Work Text:
Monster hunting is a poor man's job.
Carmen stirs the pot of soup, scraping the bottom with the wooden spoon to keep it from burning as she watches the beans and vegetables churn under her hand. A few pieces of fatty ham float up occasionally from the murky brown depths of the soup, and her kitchen smells like sandleeks and rutabaga. She carefully taps the spoon on the side of the pot before covering it with a dented lid. It's still two hours too soon for it to be served.
She puts the last of their salt back up in the cupboard and shuts the doors on the bare space before making her way downstairs. Howlett cleared out a den of vipers that had somehow gotten too close to the cemetery, and she's expecting Mort to show up any time now with the sack of flour he promised as payment. If he shows up before the soup is done she might be able to make a flat bread to go with their dinner. Staying close to the door, she's hopeful she can get it open before the older man uses his walking stick on it and wakes Logan up just after he's finally gone to sleep.
It's not that there are a lack of monsters to hunt, or that fighting them is not nearly as vital as finding clean water in the desert. Howlett is gone more than he's home, and Carmen keeps a notebook by their front door for the people who stop by to request his services. More often than not, when Howlett returns home no one else has taken up the task and so he goes right back out the next morning to work. There is no lack of jobs to be found for him out here.
Monster hunting is a poor man's job simply because only the poor make their homes in areas where monsters lurk.
The people and families who come to Howlett just don't have the gols to pay for what they need done. Barter is the way it's played, one service or good for another. It's how most things are done in Sandrock these days. An entire ecosystem of poor people trading necessities just to barely prop themselves up as the ruins run dry and company after company pulls out of the town.
Mort's sack of flour will not be unopened or untouched when Carmen gets it. It will likely be payment from the family of someone he recently buried. Given in exchange for the digging of the grave and the upkeep of the headstone. A sack of flour he would have dipped into once or twice before finding the vipers den and putting it up for payment.
Carmen knows she will likely use about two cups of the flour herself. Enough for a loaf, or two if Mort arrives too late. The rest of the bag will go to the doctor tomorrow in exchange for the medicine he'd given her to bring Logan's raging fever down from something that was going to kill him to a much more manageable thing that her son can sleep off. The sack will travel through the community like this in a cycle until the last bit of it is used up.
She picks up her hoop and gets back to work on the hole she's' been stitching. Howlett's best shirt has seen better days, and it will continue to see many more for as long as she has thread and a needle to mend the rips and tears he comes home with. This one was made by a tripion and took more cloth with it than usual forcing Carmen to debate on if it would be worth it to mend with a bit of rag or not.
Mason always needs rags though, and he's nearly done with the new pot she asked for earlier in the year. One that doesn't leak if too much get put in it and has a bottom that isn't full of scratches to catch and burn food on. Howlett won't mind if his shirt doesn't lay completely flat on him. The loss of width is minor and her husband doesn't quite have the same breadth of chest that he used to have. So, the only person likely to notice would be Vivi who spends her days spinning thread from tumbleweed fibers while her other wares languish on hangers and in chests until one of the children hits a growth spurt that needs addressing.
Carmen saves her rags for a better purpose and does her best to line the two sides of the rip up together.
She counts five new stitches before getting up to go back upstairs. The open door to Logan's room shows the little boy is still down for the count. Face flushed but breathing peacefully. Carmen creeps in to feel his forehead, pushing back the usually fine hair that is now stiff from dried sweat. Logan makes a slightly discontent noise but doesn't wake, and Carmen checks that the medicine is still on the bed side table. Two more doses carefully measured into the tiny bottle for when he wakes up. She had asked if it would be enough to keep the fever down until the sickness passed.
The doctor had not given her an answer.
A quick touch to Logan's feet and stomach has her pulling the thin sheet up over him but leaving the thicker blanket folded at the foot of the bed. Carmen bends down to press a butterfly soft kiss to his cheek before slinking back out to go to the kitchen again. She picks the lid up and stirs the soup, feeling the beans and vegetables at the bottom of the pot resist until she pushes hard enough to knock it all loose. Stirring until she can't feel anything along the bottom as she thinks long and hard about needs and wants.
About how few of either of those things can be paid for with a monster hunter's salary.