The Metaphorager.

ALL GOOD THINGS MUST EVENTUALLY be replaced, though not without some effort or expense – so Prosatio Silban discovered on a cloudy summer’s day in stony-hearted Tirinbar, whose inhabitants were the most reputedly avaricious in the Uulian Commonwell’s Three Cities and Thousand Villages.

To be precise: the beefy cook’s beloved, six-burner fatberry-oil cookstove with the dented chimney pipe suffered a rather fiery demise due to his having pushed the ancient equipment’s limits once too often. He was in his galleywagon preparing separate breakfasts for a handful of different customers (marbled eggs, poached eggs, eggs over easy, 180-heartbeat eggs, sausages, and root-hash, each accompanied by various types of oven-toasted bread), when all at once he was dumping frantic handsful of sand on leaping flames and trying to keep the adjacent bulkhead from igniting. The latter effort was largely successful, but the range itself (not to mention the food) was a complete loss.

Read more →

IT IS SAID THAT WERE it not for the leather-lunged hawkers of epicurean Pormaris, the sun would not know when to awaken. But whether or not that’s as true as it sounds, the great island-city’s markets are indeed its economic heart.

Before they open, however, they must be supplied. Sturdy fisherfolk, each armed with breakfast-pail and lantern, constellate like fireflies along the docks and jetties at Pormaris’ southern edge. They climb aboard small craft, some mounted with triangular sails, others with only oars, and fan out across the vast iridescent Teardrop Lake in a web of light, alert for finny treasure.

Read more →

FROM THE INEXORABLE RULES OF mercantile interplay comes the inescapable principle: “There’s Always One.”

“With what may I please you?” Prosatio Silban asked the stoop-shouldered man sitting down at one of two tables-and-chairs in the lee of the beefy cook’s galleywagon. The portable venue was assembled in one of cosmopolitan Soharis’ livelier marketplaces, and the milling morning crowd had promised – and delivered – a variety of hungry (and moneyed) clientele. Take the present customer: long in years, dapper of dress and mannerism, but wearing a face creased by a thousand petty disappointments.

Read more →

THERE ARE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES to every collegial association: protective fellowship on one hand, and tedious bureaucracy on another. And as a more-or-less “free spirit,” Prosatio Silban sometimes found it a difficult balance.

The beefy cook was also a Freehander – a member of the Uulian Commonwell’s fluid middle class, those who profit by their own labor. He was happy and content to be both, as they respectively provided him with autonomy and social standing. Thus, he was surprised (and a bit taken aback) by a gnarled Cook’s Guild auditor late one busy afternoon in the village of Tollingdrum.

Although his visitor wore the same traditional green apron as Prosatio Silban – a symbol of the Commonwell’s cooking sector – the latter did not know exactly who he was until after offering his signature greeting, “With what may I please you?”

“You may please me by shutting down operations,” the Guild representative announced in an authoritative baritone. “At once.”

Read more →