'NOW WHAT I wouldn't give for an angle like that ice cream guy,' Falter said as he read some on-grid report of the cooling joys of minty bits during the hot and dusty Summer Pause that never seemed to want to end.
'Overreaching, I call it,' Marthy replied on hearing the details. 'You want to make a toy rocket perhaps and shoot it off to the moon to see if anyone up there wants toys?'
'It's a thought Marthy, it's a thought.'
The couple were sat in the back parlour, Marthy rocking in her favourite chair and knitting tiny clothes for some of the wooden dolls on display out front, while her husband seethed quietly at all the things going on around them. It was as if they were at the centre of some dead space with life and prosperity flowing either side, missing them out all together.
If only the happy train would make a stop right outside his shop, perhaps things might look up. Debts were growing and some of his bright displays were showing signs of fading through age.
'We're in the wrong spot,' he eventually said. 'Footfall's too low.' He had been looking at marketing strategies on-grid and was up on some of the business jargon all successful shopkeepers needed to know.
'Lordy. You're not thinking of moving again?' Marthy said in alarm, missing a stitch. 'The cost would be,' and she sniffed, 'prohibitive.' She had learnt new words too in the three years they had tried to make a living in Cherryball Flats.
The man clenched his fists in impotence, knowing the light of his life was right.
'Somehow,' he said through gritted teeth, 'we need to make it the right spot.'
'There's a dear,' Marthy said, resuming her rocking and knitting in unison, glad that particular crisis was over till the next wave of depression appeared.
Then there was a sound which made the rocking lady halt in mid-tilt. It was a chime, like as if someone had pushed open the shop door.
Falter disappeared into the front part of the ground floor area in search of wonders and Marthy listened for voices. She strained her ears but heard nothing.
After an age Falter came back, a puzzled look on his face.
'Might have been the wind,' he said, 'except there ain't any. We're in the sultry hour. Plus,' and he looked a little wild as he continued, 'some of them dolls in the corner nearest the door had moved.'
'Moved?'
'Like they wanted a chat or something and were sat facing each other rather than staring out across the floor as they were usually wont to do.'
'Perhaps they were bored of looking at dust and wood shavings,' Marthy said with a light chuckle. 'Blessed be. What strange creatures we are discussing the feelings of pieces of wood shaped into our own likenesses. As if,' and she paused to loop a difficult stitch, 'we gave them something of ourselves, creating little souls.'
It was her turn to stare now. Not at wood shavings or a curious cube of dust she could see just beyond the threshold to the shop front. She was thinking of another little soul waiting to be created. Some day, she hoped, some day it would be.