carl@fire

Rosa liked to sit out under the suns.

Sitting in the open next to her grandson's food stall on a nice, sunny day reminded her of a youth spent on a farm helping her father with the chores. She mostly remembered plowing fields and sowing seeds in the autumns, and—best of all—riding the horses into the city to sell their wheat and flour in the summers, after which she'd get to eat ice cream.

Fond memories, sure, but now she was fully blind from the milky-white film that had grown to cover her eyes and slowly dim her sight. The suns kept her warm when she sat out with Gwalter as he worked—as she always did now that they only had each other.

Rosa didn't want to think about how that'd happened.

It made her crabby.

She hadn't always been crabby, of course. She'd grown into it naturally over the course of her very long life and diminishing eyesight.

Still, though, sitting out under the suns on a late spring day like this was much better than sitting out, freezing, in the winters.

She wouldn't stay home, obviously.

Someone had to look after Gwalter.

The next person to remind her that she couldn't see Gwalter anymore would likely receive a tirade about the cost of healing spells and respecting the elderly as she beat them with her favorite cane. She couldn't see, so it couldn't be her fault where the beatings landed. That's what she told herself, anyway.

So it came to be that Rosa was sitting outside on the street in Charus City on that fateful day when the wave came and obliterated the docks which lay just past the eastern side of the city.

She was among the first to start hearing the gossip after Gwalter had narrated its passage to her in his soft voice.

She always was. She still possessed a keen mind, and she would eagerly speak with anyone and everyone who was interested—so long as they didn't mention her eyesight and remained respectful. Word got around, not to mention the fact that she'd been sitting in the same place every day for years, and people now tended to gravitate towards her for regular, respectful conversations without mentioning her condition.

The wave was the attempted revenge from the long-eared devils, a number of people seemed to think. Perhaps, Rosa had replied. But didn't their magic tend more towards nature-y and heal-y uses? Everyone knew of the services that the nobles' purified long-ears would provide if their owners were paid the appropriate fee. Healing services, she'd meant—of course, and get your mind out of the sewers, Jaspar.

Honestly.

The healing services were expensive, but well worth the cost. On the other hand, the cost was too damn high, Rosa thought—and with good cause considering she couldn't afford the seven hundred and fifty coins she would need to produce in order to restore her vision, nearly an entire year's worth of her grandson's earnings.

She would never let him pay that for her. Better to sit blind by his stall than to make him live in squalor.

Others came to gossip about the wave as well, saying that it was the work of the devilspawn now that their queen had somehow managed to escape her Goddess-directed punishment in a single day. This was the most popular theory, though Rosa had questioned why the creatures would use water when they were known to not be very fond of it. No answer had been forthcoming to rebut that point.

The final theory, and the one that made the most sense to Rosa, was that it was the seadevils. She didn't even have to justify it. They lived in the sea; it was made out of water. They were devils. It was a wave; waves were also made out of water.

None had been able to argue with her on that idea, and a number of minds had been changed over the course of the afternoon. It wasn't particularly that she wanted to blame the seadevils, but she liked when things made sense.

Things that didn't make sense made Rosa crabby.

Rosa liked the hastily-made wooden rocking chair crafted by one of her grandson's friends, who was a carpenter by trade like his father. When she sat in it, as she did now, it reminded her of her own father and how he used to sit out on the porch of their farmhouse to watch the sunset.

According to a doctor, watching the sunset was probably the cause of Rosa's eyesight troubles. Cataracts, he'd called them when her grandson had scraped together enough of his savings and tricked her into following him to the quack's clinic.

Who was he to know how her sight was ruined? He couldn't reliably fix her vision. A one-time opportunity for a fifty percent chance at being cured, he'd said.

As if she'd trust a man who claimed to be able to restore her sight without even using magic or the blessing of a Goddess. The idea of a fraud like him even existing made her blood boil.

The doctor had told her that was a bad thing, too, however.

She'd hit him with her cane.

Rosa rocked in her rocking chair. A nice breeze tousled her hair—graying the last time she'd seen it however many years ago.

She stopped thinking about that.

It was making her crabby.

"Ho there, Good…um, Ma'am," came a voice nearby.

Rosa rocked in her rocking chair. That man had a nice, deep voice, she thought. She wondered who he was talking to.

"Uh, Miss?" the voice asked.

Whoever he was talking to, they weren't paying attention. It was a shame, Rosa thought. People never seemed to pay atten—

"Oh, you're blind," said the voice.

Rosa reached for her cane.

"Not that that's a bad thing!" the voice added with a certain sense of haste.

Rosa hesitated. The man did have a nice voice. She relaxed in her rocking chair once more. "Greetings, stranger," she said. She recognized the voices of everyone she talked to regularly. She didn't recognize this voice.

"Ah, um…" The man seemed to be at a loss for words.

"My name's Rosa," said Rosa in order to jog him along so she could listen to his voice again.

"Mine is Carl," said the man. "Hm, maybe this was a bad idea."

"What was a bad idea, Carl?"

"Well, I was just thinking I'd wanna—I mean, I had thought to ask for directions, but—"

"Ask then," Rosa said. "My eyes might not work, but I still remember the layout of the city pretty good. Ooh, I'll wager you just arrived, didn't you?"

"That I did," the man said, his voice sounding as though he was reluctant to part with that information.

Rosa cackled. "So then you didn't see the wave, did you?"

"Wave?"

"Ooh, I can tell you're curious, young man!" Rosa loved to gossip, but when it came to storytelling, she stuck to the facts. She didn't appreciate it when people fabricated their stories, so she certainly wouldn't do the same in hers.

"I admit to some passing interest," the man had said. "It would, however, be most helpful if—"

"Right, right, your directions," Rosa said, making a face. Directions were much less fun than stories. "Where d'ya wanna go?" She began slowly rocking her chair.

"A shoe shop. Old Ingrid's."

The name gave her pause. Anyone wanting to go there must be a noble or rich. The two were usually one and the same, but there were a dozen or so merchants who had managed to make names for themselves and reach a level of wealth comparable to the lesser noble houses.

This man sounded too nice to be a noble. He didn't talk like one of those coin-grubbing merchants, either. Rosa frowned. "You're sure you wanna be going there, Carl?"

"The gatekeeper recommended it to me by name," said Carl, sounding a bit testy.

The young ones had no patience these days.

"Well, if you're settled on it," Rosa said, pointing up and to her left in the direction of the marker post. "See the marker on the top of that post above the name marker?"

"The gold one?"

"That's the one. Every post you see that isn't too far into the poorer parts—it'll have one of those. They all point towards the nearest post in the direction of where you wanna go. Gold'll get you there."

"Huh," said Carl. "That's…awfully clever. But what about carts, or carriages? This one's pointing to that alleyway there, and I can't imagine a big cart's gonna fit through there."

This young man seemed to have a good head on his shoulders along with his nice voice, Rosa thought. "That's true. The city's a big circle, though. If you're lucky enough to own a carriage that you can drive but didn't know where you're going for some reason, you could just follow the main avenue along the outside rim until you got where you're going."

"Awfully inefficient," the man muttered. "I bet I could—"

"But about the wave," Rosa cut in before the man with the nice voice could escape. "Have you heard of a tidal wave before, Carl?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah," he said, seeming slightly surprised by the sudden change of topic.

"They say it was bigger than ten castles stacked on top of each other," Rosa said.

"That's pretty high," Carl said, clearly deep in thought about how high that must be. "Hold on a minute, though. For the marker posts—What if there's two posts that are the same distance away from a post, both of them in the right direction for the marker?"

"Well, we don't do that, Carl," Rosa said, a little exasperated that he could only think about markers when she was telling him about a once in a lifetime event that she wished so very much she could have seen.

"Oh. Well, obviously you wouldn't, I suppose."

"Obviously," Rosa echoed, glad that they were in agreement. He cottoned on quickly. "They also say the wave came from past the dam, going towards the sea. Isn't that interesting?"

"Hm? Oh, right. Um, yeah, really interesting, Rosa. Makes you think, that's for sure."

"It does, doesn't it? I've also heard that the castle is mostly undamaged, too," Rosa went on, enjoying having someone to talk to that hadn't actually seen the damn thing.

"That's a plus," said Carl. "Hey, do you have like, a map of the city or anything?"

"Like a map?" Rosa frowned at the man's odd expression. What was "like a map"? Some sort of riddle? Perhaps he'd simply misspoken, she thought. She decided to be nice and not mention it. But he was asking about a map of the city? What would be the point of such a thing? Everyone knew where everything was. You wanted food? Go to any number of the market streets where the food vendors were selling. You wanted clothes? Tailoring or textiles streets—or, if you had the coin, perhaps one of the larger stores nearer to the nobles' district. You wanted goods for your home? Go see a blacksmith, or a carpenter, or a plumber, or a potter. They were everywhere.

Rosa had tripped over a plumber just the other day, in fact.

A map, however…

"You could see if you can find a mapmaker's shop somewhere, I suppose," Rosa allowed. She'd never seen one, but she'd also never looked for one. She imagined they must be around. Somewhere. Charus City was a large city, after all. It had everything.

"I… Huh…" said Carl, reflecting on the foolishness of his question.

"By the way, Carl," Rosa said, beckoning him closer. "Did you know that the Her Highness, the fourth princess was out of the castle when it happened?"

"Can't believe there's no freaking maps," he muttered. "That's pretty—I mean, how coincidental," he said in a louder voice.

"She's my favorite, you know," Rosa said. "She always comes and talks to me when she comes out this way. Even when it's raining, sometimes."

"Huh, that's really something," said Carl. "Hey, listen, I've gotta get going, but I really enjoyed chatting with you. Would it be okay if I gave you a little something in return for your help?"

"Oh, you're such a nice young man, Carl," Rosa said, touched by his apparent generosity even if he did speak a little oddly. "I wish Gwalter would get back so I could introduce you to him. I'm sure you two would get along very well. He's a very nice boy."

"Er, I'll be sure to stop by if I come back this way, Rosa," said Carl. "Do you have something you can put, um, some stuff in?"

Rosa reached down and felt around by the side of her chair until she found her can. She hauled the thing up, wishing it wasn't quite so sturdy. "People sometimes give me a coin or two if they can spare it. You know, on account of my eyes. Gwalter works hard, but…"

She sighed. Times had been a little tough lately, she had to admit. Gwalter was a reseller of produce. He purchased goods directly from farmers, then sold them to residents of the city. But Gwalter wasn't the only one reselling. Those who could afford to buy more and could spend the time to seek out deals at whatever hour un-contracted farmers showed up were successful, and Gwalter had always tried to take care of his GamGam in addition to managing his stall, leaving him with a little less time than maybe he should've had. He was off now discussing a contract with some farmer or another, she was sure.

She brightened when she remembered the question. "The princess gave me this so I wouldn't just have the coins sitting out in the open." She held up the can, then rested it on her lap because it was a little too heavy to lift with one arm. "Said that might be dangerous." The blind old woman scoffed and waved her cane with her other hand. "I'll show anyone who tries to take coins out of my hand dangerous."

"Whoa, careful with that," said Carl.

"Sorry, I just get a little crabby when people pretend like I'm a cripple just because I can't see as well as I used to."

"I understand," said Carl. "If you'll let me have that for a moment…"

Rosa handed over the can. There was nothing in it right now anyway. The metal itself was valuable and formed in a shape that only the lesser nobles and those richer could afford, but it was nothing that couldn't be replaced with—

She heard a soft whump and the clattering of metal.

"I'm putting your can behind your rocker where nobody will see it, Rosa," said Carl. "You, uh, tell Gwalter I said hello."

Rosa beamed. "I'll do just that. It was nice meeting you, Carl. I hope you'll come back to talk with me again sometime.

"If I'm nearby," he allowed. "Have a nice day, okay?"

"I will, Carl."

"Bye, Rosa."

"Bye, Carl."

And then there was only the bustling relative-silence of the city.

Rosa sighed. It had been a brief chat, but she'd enjoyed it. She—

"GamGam, who was that?" Gwalter's soft voice, fraught with concern, sounded out from close by on the side of his stall as he approached.

She reached out, and his hand came into hers. She patted the back of it. "That was Carl," Rosa said. "We had a nice chat about the wave and the city. He asked me for directions," she said, proud to have been able to help someone, to do something useful.

"Where's your can?" Gwalter's concern didn't let up. "Did he—"

"Carl put it behind my chair," said Rosa. "He wanted to make sure nobody took it, even after I waved my cane to show him what would happen to anyone who—"

"GamGam, we gotta leave. Now."

"What? But you just got back! Don't you—"

Gwalter's whispered voice came from just next to her ear. "GamGam, the can is full. There's gotta be hundreds of coins in here. Maybe even a thousand."

Rosa froze.

A thousand coins?

But…

That was a lot more than the seven hundred and fifty she'd dreamed of one day having.

"We gotta go now, GamGam!" Gwalter's voice was insistent as he pulled her up with one of his burly arms. "We gotta go straight back to Lord Arderne's. I don't give a fuck if those noble jackasses laugh and make me count it outside the gates while they watch. Today's the day you're gonna get to see again."

And it was.