OPEN i don't (don't want no) want no (no knockoff)

[VALE]

graphic gore ★ genderpunk ★ three-eyed fox

Vale eyed the vampire buying a chicken, then glanced at Hayward. “Y’all have currency?!”

“Obviously?” Hayward blinked. “Wait. So the Descendants of the Departed have a barter economy?”

Vale squinted at Hayward. “Yeah, barter works?! Currency is for capitalists to control a large swath of idiots using coin.”

“Yeah, exactly!” Hayward grinned. “Superior form of government compared to divine right of kings, you know? The best entrepreneurs become kings!”

Vale blanched. This mercenary thought exactly like Meteor, but Meteor was smart and clever. Hayward… fuck, Vale thought Meteor would make a stable leader of an empire in twenty years. But Hayward? By Requiem, Hayward might accidentally fuck the Horde’s economy trying to make himself rich. The idiot had no long-term thinking. And that was obvious to Vale.

Thankfully, Hugo initiating conversation meant Vale didn’t have to respond to Hayward. Vale nodded to the lynx. “I’m looking for laying hens. Ugh, egg whites are, like, a weird ingredient for paint?! I’m tired of paying an arm and a leg for eggos when I can have plenty of entertaining chickens as useful pets!”

“Aye, if you’re not going to eat the meat?! I’ll take it?!” Vale’s right eyelid twitched. Xe trotted up to the chicken. Sitting back on xyr haunches, the fox chomped on the chicken and grumbled about feathers in between bites.

These vampires and their food waste… ugh… if only it were economical to drag all the chicken corpses and such to the Big Island, but they’d probably start to rot. There had to be some entrepreneur who turned exsanguinated livestock into jerky… ugh, but then that’d require c u r r e n c y. Vale sighed dramatically, “Goddammit flying here was soooo exhausting.”

Vale blinked and palmed xyr temple. Goddamn, maybe xe should’ve refused Meteor’s request. Sending a feral artist to a big population center to buy thirteen laying hens?!  When Vale didn’t even know what the hell is money?! Fuck.

The half-eaten chicken between xyr paws, Vale blinked at Hugo. “So, uhhhhhhh, how does currency conversion work? Goddammit maybe it’d be easier to find an intermediary who wants, like, art that can pay me for that and then I pay the chicken merchants with the coin… ugh, fuck capitalism!”

Vale snarled, then angrily chomped the rest of the chicken. Delicate bones snapped between molars.

CAUTERIZED AND ATROPHIED ★ THIS IS MY UNBECOMING ★ NOW I WAIT FOR THE