A grey-green Orc sat on his chair, rocking idly by as he took a piece of broken window in his hand, and a piece of leather in the other.

  His puce robes, too heavy to waft, dragged on the white-dusted floor as he began slowly chipping away at the glass, pinching it between a thick thumbnail and the leather patch gripping it tightly.

  A faint crick marked another shard slipping free of the broken glass, and with it, another dimpled facet to his latest creation.

  He gave a glance to his family photo, where younger Orcs grinned mightily around him, holding up a sizable fish, stabbed through with long splinters of rock and wood, their edges gleaming with the faintest hint of cut-air plasma.

  While he did wish some of them had taken to the subtler trades, he was still proud of how far they had come, in pursuing their heritage. It was another facet of their kind. Like knapped glass, everyone who looked at it saw the sun in a different face.

  Jaw broke bones. They became stronger.

  Jem broke stone. It became sharper.

  Juc broke wood. It became smoother.

  Joe honestly wasn’t too torn up about it. He splintered another feather of glass from the piece in his hand, and slowly, a lens began to take shape, polygonal and cratered like an arrowhead.

  No matter what an Orc broke, it was still made better for it. If his sons wished to break away, then it was all the sweeter.

  For him, however, he enjoyed the subtlety. The way a good lens could make the world more beautiful.

  Kaleidoscopes that showed chaos and order. Telescopes that showed far off things. Glasses that returned sight to the sightless.

  Every lens was rose-tinted for Joe.

  ‘…Except that one. That one seems to be mouse-tinted,’ he squints, looking at the smoked glass that hopped up from his lowest set of shelves with the help of a paw quartet.

  It was one of his black lenses, the sort he had made for telescopes meant to stare at the sun, or be put into something for welding.

  More than a little pricey, the quartz and soot dye were not common to come by around these parts, and, so it seemed, the rodent who was slowly sneaking it away had some inkling of its worth, or they wouldn’t be taking it.

  Thankfully, his line of sight had been broken, or he might not have noticed. Everyone thinks Orcs don’t notice people sneaking by, but a few learn their lesson, after a proper ambush or two.

  “Hello there. Are you stealing from me, young one?” he asked curiously, breaking the silence.

  –

  ‘Oh crap, kindly old Orc? Those are three words I do not like hearing together,’ Rhett thought in a panic.

  He knew full well that any old dude could secretly be a badass, in a world with orcs and elves, and thinking, talking rats. He also knew that when a guy acted nice right after you pissed them off, that was a good sign to get the hell out of there.

  An old dude who acted kindly right after spotting a rat making off with his store products?..

  A more willful person might have ran, but despite it all, the old guy’s tone made him feel obliged to answer.

  “No..?” he attempted.

  The Orc smiled quietly. “A shame. It would have helped break up the monotony. My name is Joe. What’s yours?” he requested, rocking idly on his chair.

  “Uh, Rhett. Rhett… Fency?”

  The Orc seemed to come to some kind of conclusion, a sad shake of his head slipping out as he looked Rhett up and down, and seemed to not like what he saw.

  “Come here,” he asked.

  Slowly, Rhett approached, pilfered lens held over his head like a dinnerplate, while the Orc fished around in his pockets.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about the lens, I’m just in a bit of a haze right now, and-”

  The Orc shook his head, silencing further excuses, as he pulled out coins, setting them in front of the Ratboy.

  “This is a copper coin. Some people call them bronze too, and they sometimes have different looks, depending where they came from,” he explained slowly.

  Despite the vague sense of being patronized, Rhett looked at the huge coin, noting a large, melting shield embossed on its surface, flames flickering around it in a ring.

  ‘Jeeze, do I want to know what country minted these?’ he wondered, as the Orc continued.

  “You can spend these to buy trinkets and snacks. A few coins is enough for a small, simple meal, or a goodly bag of raw foodstuffs. A loaf of fresh baked sawbread, here, can be bought for a single copper coin, and so could a sheaf of paper, or a satchel of tacks," he listed off.

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  “These are spent for things often given for free. Things that do not require labor, or that do not consume a finite thing, or if they do both, they are something considered a public good,” he continued, before setting another coin on the table, this one silver, and marked with a large log on both faces, one with a mushroom growing out of it, and a sword planted through both of them, like a strange shish-kabob.

  “This is a silver coin. A hundred copper coins is worth a single silver one. A few of these can buy you a blanket, or rope, and perhaps fifty of them could buy you a good woodcutting axe. You spend these on Sundries, do you understand?”

  Rhett nodded. The urge to complain was there, he knew what money was, and this felt more than a little patronizing, but what he had heard so far confused him enough to hold back. How in the name of Wall-street was an axe worth almost half a year of cooked meals?

  Finally, the Orc set a gold coin on the table. “Do not try to spend one of these on food, little one. People will get very upset with you if you expect them to take it,” he begins.

  “This is a gold coin. There is one greater than this, Platinum, but it is not of any concern to you, as things stand. One hundred silver is equal to one gold coin, and a thousand gold, for one platinum coin," he finished, concluding the exchanges.

  "Those who sell vital things, and luxurious things will ask for these. A sword, or some fanciful magic. A bed would be three-hundred coins, thereabouts,” he explains.

  At this point, Rhett’s plan to get sunglasses had been thoroughly waylaid by what he heard.

  He wasn’t one of those people who obsessed over medieval trivia and nitpicked at fantastical settings’ economies, but it sounded like that Orc just said a bed was worth millions of those bread loaves he was talking about.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” he answered, plopping down, now fully distracted by the topic. “You could live for the rest of your life on one sold bed, it sounds like? How does that work at all?”

  The Orc chuckled. “Live on what, sawbread? Would you ask a baker for a mountain of it, and throw some coins at his feet like some kind of king?” the Orc asked jokingly. “They say it’s harder to turn gold into lead, than it is lead into gold, my boy,” he remarked.

  "While one can be exchanged for another, in small quantities, it is best to treat each coin as its own kind of money. Copper for the trivial, silver for the commonplace, gold for the luxurious, and platinum for yet greater things, like land, and titles."

  At Rhett’s continued incomprehension, his smile dropped a bit.

  “I understand you might have come from… Trouble, Mr. Fancy,” he said, the name uncomfortable in his mouth. “So I simply wished you to understand a few useful things for your stay here in Sunnymeat. I can see nobody has thought to teach you these things. It is not so difficult, once you've had a bit of time to work with it all...” he said gently.

  He tried to rephrase, and rework his words, seeing Rhett's continued confusion.

  "Unless someone ventures to the dungeon, it is likely you shall only need to worry about silver and copper. Think of them like... The difference between big and little things.

  "Something like a fresh, clear window would be cheap, for they are easy to come by, but if I were to shatter it into little pieces for you, it would be worth much more, Does that make sense?" he attempted.

  Rhett nodded. This Orc was beaming crazy rays at him with his mouth. That was the only conclusion he could come to.

  “Okay, first off, Sunnymeat?” he blinked several times.

  “The name of this village, young man. The Beach Elves here love the stuff. Perhaps a bit too much," he remarked, gesturing to the clothesline of raw meat hanging outside in the sun, just outside of the shop's window.

  ‘Okay, Beach-Elf is an Elf-variant too far,’ Rhett put his foot down. This was getting weird, and he had the sneaking suspicion the Orc was going to keep turning his questions into brain-melting answers until he shut up about it.

  “Thanks. I’ll just… I’ll be going now? If that’s alright?” he said, backing away from the old man after setting down his attempted plunder.

  “Hold on,” the Orc barked, freezing the dark rodent in place.

  With a hand like sandpaper, the Orc rasped at his table, scooping a quartet of disks towards him.

  “Here. I hope you find freedom to your liking,” Joe concluded, pushing the coins, and the little lens, into Rhett’s arms.

  “...Thank you? Goodbye?” he said, fleeing the growing pile of weirdness in front of him.

  He shrieked as he fell backwards off the table, only to let out an embarrassed noise at the previous one’s excessiveness a second later, skittering all the quicker to a hole in the corner of the lens-shop.

  Joe blinked, then shook his head. “I think I broke the young man… Well, all the better,” he chortled, returning to the glass in front of him.

  –

  “How the hell am I supposed to spend money? I’m a rat,” he muttered, shoving the black lens on his head like a temporary hat, as he waddled home on two legs, an armful of coins forcing him upright.

  With a bwoof of exertion, the Ratboy threw the coins into his Towelhole, before throwing himself in after them.

  With a mark of finality, he looked at the smoked glass lens in front of him, finally taking the time to marvel at it, and at the way it almost seemed to glow in his hands.

  Weird, faceted design aside, it was an incredible little piece of art.

  Peeking at the annoying sunbeam, laser-guided to still be aimed in his abode, he slowly coiled a length of towel in front of it, and nestled the lens atop it.

  With a gasp, Rhett stared in awe as an ink-colored light refracted out of it, dipping his little room in pitch, as black seemed to bounce off the walls instead of cheery sunshine yellow.

  He slowly pushed his arm out, sticking it into the path of the beam, and blinked several times at the cool sensation on his freaky little hand.

  As a former fat guy, Rhett knew full well that heat was bad, and as a now and forever gamer, he knew that sunlight was also evil and despicable.

  Needless to say, then, he derived endless entertainment from the way it seemed to both cool and dim the room, more than measly blackout curtains could.

  The way its unlight, its anti-light, seemed to bounce around, ‘lighting’ the room in its own kind of stark definition was also more than a bit of a trip, like a photographic negative.

  If this were treated with the seriousness it deserved, there was no limit to the possibilities, this was an entirely new science, a new magic, and someone who saw it as more than something in the same category as a lava lamp in terms of its function could leverage it to incredible ends.

  A lens that turned hot into cold? Light into dark? All it would take is a few clever ideas, and an item like that would suddenly become a weapon, a shield, or something even stranger, something more exotic…

  As if the gods themselves were watching with baited breath, the darkness held still, and the Black Lens stood imperiously. Rhett approached its cottony dais…

  …And plopping his head under it, using it as an improvised sleep mask to catch up on the rest of his nap.

  “Hell yeah, Unwindow.”