When I was around twelve years old, I'd push my dad's lawnmower around the military housing quarters where we lived. I knocked on doors to sell my services to people who had to keep their yards inspection-ready. It was a target-rich environment with looming weekly inspections, but the money was dreadful. We didn't have a mower with self-propulsion, meaning if the grass was high, the work felt like pushing a couch up a flight of stairs. After two hours in the hot summer sun, I'd get maybe two or three dollars for a big yard — a rate negotiated entirely by the neighborhood, not by me.
It never felt fair or lucrative, but it was the only way to make money at a young age, so there I was.
Over a summer I spent some of my bankroll and ended up saving about eight dollars. Watching it disappear much faster than it arrived was the first hard lesson: you are never paid what you are worth — you are paid what the job is worth to the person paying you. It is not personal, and there is a good chance you are being taken advantage of almost every single time.
Cue up the Airovale universe, where such things, big and small, have consequences.
There are universal laws, where physics preside, and then there are the rules we make for ourselves — laws of the land. The Law of Exchange is neither. It flows through the decisions and transactions of every person in Airovale, with no respect for human or fae — all are subject to it equally. There is no court to hear each side; there is only what was given and what was taken. If the exchange was equal, no correction is required.
Opportunity is welcomed, but advantage or exploitation invites retribution. Throughout the entire story of Airovale, the concept of giving and taking appears in many forms. Some are obvious — like the storm that decimated a fleet when miners stole forbidden gold from a temple on the Crescent Islands. Taking what was not theirs sent their ships into the ocean; the Law needed no judge to decide it, only time and tide to return the gold to shore and restore balance.
But the Law rewards as readily as it punishes. A separate crew, caught in that same storm, dumped their cargo in exchange for the weight of rescued survivors. That trade created a balance in their favor, and they were spared to return home.
Greed produces its own ledger. The crew of the Nereid survived weeks adrift in storm winds, and when they finally found land, everything was returned to them — repairs, food, water, and coal enough to make the journey home. They ignored the advice of the Mystics, though, and looked past the coal at an endless supply of gold.
Within seconds, returning home became second priority. Returning rich took control. The Law of Exchange didn't prevent them from mining the gold, even as they hid the work from the Mystics. But when they learned that time moved differently on the island — a year at home lost for every day on the shores — the gold lost none of its appeal. They kept it, departed with barely enough coal for the voyage, and left the island carrying a debt they hadn't finished calculating.
What happens to coal mined from a time-dilated island? I suppose I could have been overly ironic and had it turn to diamonds in the furnace, but I chose to have it burn for a moment, then dissolve to ash. Either way, they were rich with treasure, but had no fuel to return. And the clock had already ticked seven years of life from them.
Tragic.
But the idea of excess gain is often blinding, and the Law of Exchange will course-correct through any manner of irony, misfortune, or tragedy. It can also reward those who gave and received nothing in return. It isn't a deity — it has no supernatural hunger to bring calamity, or a wish to tempt the innocent. It simply brings balance, in a way that is deeply personal to anyone engaged in exchanging one thing for another. Even if the only thing left to trade is time.
And by the way, I still cut my own grass.