some of his excess is spilling on my shop too.”

  Rhett had more questions from those answers, but at least he got the gist of it.

  “Okay, so basically, nobody leaves water laying around for hygiene reasons?” he concluded.

  “Yeah. Plus, it cuts down on the Gellies. Don’t leave your drinks out, alright? Woodbeer doesn’t spoil fast, but it’s good to get into the habit. Trust me, you’d already know if ya’ ever smelled a Sunslaked Gelly,” she grimaced.

  “Mayor Dry’s terrified of the things. Has a phobia and everything,” she noted conspiratorially, smirking at Rhett.

  He almost believed her, but something about the way she said it, and the way the evidence wasn’t quite all there… There was something else to all of this, and she had a hint of unease on her face that spoke to the idea of yet more reasons for the moisture ban.

  She shook her head. “Anyway, you got me off track kid. What I actually wanted to say was, good work. Now, this is a Copper shop, -the coin, not the metal,” she clarified. “So I can pay you a silver and a copper a day, or a hundred-and-one copper coins.”

  Sharing a momentary look of consideration, the pair nodded at the unspoken problem.

  “Yeah, probably best to stick with the silver. Don’t worry, people won’t mind giving you change for one, if you explain the weight problem,” she nods.

  “I still think that’s a bit odd. More money is better, right? It’s hard to believe you’d get thrown out of town for spending too much of it,” he can’t help but ask, wanting a second opinion.

  “Ah, well, I guess if you lived in a bigger place, or one with a few towns near it, you might not get it as bad, but most villages, what you see is what you get,” Cop shrugs.

  “We don’t have a whole lot to trade, and when some traders come by, we want as much as we can hoard.

  “Things get a little crazy when a newcomer shows up, so people can get a bit touchy about Bad-Money thinking. You’ll see when one shows up… Other than you, I mean,” she laughs awkwardly.

  Plopping down on a heavy chair behind her, she stretches. “Few times a year, we get one or two people showing up, people crazy enough to go through the wilderness, or strong enough for it. Once in a great while, we might get some of the king’s Knights, or one of the local Paladin groups coming by to sniff out any evil going on.”

  Her smile widened. “When that happens, everyone breaks out the ‘Hail Traveler!’s and everyone gets out their gold coin to buy things. We don’t want one person buying up all the bread, or all the lumber, because that just hurts us all. With travelers, we can trade for much better things, and really get the money flowing.”

  Rhett hummed. He suddenly felt uncomfortable with the coin he had from Joe. “Like what?”

  She throws her arms up. “Anything! New ideas, new materials, new tricks and techniques. We’d buy the boots off their feet if they were a new kind of leather,” she laughed.

  Shifting her foot meaningfully, Rhett’s eyes were drawn to her own boots, which she was more than happy to waggle around. The scales, which he thought were just snakeskin, glinted meaningfully in the low light of the shop.

  “Got these a few years back from a Dwarven fellow, said he killed and skinned a little Silver-Wyvern for it. Lying out his teeth, of course, he spraypainted them, but they still look great,” she proudly proclaimed.

  Rhett felt more than a little out of his depth, something the Orc woman certainly didn’t dismiss.

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  She scratched him on the head with a calloused finger. “Don’t worry kid, unless you run off to another little village, you’ll have plenty of people to help you figure things out here. I’ll loan you a gold if you haven’t earned one by the time someone shows up.”

  “T-tanks- thanks, but uhh, I’ve got one,” he stammered.

  He needed to hide in a dark room with a bright monitor and cheap snacks. This was getting way too social-y.

  Her eyes widened. “Oooh… Old Joe got you first, ey? You gotta do something nice for him, that’s awfully generous of the old coot,” she smiled.

  With a hum, she hopped back onto the counter, letting out a little huff of exertion.

  “You give any thought to something you’d like to learn? I’m telling you, Auras are totally worth the brutal training,” she leers with amusement. “One quick whip around, and you’ll be slinging with the best of em. You’ve even got the tail for an extra limb,” she once more tempts, snapping her finger and causing a small spark of Chi to flit out.

  If he could sweat, he would. “No thank you, I am small and fragile,” he half-pleaded.

  She rolled her eyes. “Bah. Knew I wasn’t getting a new apprentice today. So, what do you want then? We don’t have practitioners for everything under the sun, but I think we’ve got all the Informals, most of the Corporeals, (I’m one of those), plenty of Sages of course…”

  She trailed off at his blank expression of uncomprehension, one that looked like a black and white inked drawing of Rattus Confusicus, in his best mental attempt at a gag-manga style.

  Well, it looked like that in spirit, anyway.

  “Right, you don’t know. Okay uhh…” she cursed loudly. “Fuck, what was it called,” she muttered, having an internal conversation.

  “Okay, hold on, I’m being stupid, do you just want to go to the library? I know a book,” she offered, getting an amusing jerk of excitement from Rhett.

  The tail wagging was involuntary, and very powerful and bestial, he would later argue angrily.

  His interest was dimmed a little bit, (though not nearly as much as it could have been), when he saw the humble scope of the library.

  Less of an Alexandria, more of a Book Nook, the simple building was a single room shed, with an open doorway and boasting only a single wall-to-wall shelf of tomes.

  What was a bit off, but still quite interesting, was the large basin, where sheafs of folders poked up on little wire rails, occupying the middle of the room.

  “Notes,” Cop explained for his benefit, smiling as she slowly hefted over with him on her shoulder. “People leave them here when they make copies, or run out of room to keep them. Kids start with some of the books, and then when they’re a bit smarter, we sic them on the notes to round them out,” she explains.

  “No school?” he asked.

  “Why, you interested in teaching one?” she asked with amusement. “We don’t have anything fancy like that, but Mayor Dry has a rule that everyone has to accept apprentices, if they can. We can’t afford to lose a drop of talent, so everyone has to play their part.”

  He hummed, hopping off her shoulder and slowly making his way across the basin of research notes.

  Titles like “Water Crystallization Spell (Failed)”, “List of Boiled Water Ki Effects”, and “Spell Phonemes from Wood (3)” were common, most of these seeming to be scrawled, hard to read notes written in charcoal or marker, detailing things like tests, experiments, and formulas.

  Others lacked titles entirely, and were just dense lists of things like:

  He found his gaze locked on one sheet, which despite just being labeled “Golem (needs Arm Block)”, was just a top to bottom block of nonsense words.

  His distraction was such that he never noticed the old lady who snuck up on him.

  “Curious,” she said softly.

  Rhett whirled around, stumbling and falling into one of the folders.

  A wrinkled face peered down at him, silver-grey locks bound up in a bun on the side of her head, pinned with a large pair of tweezers. Her face was uniquely human. Pale and dotted with a mole under her eye.

  He managed not to panic when she used an additional pair of the strange tweezers to pluck him up by his tail, setting him down on the lip of the notebasin.

  “A Curious one, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Looking her over properly, Rhett saw signs of humanity beyond the fact that she was literally human.

  Her clothing, rather than the kinds he had been seeing thus far, mostly varieties of leather-laced canvas and horsehair, and mostly tunics and pants at that, was a long, flowing robe that looked suspiciously like a kimono.

  His trained eye spotted differences, of course. Rather than a sash, the long robe was held together with a thick, oversized zipper, somehow carved out of yellowed bone, and in the back, there was something like a metal brace made of steel.

  The brace looked more medical in nature than aesthetic, and if anything, it seemed to be keeping her from hunching over, posing the woman in a stout, upright posture.

  “I consider myself an aficionado of the written word,” he boasted with an affected tone of aristocracy, puffing up his chest.

  The old lady smirks. “Ah, so you like reading more than learning. Sounds nerdy,” she chortled, chuckling louder at his offended look and gasp.

  Clearly, he had underestimated this old witch.

  “Hey, I am absolutely here to learn. Like- Like why does this apron do cool magic stuff!” he demanded.

  “Most people who are not nerds begin with ‘hello’ instead.” She winked

  “I am Miss Bookel Darterdottr, and as for your question… Hmm.” she trailed off, glancing to Cop.

  “Mayor Dry may not agree, but I do think the young man’s earlier idea holds water. Schooling is important after all. Why don’t you go fetch a few hoodlums like this brat, Cop, while I set things up here. I feel inspired by this new generation,” she smiled.

  Cop snorted, waving as she left to do just that, and Miss Bookel began slowly pulling a table out in front of the library’s sole couch.

  The Ratboy watched her hem and haw over the bookshelf afterwards, gnarled hands plucking out a few colorful tomes with big, simple words on the front, and smiling mascots who promised to teach with all their heart and…

  Well, not soul, considering the mascots eyes shone with the overt corporate glow that clearly indicated they had none.

  “What are you doing? What do you need ‘hoodlums’ for? I’m not a hoodlum,” he complained.

  “Oh, well, you gave me an idea is all, deary. Cop’s going to fetch few boys Mak had digging ditches after they got caught growing mushrooms in the undertown,” she explained.

  “If I’m going to be teaching brats, I might as well teach the lot, hmm? Help me pull those chairs, won’t you?” she asked, pointing to a few rolling chairs, with smooth copper bearings on the bottom.

  Giving an experimental push, he was surprised when they actually moved. As he comprehended the woman’s words, however, his mood soured. He never should have mentioned ‘school’. He now considered it a curse word, not to be said in polite company.

  Rhett’s frown had reached apoplectic proportions by the time several young looking teens were dragged in, dirty and bedraggled.

  “Miss Bookel thought you lot would be better off learning something useful rather than digging ditches, so listen up, or Mak’ll have you digging with jerky sticks instead,” Cop barked, pushing the teens in.

  The smile on Bookel’s face promised true hell, and the book ‘Archclasses And You (Grade Four)’ was the pitchfork she’d be using for it.

  His only flicker of grace was that the others looked roughly as doomed as he did.

  –

  Coyote lounged on top of a marble pillar in the throne room of the Olympians, head in his paws as the three gods below him immediately began bickering, as soon as the rest of their family-slash-court left for the day.

  Americium flesh burned where cobalt fur failed to cover it, and within the trickster’s eyes, a divine Oath of tomfoolery shone, promising much fun if he spied on the Greco-roman geeks this month.

  And fun did it deliver. A bastardized attempt at forcing a hero into being, by throwing some random fool into their world, and hoping that the collective will of the planet would be so fascinated as to torment them into heroism?

  The stuffy Olympians sure knew how to party, even when they weren’t drinking lead wine and grape smoothies.

  They didn’t even know what he did. Stopping a Roc from attacking Sunnymeat, as if that were any threat to the natives…

  No, they did not pay much mind to their mortal worshipers, much less backwoods folks like the humble hamlet of Bigpig Woods. No mind to the real threats they faced there.

  Instead, the trio bickered, arguing over how much nothing they should do, when they inevitably do nothing about their so-called ‘hero’ spending all of his money on food and getting a dayjob as a maid instead of blundering into the forest with a wooden sword.

  They argued that he was too meek. That he let himself be washed around by those who caught him. That his desires were banal in their humbleness. That they were, (though the Olympians didn’t quite say it this way), not Greek enough in their brashness.

  All of that, and they didn’t even know the forest’s name. If they did…

  Coyote would lie and say he didn’t if anyone asked him if he laughed aloud right then and there.

  He was quite good at that, considering he was the first god to ever do it.