Magic without a magic | Glowfic Constellation

"Can I get another price knockdown if I invest in fifty pills at once?"

"Hold on, let me do some math." She does some math. "Seventy seo for fifty pills. I won't go below that, I'm getting pretty close to ingredients cost now."

"Fifty it is."

"I've made twenty five so far, so twenty two are left. You want to pay half now and get them now, and pay half for the rest tomorrow, or just pay for the whole batch tomorrow?"

"Just bring them all tomorrow," says the surgeon. "I'll close for the day soon anyway."

"Do you want some aspirin as well? I sell those at eight pills to one seo. I'll give you a hundred for 10 seo if you agree to sell them at the same price."

"What do you care how much I charge for them?" blinks the surgeon.

"If you charge for more than they help, it might give aspirin a bad name."

"I could call 'em something else."

"Hm. Fine, I suppose. I still want you to tell people the safe doses and such, though. How many aspirin should I bring tomorrow?"

"Of course I'll tell them the safe doses," says the surgeon. "I'll just call them soothers or something. I'll take the hundred."

"So that's 80 seo total, for fifty morphine and a hundred aspirin. And notes on safe doses. I'll be back maybe two hours after sunrise. Have a nice night!"

"You too!"

Steel goes home and mixes medicine. The moon tonight is not quite full, hopefully nobody wants to risk losing Aelare's blessing by being too hasty - it'll work best if they all do it on the same night.

The next morning she's back at the surgeon's place with the pills, and copious notes on them.

And she receives money for them.

She leaves her address. "Pleasure doing business with you. Let me know when you run low."

Back at the shop, she looks at the record of sales and concludes that the sale of morphine means that the shop is now probably-profitable.

"Hey Aya, we are officially making more money than we spend. This calls for a bit of a celebration. Not that I don't like your cooking, but what's the nicest restaurant you know of?"

namesthesky

"The nicest? Probably the place by the pond at the edge of town. I think it's called Chef's Knife."

"I should clarify - the place with the best food, not the place with the fanciest decor."

namesthesky

"I have never personally tasted the food at any fancy restaurants. My guess would be the same, but you might have to ask someone else for firsthand accounts."

"Ah, yes, forgot about that. Thanks anyway. Maybe I'll skip it entirely. At any rate..." She glances around to see that the shop is currently empty, "Are any tattoo-removal-seekers waiting?"

namesthesky

"One will be back any minute. Another is around the corner rather than loitering in here, I'll get her." She goes and gets someone.

She unbinds the someone's tattoo, asks them not to spread it around too much, and repeats when the other guy comes back.

And she tells Aya, "I do things without thinking them through sometimes. It would be nice to have a check of sorts, so I know I'm not doing something wrong while thinking it's right. So." She describes the risks and benefits of morphine, if Aya didn't know them already from the notes. "Do you think it's unethical to deliberately inflate the price of potentially dangerous and addictive medicine so that it doesn't get used unnecessarily?"

namesthesky

"Unnecessarily meaning recreationally, or to stave off withdrawal symptoms after prolonged need for genuine pain relief?"

"I wanted to make the price high for a month or two and slowly lower it closer to what it actually costs to produce. This is meant to discourage people from using it recreationally. Drug abuse was a significant problem in some parts of the world from my memories. Withdrawal could be managed by steadily decreasing the dose."

namesthesky