El Ábaco (The Abacus)

I am the Abacus, the frame of beads that counts every fraction of cost. Each row is a charge: the guide's fee, the mule's feed, the night's lodging, the fortress entry. I slide the beads: included experiences cost nothing extra, bundled items share the discount, external goods carry their markup. The master reads my final row and knows the true price of the journey.

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A child once played with my beads while her father negotiated. She slid every bead to the right, then back to the left, then mixed them — red with blue, coarse with fine. The father saw the chaos and laughed. 'This is how the merchants count,' he said. But I am not a toy. The beads returned to their rows; the price settled. The child learned: order before play. The abacus does not forget its rows.