The Teller of Small Fortunes

by Julie Leong

And I don’t really feel any different, just less ignorant of the world around me, I suppose. I’m still the same person, more or less. I thought that perhaps leaving Shellport would…change me, in some meaningful way?” “I think you have changed,” said Tao. “In enough small ways that you just don’t quite notice it while it’s happening, but then you look in the mirror one day, and you’re altogether different. That’s how it was for me, anyway.”

“There is something liberating about traveling, isn’t there?” said Kina. “I’ve felt it since we left Shellport—only knowing where we’re going next, but not where we’ll end. The open road ahead of you—it’s a little scary, and a little wonderful.” Silt nodded back at her. “It’s also easier to enjoy it when you’ve not left anything behind worth missing.

The statute might harm only the pockets of the wealthy merchant class now, but—as she had heard a sailor say once—shit seemed to have a way of trickling down. Economics, they called it.

He looked at Mash in befuddlement, who simply shrugged back—the universal symbol of men who have failed to understand something very important.