27th Trial, Cylus, 710a
Commercial Circle
Noon
Commercial Circle
Noon
His parents must have really hated him, to have named him "Mortimer" in a city like Etzos. A city where the Immortals weren't just shunned and dismissed, but outright hated and despised. Generation teaching generation to revile them not as gods or shards of the divine, but monsters, freaks, malice and greed made into unholy flesh and stalking the world, with but one goal.
To enslave man, and plunge all Idalos into darkness. And what did they call them, specifically because it sounds so disrespectful?
Morty. Thanks, Mum. Thanks, Dad. You pair of cunts.
"Hmm? Oh, sorry, sir..."
He covered his bitterness well, though. Someone one learned after forty years of the same insults, the same jeers, the same smirks plastered over the same faces. He'd grown thick skin and a quick mind, because he was always, in some way, under attack. Morty - never Mortimer, not even from his children - had found great focus in such constant, negligible abuse. It drove him to put himself above the multitudes of the Outer Perimeter, to get away into the ring fenced in by vast walls. As if there, in the Comm'See, he would find some kind of peace among the richer folks.
"Have a good one, Morty!"
"Um... yes, thank you."
Such was the plan, anyway. Unfortunately, his plans seemed to work just fine, apart from when they came to escaping his name. He'd even used his wife's family's name over the door of his shop, but still, Mortimer was followed by "Mortimer". He sighed and rubbed down his counter, sniffing at the selection he had flanking the space where he packaged orders and took payment. Still good, by the smell of it.
Brie and cheddar. Always pungent, you have to be careful. Can't hide the mold too well...
Another customer arrived, heralded by the ting-ting! of the bell above the door, and Morty greeted him with politeness, if not cheer. The man nodded halfheartedly in his direction and perused the shelves. Picked up some items here and there. Corn. Oats. Potatoes. A few cuts of beef. Bread. Until he was in front of the counter and looking down at slabs of orange and white and yellow. He pointed with a hand that was well-manicured, and callused from wrist to finger pads.
Hmm. Odd duck.
"Half a pound a' that."
"Right away."
Morty knew his business well, and didn't need to weigh cheese... but still did, of course. Full transparency, in front of the customer. He handled the cheese cutter with grace, never needing two cuts, wire slicing through the block of curdled, flavored milk with ease. But when he turned back around with a smile, hoping to find his customer doing the same-
The man was staring at the cutter. In a way that made Morty's smile freeze and then begin to die.
He'd seen lizards before. The kind that lived under the ground, in the endless miles of tunnels under the city. He'd seen the spiders, too. Big bastards, bigger than your hand, that skittered in terror away from you yet still haunted your dreams... and both reptile and insect had the same eyes. He remembered those eyes. Black and fathomless but not dull. Not stupid. There was an intelligence in them, alive and sharp as a razor. Not blinking, not distracted, just plotting in that simple, undeniable way a predator did.
Morty looked at the little man now, and saw that same expression settled over his face like a funeral shroud. He blinked, just once, slow and unhurried like a cat... and when his lids rose again, they hadn't shifted even a little.
"Um... sir?"
"What is that?"
"Um, it's your cheese, sir-"
"No." That finger stabbed out again, pointing to the cutter. "That. What is it?"
"It's a cheese cutter, sir." Morty blinked and a bemused smiled broke the ice that seemed to have frozen his face. "You... You've never seen one before?"
"No. How much for it?"
"I... You want to buy it?"
"Yes. Throw it in with everything else." When Morty didn't answer right away, the man plowed on. Determined look seeping into his shuttered expression. "You have another? A replacement?"
"Well, yes, but-"
"Good. How much?"
"I..." Morty's hesitation, his confusion, the fear that he couldn't quite nail down but could not deny, none of this got in the way of a singular fact: despite everything, he was an Etzori. That meant he knew when to snap up a bargain, and turn any discomfort into profit. Because so often, that was there the deal could be made. "Two gold nels."
The man blinked slowly, and nodded. A bit later, his purchases were bagged up, along with the wiped-down cheese cutter... and Morty grinned at the two gold eyes glinting in a handful of copper and silver coins. He looked up to give his great and profuse thanks, but the man was already out the door.
"Odd duck," he murmured, then shrugged and tipped the sale into his counter. "But who'm I to argue?"
