The Teacup Rebellions

[catch]

They were small things. Like teacups.

They wanted to gossip about the fires. Terrible things, they were. And did you see the poor Jacobson girl, as the healers led her away? Such a pretty face. Made even prettier by the addition of her golden scales. Melted onto her skin, they say. Well. Once the puffiness and the seepage cleared, they hoped, she would be as radiant as ever, as beautiful as ever, especially with those scales-

Jorn wasn't a man who dealt in tea. His custom was usually the dour farmsmen, weary after a day's work. Plentiful with coin, of course. His bar, and his custom, were not foul or ruined by money-scrimping techniques. His men, and women, just weren't much in the mood for anything but ale, or a quick pie or two, or - sometimes - quiet parties of bent heads and mumbling of breeding-stock, the rain, the harvests.

That all had changed.

It started with one person, at first. Wanted tea instead of ale. He had to send the serving-girl out to his Lady's house to get a bag of it. Then another. And another. His alehouse was, now, full of silks and cravats, fine dress, and her rafters hung with gossip and laughter. Jorn wasn't certain he approved of the change. The old farmsmen, the most stubborn, still came and had a pint or two, but they spent their time glowering and scowling at the riotous noise.

"Not much a feller c'n do, Gaffer," Jorn had said to one complaint, his voice thick with regret, even with the heavy till-box that rang with coin every night. "S'not like I c'n kick out erryone who dresses pretty. Can't even kick out everyone which orders tea, c'n I? I got a business t'run." A sudden, lucrative business, and while a lot of that coin went for better clothes for he and his staff, and a nice dress for the missus, and some fripperies for their house that she had always wanted, much of it went back into the business. It went for polished, wooden floors. It went for a little dancing area, tacked onto the side of the building. It went for daintier tables and chairs, ones that did not need to be sturdy to prevent them breaking over some drunkard's head.

It went for tea.

Jorn handed off the keys to his serving-girl with a great yawn, scratching his rear as he came around to the shed he kept most of the goods in, the things that wouldn't spoil from a day or two out in the elements. Mostly it had been spare chairs, broken bits that he always meant to fix, grain and barley and potatoes for stew. Nowadays, it held tea, barrels of the stuff. And he knew something was wrong when he picked up the nearest on, and great, blast of rot came sweeping back into his flaring nostrils.

He almost dropped the barrel on his foot. It was heavy, in a way tea wasn't meant to be. After catching a breath of cleaner, sweeter air, he pries open the lid, already knowing what he'd find; a mess of wet, rotting, foulness that clotted the barrel. The wood, 'round the back, had been neatly riddled with holes. All it had taken was a bit of water in the right place, and -

Every barrel was like that. With growing dread, Jorn took out ever barrel, looked inside them, even knowing what he would find.

And towards the back, when the future of tea came to the past of chairs broken in brawl, he found a crudely-carved teacup, the sort of thing an old man, mediocre at whittling, his hands shaking in bitterness at pretty silks and head-spinning gossip, would make.

Just one teacup.