Disclaimer: There is no disclaimer.
AN: This is something that I noticed years ago and wondered about ever since, but just now realized I could make into a halfway decent oneshot. Cheers!
"There's not enough..." Rana Sei murmured, staring down at her map. "All these years, there's never been enough. How are we even still alive?" Stirling was used to his traveling partner's frequent mood swings and stretches of melancholy, but this sudden change was bizarre, even for her. It made the Yuke curious.
The two were sitting by the side of the road, taking a break to rest their feet and decide where the search for myrrh would take them next, when the Selkie's comment and gloomy demeanor came out of nowhere. Though Stirling was usually quite perceptive to what troubled his friend there was nothing, as far as he could see, to make Rana so upset, unless she now also had an aversion to maps. What was wrong? It was a question that his curiosity now demanded an answer to, with dire threats of insomnia and uncontrollable musing if not satisfied.
"Not enough of what, exactly?" Rana looked at him as if he had just asked the question with the most obvious of answers in the history of obvious answers.
"Myrrh, of course!" She jabbed a finger at the map. "Look, there are six cities with crystals, right? Tipa, Marr's Pass, Alfitaria, Shella, The Fields of Fum, and Leuda. And each city needs three drops of myrrh a year to recharge its crystal, right?" Stirling nodded, knowing that though he was not quite following her train of thought yet, it was safer to simply agree and let her continue. "Well, if there are six cities, that means the world uses eighteen drops of myrrh to keep each city's crystal sparkling. And then there are the two crystals at the ports on the Jegon that need myrrh too, so that makes twenty-four drops used each year."
"All right, that makes sense."
"Now look at the number of myrrh trees on our map. There are ones in Belle River Pass, Goblin Wall, the Mushroom Forest, the Mine of Carthuriges, Tida, Moschet Manor, Veo Lu Sluice, Daemon's Court, Selepation Cave, Mount Kilanda, Conall Curach, Rebena Te Ra, and the Lynari Desert. We're looking at the map, so we can be sure we haven't forgotten any, but that's still-"
"Thirteen, only thirteen..."Stirling couldn't believe it. Now he understood what she was talking about. The truth was horrifying, a fact that should have meant the end of life as they knew it centuries ago. "If there are only thirteen trees, then the most myrrh all the caravans could hope to collect each year would be thirteen drops. That's only enough for four cities, but even getting that much myrrh is impossible because the trees only form new drops once every two years..." He turned to look at Rana, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, his scholarly facade completely shattered. "You're right, in the whole world there's really only enough myrrh to support one city, and we have six... How are we still alive?"
AN: Shadow Phantazy's hypothesis as to why all the cities haven't gone the way of Tida is that each caravan has its own designated myrrh-collecting area and all we ever see in-game is Tipa's territory. It sounds logical, but I have my doubts... Oh, and in case you wanted to know, in order to provide each town and port with enough myrrh to survive, the world would have to have seventy-two myrrh trees. (Six cities plus two ports, times three drops, times three for the triannual drop cycle, equals seventy two trees.)
