NOVEL FROG Chapter 694 – Difficulties and Opportunities
“With differing lands and people, every place would also have its own difficulties.” - Old folk saying.
“Say, you got some really good food here, but why is business so slow?” asked Kino out of curiosity as the group were polishing off the last of their meal. Her question was understandable, as while there were a couple other customers other than their group when they first came, those had finished before them and no new customers had arrived since.
“Ah, that’s got more to do with the local tastes, lassie,” said the merfolk woman with an easy smile. “You probably noticed yourself, most of the dockhands and other workers are therian folk. They’re good folk and all, sure, but many of them also don’t eat meat or fish at all. It’s mostly preference for most of them, I think, though some might also be unable to actually digest them. Because of that, places like mine mostly cater to the travelers or the few who do eat meat and fish like others of my kind that live here.”
“Is that enough?” asked Kino once more, with some concern in her voice.
“More than enough for my family’s daily living when put together with what my man makes from ferrying people, really,” said the proprietress with a smile as she poured more ale to top off the empty mugs. “Besides, we have savings since the dwarves paid us well to get plenty of fish and other stuff living well in this lake, so we’ll be fine either way.”
“It’s still more quiet around this time of the day, mostly locals going to and fro. During the busier times are when we get more foreign travelers around here, and that’s when we make most of our day’s income,” added the woman nonchalantly. “I’m far from the only one who caters to foreigners and travelers, and there’s still enough room around here for at least a couple dozen more places like that, even, I’d daresay.”
“Then it’s pretty thriving around here, huh?” asked Áine in turn.
“You could say that,” answered the merfolk woman as she looked at the port town that had sprung up around the northern docks. “When me and my man first came here around two and a half decades ago, this place was pretty barren. Few things swim the waters, and all you have on the shores are just the docks and nothing more.”
“We already saw these towns get built in that time, the lake also growing far livelier and plentiful in that time. The growth isn’t one that’s likely to stop soon, both for the lake and the ports around it, I feel,” she added. “There’s more than enough room to grow more, for both of them, which was one reason we decided to stay and raise our children here. There’s future prospects to be had here, and as some of the earliest people around, we’d be in a good position to benefit from it. If not us, our children would.”
“That’s a clever way to look at it, I guess,” Áine admitted as she nodded to the merfolk woman’s words. The merfolk couple were pretty young by their standards, maybe only fifty to sixty years old, which was still a young adult as merfolks in general live up to two centuries normally. Given the growth of the port towns, it was extremely likely that greater development would take place during their lifetime.
While it might be a bit of a gamble, it was one that had high odds of returning one’s investments, especially since the couple had a part in helping cause the current growth of the lake and its port towns. As the area grew more prosperous the port towns would grow larger, perhaps into cities of their own, and the lake’s location would turn it into a major trade route as well.
“Where we were from, things were nice enough, but there’s been little change, you know what I mean, lass? Nothing much has changed there since my parents’ days, and their parents’, and so on. Things have grown to a stable point, you can say,” lamented the merfolk woman with a sigh. “Not saying it’s a bad place, but when you’re young, you tend to have higher goals, you know? Maybe it’s just in our nature to want to do better than what our old folks managed.”
“Which was part of why me and my man came here to work for the dwarves, I guess. The challenge was interesting enough, but more than anything, it was the chance of sowing down the seeds for what might be the next trade hub in the region that got us hooked,” she admitted. “Heh, back then our parents didn’t even agree with the idea, so the two of us just ended up running off on our own together.”
“Then somewhere along the way, running off turned to eloping, huh?” asked Celia with an intrigued look on her face.
“Well, that wasn’t too big a surprise, really. We’ve known each other since we were little brats, and here on this foreign land, we were pretty much the only one that the other knew well. One thing leads to another, you can likely guess for yourselves how, but yeah, a couple years later we just decided to get together,” said the merfolk woman. “Can’t say that it wasn’t a rather impulsive decision at the time, but it’s one neither of us regretted so far.”
“It’s rarely a bad choice, to have a distant outlook on life. They’re more likely to pay off in the long run than the short-sighted choices that prioritized immediate benefits,” noted Aideen with a nod of approval. “The short-lived people all too often make that mistake over and over despite having plenty of examples to learn from. Glad that your family learned some of the better parts of the dwarves you’re working with, at least.”
“Them dwarves might be stubborn, boneheaded lugs, but they know a thing or two about planning for the long run, yea,” admitted the proprietress with a smile. She then poured herself a mug of ale and lifted it up for a toast. “Here’s to future endeavors and profits.”
