Page 52 of Of Potions and Honey
“So… after I’d signed the papers and gotten the house, the solicitor gave me this envelope…”
“When she was done recounting the somewhat bizarre sequence of events that had led to her opening a potion shop in a town she’d only ever been to as a child, with no formal training whatsoever, Kayden looked like he was trying hard not to laugh.
“He really did that. And you thought ‘sure, what could possibly go wrong’?”
“Something like that,” Mira muttered. “Listen, it was an opportunity, my boss made my job a miserable experience, and I figured I might as well give it a try, seeing as I had the house and the shop anyway.”
Kayden raised his hands. “I didn’t judge! Just. It’s a little unusual, you have to admit. Normally these things are discussed beforehand.”
“Believe me, I know.”
And maybe Uncle Lochlin would have liked that, too. But things had played out the way they had, and they’d both done the best they could.
Kayden leaned back on his elbows. “No regrets though?”
“Only a little bit. I ruined two blouses when I had potions explode on me,” Mira groused. Now Kayden did laugh.
“Oh no, not the blouses!”
“Don’t you mock me!” Mira elbowed him in the side. “They were very nice blouses.”
“Who wearsniceclothes inside a potion workshop?”
Mira rolled her eyes. “Someone who has never made a potion in her life, that’s who.”
“Right. That.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while. Poppy, panting, left the children to their own devices and came to slobber up some water from a bowl and then nap at Kayden’s feet like the world’s lumpiest shag carpet. Hamish and Clara stopped to say hello for a minute, and the Atas’ children bounded up to them, asking to pet Poppy, who graciously allowed it before the three returned to their harried-looking mother. The green was busy this time of day, it was loud, and right now, there was nowhere else that Mira would rather be.
“I’m glad he did that,” she said abruptly. “Write me that letter,” she clarified upon Kayden’s puzzled look. “I still don’t know what Uncle Lochlin was thinking, but I know he really believed in me. If he hadn’t…” She plucked a blade of grass and slowly tore it into tiny pieces. “I was pretty miserable at the emporium. I didn’t see it that way at the time, but looking back now, I don’t know how much longer I would’ve lasted. I probably would have quit sooner or later anyway, but this way, I had an alternative, rather than just storming out in a huff. Who knows where that would have gotten me. I might have ended up somewhere even worse.”
“Good man, your uncle.” Kayden picked his cup back up and held it out in front of them. “To distant relatives with an abundance of confidence.”
Chuckling, Mira knocked her cup against his. “And to doing things even when you have no idea how they even work.”
They drank to it. When Mira put down her cup, the ball rolled past and Poppy got up for another round of ‘bowl over the tiny children’. Mira silently thanked Uncle Lochlin once again as she watched her run off, accompanied by squealing children. However strange it all may have been, however much she still had to learn, she knew one thing now. However things would turn out, she was proud to call Emberglen her home.
After a day spent outside, Mira was glad to return to said home at dinner time. After collecting the day’s mail and dropping her purse on the brand-new chair in the hallway – serving as sideboard and coat rack until she could afford both of those – Mira trudged into the bathroom to draw herself a sorely needed bath. She was still lacking a firestone, but in the warm summer weather, a bath at room temperature wasn’t quite as bad as it had been in the spring chill. Then, she had limited herself to sponge baths in the sink more often than not, and only bit the bullet when her hair had needed washing.
Now, she would be drawing herself a bath, if any water would come out of the pipes at all. After a good dozen pumps, which usually had it flowing nicely, there was absolutely nothing. Frowning, and frankly a little concerned, Mira kept pumping. When she leaned in to listen, she heard a faint gurgling in the pipes. Finally, after way too much time spent cranking the old pump, the tap sputtered and began spouting water. Well, trickling. And after another solid minute of effort, a trickle was still all that Mira was getting.
“Oh, rats.”
Mira abandoned her effort and hurried to the kitchen to try the pump over the sink. The results were much the same – too much pumping, and a sad little trickle of water into the basin. Groaning, Mira sank into a chair. That wasn’t good.
There was no way Eren’s problem had anything to do with the pump. If her house was affected, so close to the spring, something was wrong with it, and by extension the groundwater reservoirs that it was feeding into. Was that why those alleged tourists kept going to the spring? Was Golden River sending employees to try and ascertain whether it made sense to expandoperations in the area? If that was it, maybe Mayor Lloyd should look into it sooner rather than later, because if Golden River saw an issue that would prevent them from making money, that might just be everyone’s problem very soon.
A problem for another day though, Mira decided. Today, it was getting late, and she was very much done. She’d just file away her mail, which these days mostly consisted of advertising from wherever she ordered her supplies, and the occasional letter from home. Today, that was a letter from Rue, which Mira put aside to read after dinner, and something from… a bank? Not her bank, and it was addressed to-
“Uncle Lochlin?”
With a sinking feeling, Mira opened the envelope. She’d thought his accounts had been closed. Did someone fumble the process and saddle her with fees?
Urgent notice.
Oh, that didn’t sound good. Mira quickly scanned down the page. When her eyes caught on an absurdly large number, she jumped back up to read with more care. What was going on?
On the first read, Mira lost her appetite. The second time, she started to feel ill. The third time, she put it down halfway through and stared at the wall.
