Market Forces.

unseenphil:

Harry Marshall was not a fan of the Market coming to town, as it did every Summer solstice from Sunrise to Sunset.

Goblins were, frankly, shit at properly filing for permits for whatever field they took over, and when it came time to pay local taxes,  (and fines. There were inevitably fines when the Market happened to a place)  they never really understood the concept of legal tender. 

He’d had to print up new forms with fair trade values for Goblin Esoterica so when a tiny grey man with all sharp teeth decided to try and pay for biting a rude customer that with the bottled laughter of a child they had some idea of how much that was worth in human terms.

As it turned out, the one thing Goblins valued that had monetary value to humans were cows.  Not, it should be noted, cow meat, as the man who ran the steakhouse found out to his sorrow. Just cows. Live cows,

Everything ridiculous thing goblins tried to pay with or buy thus had a value in cows, which could be converted to money.  It had been a lot of work putting the charts together, and he was perversely proud of it.

But honestly none of that was why Harry wasn’t a fan of the Market coming to town. 

No, it was because the arrival of the Market coincided with the early days of the Summer tourist season, and if anything was trouble, it was the combination of a Goblin Market and tourists who were sure they were more clever than any of the locals looking for a deal.

It almost guaranteed something was going to go hilariously, disastrously wrong, and he did not look forward to having to sort it out, because somehow “County Tax Assessor” had become the unofficial “Deals with the weird shit” position in local government.

This was, admittedly, his own fault, by way of being some of the weird shit himself, but he’d taken the job in hopes that it would be boring.