It didn't occur to me, gold was a very precious metal. Not because it was pretty but because it had a whole lot of uses. And this world wasn't an exception.
Not only was gold used as jewelry by the upper-class people but magicians and sorcerers often used gold as a catalyst for various spells. And yes, I hadn't seen them because most of them were in service of kings or churches or famous rich people….
Anyway, just 1 cold coin was enough to provide ration for a bachelor for up to 1 whole month. Aka, it was worth about a thousand bucks.
And Den blew two grand on me and my book hunting.
How I knew this? He told me of course! Well, not me specifically. But he told Mom; or was forced to. Mom brought us outside, made us hold or rather pull our own ears and just stand in the sun and reflect. It was sort of chilly today, so the sun actually felt pretty good.
Well, this was a weird sort of punishment.
But I kind of felt relieved she wasn't spoiling me rotten. I wanted to be spoiled sure, but I didn't want to randomly pick up the habit of spending money frugally. Especially other peoples' money. This was a nice reminder. I felt shit though, and awfully embarrassed.
Why?
Because we had visitors… Lyra and Lia had come to visit and they were peeking at us from the window….
Sigh.
Fuck.
***
Mom gave me a lecture on money.
She was holding it back till I reached my fifth birthday when she would have started giving me an allowance. So, she really was keeping track of my birthday?
Anyway, the values are as follows.
1 Gold= 10 Silver
1 Silver = 10 Copper
If 1 gold was 1 grand, then 1 silver was 100 bucks and 1 copper was 10 bucks. They even had a minor currency called small iron which was valued 10 times less than the large copper so 1 dollar. And yes, apparently, things were really expensive in this world, especially books.
I felt shit about making Den buy me the book. But the dude bought me out of sheer pride!
Anyway, we both promised we'd be careful about money and mom agreed to give me a monthly allowance of 1 copper. She also confiscated the book for safe keeping till I learned my lesson.
Shocker….
***
"I'm not letting the two you roam unsupervised anymore," Mom said, pouring us some soup.
Den gulped but- "Did you make anything other than soup?"
We didn't have a large table, so we all came outside and just sat on stools while Mom handed us bowls.
"No."
Den didn't say anything else.
"Do you even know how to cook anything else, Lin?" Lyra asked.
Mom said nothing. For the first time I actually saw her blush in shame. Okay so, my assumptions were not off the mark. She really didn't know how to cook.
'Yet she learned how to cook meat soup just for me.' Because I always complained the soup was bland and stuff… 'Maybe I'll complain some more.'
"Is 1 gold coin, really a lot of money?" Lia asked.
Birds chirped quite a lot today. Wait, actually there were birds I hadn't seen before; rather fat and white. Winter birds? Was it winter somewhere else?
"Yes dear, remember those large pineapples daddy brought you? They cost 2 copper each. You could probably buy hundreds of them with a gold coin," Lyra said. Was it me or had her stomach swollen considerably?
Hmm… I'd say, she was at least 6-7 months in.
"But he bought a book…" Lia stared at me as though I was stupid or something.
Yeah, I didn't blame her. I was pretty stupid myself.
"Mom… I want to learn a new language," I said.
The two most used languages were the Western Tongue and the Southern Tongue. There were also two minor languages, Demon Tongue and the Sea Tongue but since most people knew at least one of the main two languages, people didn't bother learning the other ones. Though I had a feeling it had more to do with looking down on those people, than anything else.
"You already know the Western tongue," she said.
"Yes, but I don't know how to read it…"
She stared at me, almost conflicted. "Read and then what? What will reading anything get you? I say practice with Den and-" She paused, sighed once. "You just want to learn how to read Western Tongue, right?"
It was almost as though she was afraid….
"Yes…"
She eyeballed Den for a few seconds. "Alright. I'll talk to Zena."
All this time, Lyra was giving me quite the smirk but she hadn't said a word.
But yeah, I really did piss off Mom. And I had to properly apologize otherwise things were only going to get worse.
After lunch, Lyra and Lia left. They'd come to see how I was doing and check on Lin. Once they were gone, Den also left, giving me the perfect opportunity to help Mom clean up and have a proper conversation.
"I didn't know," I said. "I'm sorry."
"I'm not mad at you for not knowing. I'm mad at you because you didn't even tell me you were going. And when you went there, you just-" She sighed. "I thought you were smarter than that… but I'm sorry too. I didn't mean to punish you like that." She finished cleaning up, washed her hand, dried it and then picked me up in her embrace. "Money is the basis of life but it also leads to corruption and hellish times. I don't want you to become a conceited idiot who doesn't know the inherent value of things and misuses trust."
I kept quiet. I didn't really know what to say. I'd messed up, but it wasn't my fault. But some bits of it were my fault. And that hurt her.
It hurt Den.
It hurt… me too.
"But let this be a learning experience," Mom smiled. "So, you don't mess up in the future."
"Right!"