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They're Everywhere

Sun Jan 05, 2020 7:31 am

It occurred to Medjen Ott, as he purchased one of Magda Kaczmarek's prize-winning pies at the market for the seventy-sixth month in a row, that there were suddenly a lot of Kaczmareks, and that they were everywhere.

He'd met Karol and Magda shortly after Cinnabar Calomel's purchase of the old farm up the ways. There'd been quite a lot of them, then, even though some had perished in the Flux and the Ashfiend's attack (and didn't that make him feel old, to think of those horrible days). Since then, he'd watched their eldest son, Piotr, marry and purchase a farm of his own; their second son, Dominik, become the master mason who saved the Meetinghouse; Agnieszka -- well, everyone knew her. He bought his bread from Giertruda at the bakery, his meat from her husband Krais at the butcher's, and avoided the teahouse run by Petronela, because, well, his wife would positively kill him if he went in, and Medjen Ott was no idiot.

But it occured to him, as he went about his day, that they'd... multiplied.

There was a Kaczmarek married to a cooper, one running the blacksmith, a few in the city guard; one married to a falconer, and another to a butcher. One was a scribe, and another married to the daughter of a town magistrate. There were Dominik's two bastards, as well. It occurred to him that wherever he went, he saw little Kaczmareks doing all sorts of things. And there were always more little Kaczmareks.

In fact, he might have thought, if he was a thinking type of man, that Karol and Magda might be making sure they had at least one Kaczmarek with a hand in each and every single one of Myrken Wood's industries. A child apprenticed to a clerk; a child working with a long-distance trader; a child learning herbalism and one learning to brew. A bard. A forester. A ropemaker. A locksmith. That there were some very interesting buildings going up at Piotr's farm.

But Medjen Ott wasn't really a thinking man. He thought of how successful the family was, wished his own children were just as industrious, sniffed the pie, shrugged, and moved on home.

After all, the pie was very, very good.
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