Juno’s savings had grown to the point where keeping them in a jar under his bed was starting to make him a little nervous. He didn’t have much choice about it. Being an outsider in Oba, he didn’t exactly trust the banks; the whole idea sounded rather odd to a nomad. Besides that, well... he’d met some fairly decent folks who lived in houses more secure than his little rented room, but he didn’t feel that he knew any of them well enough to ask for favours. He wasn’t entirely sure if he trusted them, anyway.
To be honest, it was an awful way to feel. Juno didn’t normally worry about that sort of nonsense, but this little stash of money was his ticket to bigger things. Still, it wasn’t the money that mattered, it was what he could get with it. He found himself feeling eager to get rid of it, and promised himself that he’d stop penny-pinching (and throwing suspicious looks to the kids who hung around in the courtyard) when it was finally and properly gone.
With this in mind, he headed over to Lana’s workshop to see if anything interesting had come in. Lana was a local craftswoman renowned for her gorgeous wagons -- the sorts of carts rich Oban merchants would buy to ply their trade (or used to buy, at least, until the bandits got brave enough to target them). She built them out of curved, carved and polished wood, often custom to her clients’ specifications, and painted them with the bright reds and gold leaf finishes so popular here. They were beautiful things -- and far, far out of his budget.
She did, however, occasionally get old wagons returned back to her when their owners had no need for them (or had moved on to a newer and shinier model). After doing some quick restoration work, she’d sell these off at a fraction of their original cost to folks like him. But you had to catch her at the right time. These opportunities didn’t come too frequently, and oftentimes a cart would be spoken and paid for before the restorations were even completed.
But today… today seemed promising. He rounded a tall fence and turned into the work-yard, his eyes immediately settling on a particular wagon off to the side. It was clearly an old one, with a red canopy that was faded almost to pink, and the paint peeling off the wooden sides. But this was exactly the sort of thing he was looking for, so he made a beeline towards it with a jingle in his pocket and a determined gleam in his eyes.
Peppermint Coffee
