Hell Hath No Fury - Book One

An Election

AN: Hello y'all! this one is a longer chapter! I'm sorry! It's about 7k words 

Ava's first shift on carpentry couldn't have gone any worse. Well, she left with all of her limbs intact so it could have gone a lot worse but she had a feeling that she would not be sticking in carpentry. She knew none of the tools, how to work any of the equipment, or how to be safe in the woodshop. It was probably funny to the others how awful she was at it.

It was clear halfway through the sun that she was holding up progress more than helping. She found a spot to stand that was out of the way and instead provided conversation and entertainment with stories about her snobby siblings. Evana, the lead, never spoke. Skins, Chubs, and Rita though would not stop talking. At first, Ava tried working and listening to Evana through the first hours of the morning, ignoring the conversations in the shop like Evana was doing. After lunch, when she began paying attention to the conversation she found their banter hilarious. She began to build up the confidence to chime here and there. Her comments were well received every time and Ava didn't feel ostracized by the close group of friends.

She really made her presence and value known when she solved a problem for Skins. They had been talking about how one crew member owed her 300 gold. How Skins allowed for that amount of debt to pile up was beyond Ava but that wasn't the point. After the Espbar treasure, each crew member walked away with a share of 500 gold coins each. Now that Jav, the person who owed money, had enough to pay the debt, Skins was demanding payment in full. Jav didn't want to pay the full thing, especially because they were about to get to Niveal which she needed money for. Ava understood both sides, Jav had gotten herself in that mess in the first place but she understood Jav's reluctance to give it up.

Ava had a feeling that Jav wasn't going to give in and neither was Skins so Ava proposed her own solution. After a while of hearing them go back and forth, she had found a solution that might appeal to Skins.

"Why don't you just ask for payments in installments? She doesn't seem to want to give up all her money and you deserve your money back. Maybe meeting in the middle will help?" Ava offered.

"And what's to make her pay me back quickly and not one gold every cycle?" Skins turned around to face Ava.

"At the end of the length, you impose a fee if it hasn't been paid back in full. For every gold she is in debt she owes you an additional five silvers. 50 percent interest," Ava elaborated, "That way you are getting paid and she is happy with not parting with so much of her money at once. Plus, it acts as a way to save money. Can't spend it if you don't have it," Ava pointed out, another thing she had learned through her observation of the women was they were all shit with money.

Skins had stopped her work momentarily to stare at Ava. Ava just stared back, waiting to answer any other questions Skin's might ask. Instead, Skins just nodded and turned around.

"I'll talk to Jav," she said and without another word, the conversation was over.

Ava had noticed on the ship there were no formalities or normal greetings. It was straight to the point and when a conversation was over, that was that. It was funny to Ava, a quirk about the ship she enjoyed. Besides that, it was an uneventful sun where she learned nothing else except she was not Evana's next carpentry prodigy. For the next two suns, she worked in the woodshop getting to know the women down there. By the end of her term there, she had a regular back and forth with the women and she was quite invested in their problems. She had learned the Chubs and Rita both lived together in one bedroom but they were just friends. Skins lived in the lower deck and Ava found ou that many of the women on the ship owed her money.

Ava proposed helping her form a plan and write a list of everyone that owed her so she could keep track and make sure she was getting paid back. Skins took her up on it and they spent a few nights in the lower decks discussing the new payback system over dim candlelight. When Ava's three suns were up and she went back up to figure out her new assignment, she was in for a shock. She was being reassigned for another three suns to carpentry or until they reached Niveal. Ava was at a loss.