//------------------------------// // 11. I Am Doing Business. // Story: The Little Wooden God // by Apophis797 //------------------------------// Well, it took a lot of work but I'm officially up to 10 , even after the couple I spent on food. It's not a lot of money but I think I've improved over the last few days of work to the point where at least one of those sales was to someone who liked the little figure. They're still not good, mind you, but I could see someone putting one on their desk. I'm also getting a handle on numbers by pointing at things so the shopkeeper tells me the price and then reading the sign and watching how much people pay for them. I still don't know where to buy most things but there's a reason I always set aside a couple hours for exploration. On the subject of exploration I've managed to find some more old, abandoned buildings. They're all a decent ways from my current base of operations and most are pretty out of the way but it looks like, at some point in the relatively recent past, the city started making less and importing more. Makes sense considering how all the really big businesses I've seen looked like either offices or real high end places. It's just not profitable to make things like building materials here anymore. A side effect of this, however, is an abundance of old industrial equipment and material. Nearly all of it isn't actually in working order anymore and I'd likely kill myself if it was but I found an old brick company with quite a few old bricks still in storage. More than enough for, say, a small oven. The hard part is going to be moving them all back to my warehouse. My knees still aren't in the best shape and I can't say I've been eating all that well so I'll leave that for fall when I start needing the heat. There hasn't been much progress on the chimney, even if I found the right size and shape of piping there'd be no way to drag it across the city, but I have been putting some thought into it and I think I can cut down on the length requirement by a lot without too much work. It seems like a lot of these buildings, presumably those meant to have people in them in the winter, have a small chimney sticking out of the back corner. The roof slopes at an angle and if I poked a hole in it near the edge, then piped the smoke up through that, it would be in about the same position. It wouldn't look good, exactly, but I think it'd be okay from the ground. On the less long term front I think a good step up would be to get some paint. I'm no artist so I'll leave painting the figures themselves for now but I think I can get some cheap paint for a couple bits. With that and a rag I'll be able to make a marginally more proper looking sign. I'd also like to make a table at some point, I have all the necessary woodworking tools, but I'd also need to build a sufficiently sturdy chair since there's no way I'm spending the whole day on my feet. A blanket and a sign is fine for now. _/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_ Why is paint this expensive? I can't say I've ever bought it before but it took nearly half my bits just for a little tin of black that fits in my pocket. It was more than enough for a proper sign though. If I'm not mistaken it should say "1 bit" in the local language and the lines aren't great but it seems decent. Not sure what it'll do for sales but at least the price will be obvious. It'll take me a pretty long while to make it back though so I should probably find something to do with the rest of the paint, just so my efforts aren't entirely wasted. I may not have any proper brushes or all that much painting talent but thinking about it I could probably still use the paint and one of the thinner nails for shading and accents. Point-on for pupils and side-on to add things like creases or fill in little gaps or shadows. Actually bring some added value to go along with the sign. I'll try it on a few of the ones I haven't sold yet and see if they sell any better. _/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_/|\_ Well hot damn, it turns out people are way more into buying things when they look decent and they know how much they cost. I'm still not doing amazing but at this pace I could probably manage as many as ten bits per day on a good day. We'll see if it keeps up. I decided to treat myself a little and get a donut for a few bits, and can I say it was the best damn donut I've ever had, but I'd like to save the rest. I don't think it'll keep up once the weather gets colder and there are fewer people on the streets. Hopefully I'll be selling to rich ponies by that point but it's best not to get my hopes up. Towards that end I haven't looked around the wealthier areas too much but I have picked up a bit of the language. I can't hold a conversation yet but total immersion works surprisingly quickly, even for someone like me who only interacts with ponies for a few hours a day. My short list of things to get started with is done and I've got a decent number of nouns down outside that, to the point where I can almost get that slow basic language that condescending people use when they don't think you speak their language. That, plus the few basic sentence structures I have down, means I can probably communicate with a pony if I have to, albeit slowly and basically. One possible path to learning more moving forwards is the local university, that unicorn mare from my interrogation was a professor so it's likely they have one, since if they've got something like an anthropology department it'd likely be pretty interested in something like me. I'm just a bit worried some of them might be inclined to view me as a test subject, especially if it comes out that I'm an alien. On the one hand I'd like to at least wait until I know the language a bit more and I've got a proper business going so I seem more like a citizen and less like an outsider. On the other hand it's probably my best bet at learning the language as quickly as possible. If anything they're at least liable to have experts and books on the subject, although they might skew a little advanced for... I just remembered libraries existed. God knows how I've managed to survive this long with a memory like that. Any city as large and wealthy as the middle district is likely to have a library of some kind and any library is likely to have kids books just for learning the language. It might be a bit more expensive here but at my local library a membership only cost what, like $20 per year? I could make that in a few days if it's not too far off and that was only for checking books out. Reading them was normally free. I have got to figure out where the library is because once I do I'll have the whole kindergarten-level literacy thing in the bag.