Beneath the patched awnings of Zone Thirteen, Merrow weighed a clean piece of salvage as curious eyes gathered around his stall.
Timeline of Events
Morning: Aeloria begins his usual scavenging run along the edge routes of Zone Thirteen.
Late Morning: A useful, intact component is recovered from the outer rows.
Trade Period: Merrow and Aeloria negotiate over the component’s value while the market remains busy.
After the Sale: Aeloria leaves the trade rows and heads back towards the shack and Larn.
Fifteen and Two Smalls
Merrow eased the driver beneath the warped edge of an interface plate while trade pressed around his stall. Above him, the patched canopy snapped against its supports, shaking fine grit onto parts he had spent half an hour sorting. He brushed the dust aside with his sleeve, caught sight of Aeloria waiting beside a hanging sheet, and rested the driver against the workbench.
“Morning,” Merrow said, eyeing the young scavenger’s dusty shoulders. “You’ve come in late. Either the ground was generous or you’ve started taking your time.”
“The ground gave enough.” Aeloria adjusted his pack. “You were busy.”
“Busy enough to keep breathing.” Merrow glanced towards the bag, then back at Aeloria’s face. “How is your father holding up?”
“Same as before. He was awake when I left.” Aeloria gave the familiar answer, allowing the word father to pass as he usually did.
Merrow asked after Larn’s cough and reminded him about the filter frame he still had for sale. The old man would complain about the worn seal, of course. He could almost hear Larn explaining the proper value of something Merrow had spent good tokens recovering. Aeloria’s small smile told him the picture was shared.
Then the young scavenger drew a component from his pack, and Merrow’s amusement faded as its casing caught the grey light beneath the canopy. A fracture marked one seam and somebody had already prised the housing open, yet the wiring remained seated, the exposed assembly cleaner than anything Merrow had handled that morning.
“Where did you find this?” Merrow asked, turning the piece by its outer edges.
“Outer rows,” Aeloria replied, keeping the pack against his leg.
“That covers plenty of ground.” Merrow examined the exposed contacts. “What else have you got for me?”
Aeloria kept his hand near the table. “What will you give?”
At the neighbouring stall, a customer paused with a bundle of wire under his arm. Merrow recognised the small movement of the man’s eyes towards the clean casing and reached beneath the bench for his ageing scanner. Its damaged relay ticked while the display struggled to settle, giving him time to consider the fracture and the cost of a failed test.
“Fourteen,” Merrow offered, laying the scanner down. “The seam’s opened, and I carry the loss if the core fails.”
“Fourteen for that?” Aeloria leaned closer. “It was worth twenty.”
“Sealed, perhaps.” Merrow tapped the damaged seam with a fingernail. “Twenty if the contacts are sound and a buyer’s waiting. Fourteen is me choosing to stay fond of your father.”
Aeloria’s jaw tightened. “He wasn’t my father.”
Merrow met his gaze. He had been calling Larn that for years, and the correction still arrived whenever the young man felt cornered. “No,” he said gently. “Though he raised you all the same.”
Across the aisle, two men stopped with a heavy crate between them, trading quiet words while their eyes drifted towards the workbench. Merrow turned the component over, hiding its intact wiring from the aisle. Even ordinary scrap could draw an audience when somebody argued long enough; a casing this clean could keep the whole row talking.
Aeloria looked back from the aisle. “Seventeen.”
“Fifteen.” Merrow ran his finger along the split housing.
Aeloria kept his hand near the piece. “It’s clean.”
“It’s opened.” Merrow eased it towards himself. “Carefully, I’ll grant you. I still have to test it.”
The two men remained beside the stall, shifting their grip on the crate with surprising patience. Merrow saw Aeloria register them and understood that another round might gain a token while costing both of them the privacy of an ordinary exchange.
“Sixteen,” Aeloria said, his voice lower now.
Merrow reached for his token tin. “Fifteen and two smalls.” He counted out the larger discs and added two chipped pieces, leaving them in easy reach until Aeloria gave a nod and closed his hand around the payment.
“Tell Larn about the filter frame,” Merrow said, drawing the component behind the open interface unit. “And tell him that pack strap of yours is fraying badly enough to make me nervous.”
Aeloria glanced down at the worn leather near the buckle. “I’ll tell him.”
“And next time you find something that clean, keep the argument short.” Merrow picked up the driver again. “People get curious when they see you fighting over two tokens.”
Aeloria slung the pack onto his shoulder and took the outer line beyond the awnings. Merrow watched him pass between patched sheets and rusted supports until the crowd absorbed him. Then he turned back to the interface unit, working the driver beneath its stubborn edge while dust gathered again where the clean component had rested.
An unusually clean piece of salvage lay beside the worn trade tokens on Merrow’s workbench, the remains of a bargain that had attracted too much attention.
Inspiration Behind the Story
The most revealing moments in a speculative world often happen long before anything extraordinary announces itself. In Zone Thirteen, survival depended on small judgements: how much a damaged component might fetch, whom a trader trusted, and whether the price of something included the attention it attracted.
I wanted to explore that everyday economy through Merrow, a man whose livelihood required a keen eye for salvage and an understanding of the people passing his stall. His familiarity with Aeloria and Larn offered a glimpse of relationships built through repeated exchanges, private worries and dry humour.
The market also allowed the damaged human world to feel inhabited, where discarded technology still held value, ordinary people carried their own concerns, and even a simple bargain could reveal the unspoken rules of survival.
Next Chronicle: Blue Fire Across the Zone
Beyond the crowded trade rows of Zone Thirteen, a gathering storm swept across the abandoned industrial outskirts, carrying dust through the ruins of an electrical network that had stood silent for years.
At a patched relay station, a lone lookout struggled to keep his equipment working as strange fluctuations spread through the surrounding pylons. Familiar faults gave way to readings he could scarcely believe, and the approaching storm threatened to expose something far more troubling than another failure of the Zone’s ageing machinery.
Related Book or Series
Fifteen and Two Smalls takes place during the opening events of The Chronicles of Aeloria: Zone Thirteen, where a young scavenger survives among broken technology, salvage markets and the dangers of attracting attention. Discover the wider mythic science-fantasy story in The Chronicles of Aeloria
