A Measure of Salt

At the salt stall, Danri, small and fair-haired, placed a pouch on the scales and waited. Tulra, her brown hair pinned up, checked the counterweight and then the bottom of the bag: a little hole was spilling pale grains between the boards. “You've lost goods before you've even sold them,” Tulra remarked, pointing to the white trail. Danri was about to object when she saw the strip of salt at her feet. She took another wrapper and transferred the contents under the customer's eyes. The weight was right again; the price stayed the same, since nobody had bought the salt dust scattered across the floor. “You could have sworn to me that the first bag was full,” the customer observed. “I could have,” Danri replied. “And you would have had to believe me.” At the end of the morning Tulra noted that the stall needed repairing. For once it was not a dispute between traders, merely a nail that needed driving back in.