Welcome Home – 3

Now that my house was a home, I found I had a lot of free time on my hands. I tracked down Auni, the kid obsessed with bugs, and got a dissertation on how to catch them using his homemade smoke bombs. Halfway through his breathless de***********ion of the various bugs that could be found in the valley, he said something that caught my attention.

“Sorry, back up a second, Auni. You said there are bugs that have medical effects?”

“Oh yes.” The kid beamed. “Those ones are worth the most. There’s a wasp in the high forests with a sting that paralyzes for a short time. Very useful for the doctors. There’s a moth that pupates in the rocks to the east. I think it has psy… psycho… active? Effects? The cocoons are valuable, but the adults won’t tell me what it’s used for. Every cocoon I collect sells almost immediately, though.”

“Huh. Interesting. Any idea where I could learn more about these bugs?”

“Check the library! I’ve got to go, Mr. Jack. I’ve got a lot of mail to deliver!”

My furniture was functional, but it would be nice to have chairs to sit in that didn’t give me splinters. I could upgrade my tools and workbench, but I’d much rather pay someone like Tina to make the furniture for me. For that, I needed money. I could make the most money from these special bugs, but I had to learn about them first. To the library, then.

The library, if you could call it that, was on the edge of town. I had passed it every time I ventured into Bening, but this was the first time I bothered stepping inside. Books and I don’t generally mix. I was met at the door by a stuffy librarian.

“You must be Jack,” she wrinkled her nose at me, and cast a disparaging look up and down. “You’re new, so I’ll give you the rules. Don’t take any books out of the library. Have clean hands before you read. And stay out of the forbidden section.”

I nodded along. “Sure. I’m here to learn about bugs. Unless that’s forbidden knowledge?”

The librarian sniffed. “Back aisle. Under E for entomology.”

I thanked her and followed her directions to the rear of the library. There were only a few books filed under entomology, and I flipped through them curiously. Along with decently-rendered woodcuttings, I found exhaustive uses for the various insects, but nothing about the moth cocoons.

There had to be more information somewhere. For a product in such demand, there had to be information available. Maybe it was forbidden. I leaned out of the aisle and checked for the librarian. She was deep in conversation with a villager, and not paying any attention to me.

Well, what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, right? I slipped across the aisle and stepped over the ropes sectioning off the forbidden section. The information here couldn’t be that forbidden, if the security was so lax. I scanned the shelves, searching for bug books, and found what I was searching for almost immediately.

“Insects and Their Creative Uses” was a thin journal, and a quick search through the pages turned up the rock moths. I scanned the entry and my eyebrows rose. The cocoons were psychoactive indeed, but the moths themselves had an additional side effect. They were both an aphrodisiac, but breathing in a dried and crushed moth made someone highly suggestive. It wasn’t surprising the villagers were only interested in the cocoons.

“Ahem! Mr. Jack, I explicitly told you to stay out of the forbidden section!”

I snapped the journal shut and turned to give the librarian a polite smile. “Sorry, is that what this is?”

“You climbed the ropes, didn’t you? It’s forbidden for a reason!”

“Sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“It certainly will not,” she huffed. “You are banned from the library!”

That seemed like an extreme reaction, but I had the information I wanted. I didn’t argue as she escorted me out of the library. Now that I knew what the rock moths were used for, I was more interested than ever.

It was getting late in the afternoon, but I didn’t have anything better to do. I set off to the east, heading toward the rocky cliffs that jutted up out of the forest. It was nearing sundown when the ground started climbing steeply upward. Boulders that had tumbled down from the cliff face studded the landscape. It seemed like a good place to find moths.

The sun set, and the moon rose before I saw so much as a flitting wing. Then, with moonlight flooding between the trees, I started seeing little flickers of movement. Moths were crawling out from cracks in the rocks and setting out to do whatever it was moths did.

It was easy enough to catch a few of them before they could get airborne. I trapped them in a scrap of cloth, and started the long journey back home.

The next morning, I woke up late, unused to the luxury of sleeping on an actual bed. I puttered about, making breakfast, while I debated what to do with the moths. It didn’t take a genius to know dosing someone with moth dust was unethical, but on the other hand, it wasn’t like I’d be ordering Kitana to do anything she wouldn’t do on her own.

The delicate moths hadn’t survived the trip home in my pocket, which was just as well. I crushed them to a paste and spread it out on a shingle to dry in the sun. I took a trip down to the pond to swim and get clean, and by the time I got back, the moth paste was dry and powdery.

Perfect. I felt myself starting to get hard as I contemplated what I would do with Kitana when she returned in two days. What I really needed was some proper furniture. Fucking the girl over the table was fun, but not particularly ergonomic for either of us. I wanted a way to tie her up properly, and that meant a saddle bench of some sort.

Back to woodworking, then. I had an idea of what I wanted in my head, but my limited experience in making furniture wasn’t allowing me to produce the results I wanted. My measurements were off, the angles weren’t lining up, and I couldn’t get anything smooth enough to avoid splinters.

Finally, frustrated with my lack of progress, I decided I needed help. It was evening when I made it back to town, and I found Tina outside her furniture shop, in the process of locking up.

“Hey, Tina!” I called to her. “I know you’re closing for the day, but I’ve got some furniture questions.”

The slim girl gave me a beaming smile. “I love furniture questions! How can I help?”

I opened my mouth, then realized there wasn’t any good way to describe what I was trying to build without also describing what I’d be using it for. “Um, it’s complicated,” I said lamely.

She gave me a sympathetic nod and rested her hand on my arm. “Woodworking can be like that,” she assured me.