The farmer watched the baker put the finishing touches to her beautiful chalk calligraphy on the blackboard sign outside her shop:
Freshly baked rolls from fairy-husked spelt
“They’re not fairies though,” she pointed out. “They’re mice.”
The baker looked askance at her. “they’re mice with wings, which is basically the same thing.”
“It is not,” she protested, but she was pointedly ignored.
“There,” the baker said contentedly, wiping her hands and adding some chalk stains to the floury handprints on her apron. “Mark my words, they’ll be sold out before the morning’s over. They always are.”
“Of course they will,” the farmer said disapprovingly. “But your bread is too good for you to have to stoop to false advertising.”
This was a complicated piece of accusatory flattery and there was a brief silence before the baker replied:
“It is not false advertising.”
“It is too! And why say anything about the husking at all? It doesn't say ‘kelpie-ploughed field’ either does it?”
“No,” the baker replied dryly. “Because that would give rise to question about animal welfare.”
The farmer scrunched up her nose. “He knows what he did. When his year and a day are up I'll let him go.”
The baker rolled her eyes and made no further comment, but she immediately regretted it, because all she gained was an immediate return to the argument.
“But why not just take it away instead of being inaccurate?” the farmer insisted.
“Because I’ve been advertising them this way from the start! It would look odd if I changed it now, not to say suspicious.”
“Did you or did you not win these magical mice from the queen of Faerie?” the baker interrupted, in a tone she perhaps ought not to take with her best supplier.
“Yes…” was the reluctant answer.
“Then they are fairies,” she snapped.
“No,” the farmer snapped back, because that was exactly the sort of tone she did think she got to take with her best and oldest customer. “They are fairyland mice, so why not just call them that?”
“Because my customers won't want to eat bread made by mice!” the baker burst out.
The farmer stood looking at her for a moment with her arms crossed, before giving a dignified huff and resolutely turning her back on the blackboard. “Your customers are wrong.”
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