When I was a child, I lived in the market square of the great Golden City of Arabia.
It was during the middle of King Nod's rule when I was born; the city was prosperous, our army strong, and our spirits high-hell, even the camels seemed happy-how could they not be? The three Golden Balls sat atop a tall minaret, close to the heavens and always watching over us. We were invulnerable. A city of Gods. No one could halt our progress.
That's not to say that we were without corruption and poverty, and yes, the rule of King Nod was accompanied by the counselings of Vizier Zig-Zag, whose sharp and ugly nose prodded at every decision the King made. Most artisans who lived in the market square clustered underneath the tarps of their booths at night and slept where they worked, perhaps taking advantage of the good luck we'd been blessed with at the time, perhaps because they had no other home, yet always willing to awaken for a customer willing to purchase a new vase or a good cut of lamb.
I was lucky enough to have inherited my mentor's cobbling shop (though I'm not sure she had anyone else to leave it to anyways.) I slept, too, where I worked, but I was lucky enough to have a roof above my head to spare it from the rain and a soft, old woven cloth beneath me. The shop itself was a shambles, spools of thread in heaps of baskets, those baskets in heaps lining the walls of the first floor where I allowed customers to browse the racks of shoes I had sewn myself and a displays of pairs of slippers, one of each pair broken and the other repaired, an example of what service I could provide. The stairs were directly across from the door, though I didn't allow customers up there, and if one were to stumble through the shoes hanging above the doorway they could easily make it to the top floor where I worked and slept and kept what little money I had. Of course, what reason could they have to steal from the market's cobbler? He was sparer than a bone, financially.
But that was fine. I loved what I did, and I was good at it to0-it's all I'd ever been; Tack the Cobbler.