I knocked on the door of the house and an old man answered it.
"Hello, I'm looking for William", I said.
"Believe you can find him feeding the animal out back", he said.
"Thank you".
When I found William I spent some time watching him from afar before he noticed me. When he did he smiled and ran over.
"I'm glad to see you here. I thought you weren't coming back", he said, a little breathless.
"I said I would", I said, a little too defensively. He shifted his feet uncomfortably.
"So, um, anyway, that's a nice dress you're wearing. Did you make it with that cloth you bought last time?"
"Thanks, and yes". I was glad he noticed.
"So, um..." William seemed to be struggling to think of something else to talk about.
"You said you'd help me sell my catch". I pointed to the two bundles I had laying at my feet.
"Oh, right. Well, let's go, then", he said, finding his focus again.
"What about feeding the animals?" I reminded him.
"Right, that. I'll finish that up right quick and then we'll go. Wait here, okay?"
Where previously he strolled around the yard and barn like he had all the time in the world, now he was running as if his shoes caught on fire. A few minutes later he ran back to me.
"Let's open these bags. I need to know what we're selling first". 'We'. I liked the sound of that.
Once William was done with his inspection he bundled everything up again, then took me on a tour of different homes, where he then haggled with owners and sold off my merchandise bit by bit. It took a few hours, but when we were done he took me back to his house.
"Thank you so much!" I exclaimed. "How did you manage to get so much money for them?"
William polished his fingernails on the front of his shirt, a self-satisfied smirk plastered over his face.
"It's all about knowing the customer. I know everyone around here, what they like, how they get it, how much they usually pay for it. All I had to do was deliver it to their door at a slightly lower price than usual, and it was an instant sale".
William was applying some of the same principles father used as a trader, but instead of working on the level of a village or province, he did it at the level of individual households. I was impressed. His efforts earned me nearly 2 gold coins, and he didn't even take a commission.
However, there was one thing that bothered me. Throughout the whole time I couldn't help but notice the eerie absence of beast-kin. I visited the village center twice, walked through the fields of many farmsteads, and now I visited about a dozen other farmsteads, and I've seen neither head nor tail of a single one of my kind. I haven't even smelled the faintest trace of their passing.
When I mentioned this to William he had a troubled look on his face. He led me further, behind the house, behind the barn, until we reached a strange formation. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was looking at the charred remains of a house. It was overgrown with moss, lichen, weeds, and vines. There appeared to be 3 tomb markers in a row in front of it.
"This is the house of our beast-kin", William said.
"What happened?" I whispered.
"When my dad was still a boy, about 30 years ago, a lot of beast-kin decided to get together to run away. Some of them really hated their masters and took the opportunity to also get some revenge. Most of the humans went crazy. They formed a mob and hunted down the slaves. There was fighting all over the place. A lot of the slaves managed to run away, but most of them were killed. Some of the humans were killed, too.
There were also a lot of beast-kin that chose to stay. They were too scared to run, or they liked their masters. That was how it was with Harry, Susan, and Harold over here. They said they loved grandpa and his family, and that they couldn't run with a baby anyway, so they hid and waited for things to calm down. They never did.
When the mob finished killing off all the slaves that rebelled and ran away they started going from house to house, killing all the loyal slaves that chose to stay. Within a few there wasn't a single beast-kin left alive in the whole village.
Grandpa and grandma tried to protect his beast-kin, but the mob didn't care. They pushed them aside and searched the whole farm and the area around it until they found them. They dragged them into this house and set it on fire, then stood guard to make sure they didn't escape while they burned them alive. Harry and Susan begged them to at least spare the baby, but nobody listened. After they were dead the mob left and grandpa, grandma, and their children pulled the bodies out of the house and buried them.
A lot of the villagers left after this. They couldn't tolerate living together with the people that killed their beast-kin, but grandpa said that this is his home and he won't let anybody drive him out and that the murderers should be the ones to leave, so we're still here.
After that the priests here started talking about beast-kin as if they're demons, and everyone in the area knows not to bring any beast-kin into our village because they'd get killed. If I didn't sometimes go to a neighboring village for trade or for matchmaking meetings, I'd have never seen one my whole life".
The whole time that William was talking I remained silent. I never heard of beast-kin being massacred. We'd get beaten, tortured, raped, even murdered, sometimes just for sport. I even heard that some of the extremely rich and powerful enjoyed eating beast-kin meat. However, exterminating all beast-kin was something new to me and shocking. I never even considered that humans would do something so wasteful, something that not only brought them no benefit or pleasure, but even hurt them economically.
I clasped my hands to hide my shaking. My mind was all a mess of conflicting thoughts that I couldn't make sense of, and I wanted to escape, to be alone to process what I just learned, but I didn't know how to extract myself from the situation without appearing suspicious. A human would likely not react as strongly as I was.
I followed William back to his house. He turned the corner around the barn when I heard a woman scold him loudly.
"There you are! I've been waiting for you all day to come fix the cabinets! What have you...oh".
She cut off when I stepped around the barn behind William. She was a fat woman of average height and her face was round and sported a double chin. She might have looked a lot like William if only she lost most of her weight.
"Well, anyway, please come take care of it soon. It's been driving me crazy", she continued in a calmer tone.
"I'll be there right away, mom", William replied. His mother turned and plodded her way back into the house.
"Sorry, but I have to go", William said. "Will I see you again soon?"
"Yes", I answered curtly, just wanting to get out of there to be alone.
"Well, bye, then", William said.
"Bye", I replied.
He turned around and headed into the house, while I turned away and headed back to my home.
