Minding the Shop [Tag Seth]

[Kender Bard]

"Hmph!" Seth snorted with a look of contempt. "If I were a guard, I would have to go by someone else's rules. When I'm a man, I'll have no one to answer to but myself! Being a mercenary means doing whatever you want, whenever you want."

[Darastrix]

Hotaru didn't look particularly impressed at his reasoning. "It sounds more like it means having to wait for people to hire you instead of working steady," she said, turning to pick out a spool of thread the right shade for the pants.

[Kender Bard]

"Eh, I'm pretty sure if I had to I could live off the land," Seth boasted. "So it's not like I'd starve or anything. And then when I finally made a name for myself, I'd make a lot of money. But I'll probably help carry on my family's guild. They always have a steady amount of work."

Granted a lot of it was fairly menial...

[Darastrix]

“Mm.” Hotaru sat down with her thread and set to work. “Well, at least you know what you want to do. I’m not really sure. I don’t mind helping out here, but I don’t know that it’s what I want to settle down to do.”

[Kender Bard]

Seth leaned against the nearest wall and flashed her another grin. "Maybe you should travel to one of those more high society nations in the north and go to their courts. You'd look awfully pretty in a dress, I bet. You could be a sosha-... Sosha... Um..." He fumbled for the word. "Person who talks a lot and somehow gets by on it."

[Darastrix]

Hotaru wrinkled her nose as she bent over her sewing. “I’d like to do something a little useful. All socialites do is gossip and go to parties. Might be a nice hobby, but not for a career.”

[Kender Bard]

"True enough," Seth chuckled. "Okay, well, if being a seamstress is out, then what do you like to do? You know, for fun." He was feeling a little restless and began to wander around the shop to look at things, touching material here and there.

[Darastrix]

“Puzzles,” she said, glancing up with a small grin. “Not like, you know, the kinds made out of wood. Word puzzles, riddles…. You have a fox, a chicken, and a bag of corn to take across the river in a boat. The boat can hold only you and one other thing. If you leave the fox with the chicken, he’ll eat it, and the chicken will eat the corn if you leave her alone with it, so how do you get it all across without something getting eaten?”

[Kender Bard]

Seth grinned. "Make a camp. Eat the corn and chicken. Kill the fox and use it for a blanket." He mused. "A pet fox would be pretty neat, though." He chuckled. "Give me another riddle!"

[Darastrix]

Hotaru resisted the urge to smack her face with the palm of her hand, but only because she was holding a needle. She settled for rolling her eyes instead. "Not if you're not gonna try. Anyway, I like figuring stuff out."

[Kender Bard]

"Well if you like figuring out the riddles, maybe you should solve crimes!" Seth told her. "Lots of times things happen and nobody knows why. Orrr, you could be a Mind Healer! People's minds are confusing. That's like a puzzle."

[Darastrix]

“Well, if I wanted to do that, I bet I could get an apprenticeship easy,” Hotaru said with a thoughtful frown. “I’m more of an empath than anything—totally opposite of my father—and Dad’s good friends with the best Mindhealer in Sensatia.”

She narrowed her eyes at a crooked stitch and carefully pulled it out before continuing. “It’s a really draining craft, though. Being a regular healer would be. Mindhealing really is. I think I like your other idea better.”

[Kender Bard]

Seth grinned at that. "You could open up your own little business doing that." He waggled his brows. "My brother and I could come to you when we have a mission that has us absolutely stumped. You'd seek out the elusive clues to who the bad guy is, and then Sawyer and I would swoop in and catch him!" He lunged forward, holding an imaginary sword. "Ha ha!" He tilted his head and glanced over. "Say how long will that take? Should I go for a walk and come back?"

[Darastrix]

"Well, my dad or my uncle could do this faster," she said. One of them would probably have been finished already, in fact. "But it's not going to take me that long. Just a few more minutes."

Going back to what he'd said before, Hotaru asked, "If you're wanting to bring in criminals, why call it a mercenary guild? Most people hear 'mercenary' and think of soldiers for hire who give their service to whoever gives the better pay. It doesn't sound like the name would be good for business."

[Kender Bard]

"Yeah that rarely happens but my mother's actually on a job doing something like that right now," Seth explained. "I'm not sure why. Maybe the guards in Ronduin just gave up so someone else is hiring her to pick up where they left off? That makes sense to me."