TheNexusProject/TheCrazyGooseLady
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The Crazy Goose Lady
by MelWong
- "Goose eggs, goose eggs for sale. Goose eggs the size of melons! Painted eggs! Eggs good for eating! Goose eggs, goose eggs for sale!"
- The Goose-Lady's usual spiel.
- "That crazy vagrant is an eyesore and a nuisance. Honestly, I'd just like that ugly hovel she lives in knocked down, and then she can go to Dungtown and live among her kind."
- Mistress Clove, shouting over the balcony to her neighbor.
Bent, wrinkled and gray, the Crazy Goose Lady is something of a fixture in Brookside. An aged woman of indeterminate elderly years, she has down-feathers in her hair and a rusty printed scarf pulled over her head, and her clothes are much-stained and well-patched. Her hoarse voice rings out through the tall houses of the district every morning as she poles her small boat through the canals, selling goose eggs and delivering sundry groceries to the wealthy folk standing in the balconies above. She starts her circuit at the head of the Burglar's End where the venerable and established greengrocers', The Loaf and Jug, are located. Whispering Rush, the current proprietor, pays the Goose Lady a pittance (as well as the day's wilted or unsaleable produce) to deliver the grocery orders to the houses on the wealthier end of the district up near Shuna's Well.
She has never yet failed to deliver an order, and navigates the twisting, narrow waterways with ease, outdoing most of the river-taxi pilots for speed or shortcut-finding. Standing on the prow of her tiny boat is her pet gander, Shingle, a fat gray goose with a tattered blue ribbon tied about his long, muscular neck. It is not only to Shingle that she owes her neighborhood nickname, though. Besides the produce deliveries, the Goose Lady also sells the most beautifully hand-painted goose eggs. Some wonder where she gets them from, as she seems to lack the wits to paint properly. None of the dizzyingly complex patterns are the same, and some of the more opportunistic natives of Brookside buy them for the pittances she asks, and then sells them to collectors in Bastion and Cinnabar.
The Goose Lady has six other geese living happily in the burnt-out shell of her house on the southern outskirts of Brookside. The geese spend their days paddling in the entirely-flooded lower floor where she parks her rickety little boat once the day is over. Access is through the collapsed wall on the north end and the sole inhabitable room is the slopewalled garret on the third floor of the hovel. Her geese roost in the unlivable second-floor rooms and leave heaps of guano all over the place. The smell is, of course, unbearable, but the Goose Lady is so far gone she hardly notices. She speaks affectionately to the many loud fowl in her hovel, going so far as to name them names, and those who have had the patience to listen to her ravings note confused references to a house fire that killed her seven children twoscore years ago.
Some folk in the upscale parts of Brookside would like to see the Goose Lady gone and her hovel torn down or rebuilt, but others in the neighborhood consider her daily errand runs and egg-selling to be a convenience to the district.
Rumours
- Some have murmured that she has a golden goose resting up in the attic, laying eggs with naturally patterned and colored shells.
- Others say that she is raising a karmeus chick in the attic, and woe betide the neighborhood children when the unholy creature actually leaves the roost.
Secret
- The Goose Lady did indeed lose her most of family in a great fire - however, she was not an original inhabitant of Brookside. The truth lies in the more affluent sections of Cinnabar. The Goose Lady is actually Silken Pinion, master painter and former darling of critics before her presumed death in The Great Nexus Fire 40 years ago. Her true identity could be gleaned if only anyone took the time to examine the goose eggs she painted for her unique sigil.
