Kitty—Earstelle City

If you were to ask nine year old Kitty what her favorite thing about visiting Grandma and Papa was, she would say the candy store, without a question.

You see, they had a whole tradition. Kitty’s grandparents would save up all of their metal bits and pieces for recycling- things like old nuts and bolts, screws, and the occasional prized spare gear that they accumulated over the months. They’d load up boxes and bags of the stuff and wait for the grandkids to come visit.

The first thing Kitty and her brother would do upon arrival was take stock of their product. Then they’d go recycle it.

The recycling was half the fun. Well, we are talking about an eventual candy store, so I’ll say it was a third of the fun. They’d take the bags and boxes of metal pieces through Earstelle, crossing bridges across the canyon, up and down stairs on the cliffside, and through tunnels to the forge deep underground where they melted the metal down and made new, more useful things.

There were conveyor belts that rattled along and took the metal to the different melting pots. Kitty and her brother would sort the metal bits into boxes that they’d weigh, then toss onto the proper belts- iron, steel, copper- each on their own belt. At the end, they’d get money for the metal, divided between each of them. It was just coins, but for a seven and nine year old, it was a fortune.

Then it was all they could do to walk patiently back to the canyon cliffside to the candy shop. There was no running, even if they wanted to; smart kids learned not to run on the paths along the sheer cliffs, whether canyon-side or cave-side.

The candy shop was divine. It was built right into the side of the canyon cliff face and had a huge window in front. Inside, it was bright, colorful, and full of shelves, boxes, and bottles full of all sorts of candy.

Kitty remembers buying red ropes of licorice, crunchy chocolate candy, balls of smooth sugar to suck on, bags of candy beans in all colors, and rings of chewy gummy fruit flavored candy, among many others.

At the end of the day, they’d collapse back in Grandma and Papa’s home, surrounded by paper bags of sweets. Her brother would eat recklessly, but Kitty always rationed out the candy so it would last the whole trip. It was one of the things that made visits with the grandparents so special.