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Aethze
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Tales of a Roving Trader, Chap. 1: The First Delivery

Tales of a Roving Trader, Chap. 2: The Bayou
trtchap1.doc
Keywords husky 28258
Tales of a Roving Trader

Chapter 1: The First Delivery


Opening his eyes Mawti awoke from a deep sleep, awakened by the cold of the room around him on his feet, exposed from under his warm blankets. He quickly pulled his feet back under the covers and smiled with the comfort of the warmth. He then looked around the dim room, lit only by the light of the early morning coming through the small slit between the shutters of his inn room’s window. "Just another average, cold day." he thought miserably. Though he was accustomed to the cold from living in the North for his entire life, he never did like weather of his homeland. Deciding that he should get up to see what time it was and get something to eat, he pulled his covers off from himself, feeling only slightly the cold through his light brown fur. Quickly he pulled a white shirt and rough brown leather pants from the backpack that sat beside the wood frame, straw mattress bed and pulled them on and doing the same with his heavy leather and fur boots. He then stood and stretched his thin, slightly muscular, Husky limbs to ward off the stiffness of sleep, and scratched his head and chest as he moved slowly toward the door of his room, opening it with a quiet creak of the cold, iron hinges. Walking down the narrow hallway of the upper level of the inn toward the stairway, his boots making a quiet thud with each step, he felt the air starting to feel warmer from the fire that was burning in the fireplace of the tavern on the main level. He walked down the stairs and looked around at the neatly organized tables and chairs in the large room. There were only two other individuals in the room, the innkeeper, a jolly, but quick witted arctic fox that was always prideful of his cooking and with whom Mawti had become friends over the past couple of days, and a small, brightly colored avian who must have come in the night before, sitting at the closest table to the fireplace. Mawti walked up to the bar and sat on one of the stools in the middle.

"Good mornin' Mawti!" exclaimed the innkeeper in his normal happy, somewhat nasally voice, "What can I get for ya?"

"Good morning Tal, I'll just have the usual" replied Mawti.

"Aye, the breakfast pie is very good this mornin', if I do say so myself." said Tal as he cut a piece out of the pan, putting it onto a plate then setting it in front of Mawti. He walked toward the fireplace with a steel cup to get Mawti's coffee and mentioned, "Coffee's startin' to get expensive, I bet those plantation owners down south are makin' a killin'."

"Yeah, but you never know what's happening, and shipping costs are never very regular." contended Mawti, continuing the small talk.

"So, what ya gonna be doin' today?" inquired Tal, setting the coffee down next to Mawti's plate.

"Well, actually, I'm going over to the Continental Courier office to start doing deliveries for them" replied Mawti, through a mouth full of breakfast pie.

"Really, so you're gonna be gone for a while, eh?" asked Tal in a jokingly sad tone.

"Yeah, but don't worry, I'll be sure to come back and visit when I can." said Mawti, smiling.

After finishing his breakfast and talking some more at the bar with Tal, Mawti went back to his room to gather up his things. Putting everything away and getting his heavy coat and pants on he walked back downstairs, waved goodbye to Tal and walked out the door into the street. By this time the weather had changed from clear and sunny to a full blown snow storm, as it usually does on the southern coast, from being right on the water and having the tundra and glaciers just to the north. The wind was blowing hard and the snow stung Mawti's eyes as it blew in his face making him squint hard. Through the curtain of snow he could barely see more than two buildings down the ice covered cobbled stone street of Trepenabsats. Slowly walking with his shoulder to the wind he made his way down the main street to the Continental Courier building. When he arrived he quickly opened the door and slipped inside. It was much warmer in the building, so he unclipped the front of his coat to keep himself from getting too hot and walked up to the counter to talk to the dog behind it. After telling of his appointment Mawti was pointed to a door next to the end of the counter and told to talk to the woman at the desk in the next room. As he made his way through the door he was greeted by a cheerful, young black squirrel.

"Oh, hello! I'm Tini, and welcome to the Continental Courier Company! You must be Mawti. Please feel free to take your coat off." she said cheerfully, then stood up and walked to the door behind her, opening it and sticking head inside for a few seconds, then turning back to Mawti she said with a smile, "Alrighty, go on in."

Mawti walked through the door into a small room with shelves filled with various ledgers and other books along the walls, and a desk covered in parchment and writing supplies in the middle. At the desk sat a polar bear obviously frustrated with the work he was doing. "Take a seat, this won't take long", he said gruffly in a low growl.

Mawti quickly sat in the small wooden chair in front of the desk. "After five years of this I still can't believe that there is this much paperwork to do around here", said the bear partially to himself, then putting his attention back to Mawti, "My name is Houlook, I'm the head of this entire region for the Continental Courier Company and also the manager of this town's office. As you can see I'm very busy so I'll hurry this along. Basically all you need to know is how you do deliveries. All you do is go to the front desk at any office, tell them that you are an employee and show them your identification card that you'll get from Tini when we're done. They will give you a package or some letters, and information about where the order will go. When you deliver the order you will be paid then you can get another, got it? Good. Now get out of here so I can finish my work." he said hurriedly, but stern.

Mawti stood up and walked out of the room without saying a word the whole time. Closing the door behind him, he was again greeted by Tini, "So, I assume everything went well, he didn't hurt'cha too much did he?" she laughed, "Don't worry about him, he doesn't like having to do those little meetings, but it's company protocol and all, and Houlook always does everything by the book. He's not always so gruff and tough, when he has his work done he's usually a real sweetie." she said moving from her desk to a small cabinet, and searching though some of them, "Well, I'll just get your card... here it is, and as Houlook told you just go up to the front desk and tell them you are ready for a delivery. Well, I guess that's it, good luck out there." she said while quickly wrapping her arms around Mawti in short hug.

"Umm, thank you." Mawti replied, a little surprised by the sudden embrace, and Tini giggled at his startled response.

Mawti returned to the front room of the office and spoke with the dog at the counter again, but this time showing the company card he had just received. The dog bent down and pulled a leather bag with the Continental Courier Company logo on it and small envelope from under the counter and handed it to Mawti. Mawti thanked him and turning around broke the red wax seal with his right index claw. He pulled the small piece of paper from its envelope and read it. A small bag of letters to be delivered to the Bayou office. "Hmm... Bayou," thought Mawti pulling out his brown leather bound notebook with a map and all of the information he had gained from reading his brother's letters. Flipping through the pages he finally got to the page labeled Bayou. His brother had written that they liked the northern smoked and dried meats in the swamp isle, "Sounds like I should take get some jerky from a shop in town. Won't net me too much profit I figure, but if nothing else it’s a start for my trading career," he supposed. Sticking the note in the front cover of notebook and buttoning up his coat again he opened the door to the street and walked out. It hadn't been but 10 minutes in the office and the snow had stopped, however the sky remained as a grey roof above the city and sea beyond it and the wind continued to blow fiercely off the water. There were still very few people on the street even though the snow had stopped and most were just stepping outside to clear the white drifts from in front of their doors. Mawti walked through the crooked streets as he made his way toward the shops and warehouses near the harbor. He found a small warehouse from which he could buy some goods. With some of his small amount of gold, he bought enough jerky to fill the remaining space in his pack, thanked the manager and left for the dock house to arrange for passage on a ship to Bayou. The dock house was a large three level building that provided a cheap room and meals for sailors and merchants who were staying in town for the night, and the manager was also the harbormaster and managed all of the comings and goings of ships into and out of the harbor with the help of his enforcers. He made Trepenabsats one of the safest ports in the entire world, free from pirates, smugglers, and their ilk, unlike so many others, and if it were not for the location on the southern edge of the northern peninsula, it would have been one of the largest in the world as well.

Mawti walked into the dock house and was greeted from behind the front desk by the harbormaster himself, "'Ello there! Ye needin' a bed o'are ye lookin' to go somewhere?" he called in gravely but buoyant voice.

Mawti walked up to the counter, "I'm looking to make a trip to Bayou."

"Ah, yer workin' fer the CCC, now are ye?" said the harbormaster, noticing the leather sack hanging around Mawti, "Well well then, let's see what we've got." he opened the log in front of him, "Hmm, there'll be a ship leavin' in jus a coupla hours, go down to the dock and find the Turbulent Wind, I'm sure they'd be glad ta take ye."

"The Turbulent Wind?" Mawti questioned, "The name doesn't inspire too much confidence for smooth sailing."

"Well, ye'll be in fer some rough travel goin' out, the sea's been a bit angry today, but don't worry, I know the captain, he's one of the best in a storm, and a nice fella to boot." said the harbormaster reassuringly.

Mawti thanked him for the help and made his way down to the dock. Just a few ships down the row he saw Turbulent Wind carved into a wooden plaque on the bow of one of them. There were men and women of all types furiously loading cargo, making repairs, and doing other work to get the ship ready for sailing. One man stood out from the rest, a tall otter, who was distinguished not just from his dress that consisted of a blue captain’s jacket with gold buttons and tassels on the shoulders, tan dress pants of a fine material, and fine leather boots, an outfit obviously purchased from an expert clothier, but also from the way he carried himself and confidently called orders to the crew.

Mawti quickly walked toward him and asked in a slightly elevated voice to be heard over the wind blowing in of the sea and the shouts of the sailors, “Are you the captain of this ship?"

The otter replied in the same confident tone as before, "Yes. The name's Velvalo Arelos, what can I help you with?"

"I would like to buy passage to Bayou, if you have the space.” said Mawti.

"Of course! If you've got the gold then you've got yourself a trip!" Velvalo said happily. After a short negotiation of the price Mawti handed over the agreed amount of gold and Vevalo said, "Alright, get your things together and get onboard, my first mate will show you to your bunk." Mawti followed the much shorter otter first mate up the plank onto the ship; this was the beginning of a great adventure.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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by Aethze
This is the first story in a new series that I'm writing, I wrote this a little while ago and I am uploading it here. All comments and critiques are greatly appreciated. If you like it, please leave a comment and keep reading the stories as I make them.

Keywords
husky 28,258
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 12 years, 5 months ago
Rating: General

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