Excerpt:

Around the corner Meno passed the apothecary with the weird old man. This weird old man tried to poison Meno every time he felt ill or hurt himself. He did not trust these concoctions that came in bottles or powders that came in little neat brown packages. How could you trust anything packaged so well by a man whose hands shook and shuddered at every breath he took. Farther still was the old tavern with its run down windows. The bricks were chipped from several wars and from the wear and tear of weekly brawls. But the owners were nice and would sometimes slip Meno sweets when his father pretended not to notice. Their sons and daughter however were different. The boys were tall and lanky and chose to constantly bully those younger and shorter than them. It was an odd moment when one of them wasn’t in trouble or causing trouble. Their daughter was the single source of contention in gossip and rumours for the children. If anyone in the entire city had a visitor she found a way to make it a scandal. However her rumours were often short lived and lately she had been trying to keep everyone’s attention by creating more insane rumours more and more often. However people had begun to annoy her and her words had lost nearly all sting. At this rate she would easily become the village fool or the village whore.