Crystals And Destiny. Power Colors Short Tales, #1

Crum - Crum had learned at an early age to polish and shape stones he gathered from the tailings of the nearby mines. Not only was he able to sell them on the street for credits that would buy food and occasionally a night in one of the flop houses, but the work made him feel like he was a part of something meaningful. Once or twice he had found shards of the crystals that were mined here and he would feel great comfort in their touch.
But always those had more value than any of the stones he formed and he would invariably have to sell them to eat. Xasl - Like his father before him, Xasl struggled to make a living doing odd labor jobs moving from city to city as the seasons changed. Today marked three weeks since he had last found work enough to eat a real meal. He could not even remember which city he was in now. When he saw a muscular woman opening the door to an office he did not recognize, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way over to ask her if she had anything he could do to earn enough credits for a meal.
Aarn - Aarn was the eldest son of a well-known landlord in the largest agricultural section of Amelus. Aarn like his father could tell if a field was well tended or not from looking at the aerial images relayed from their satellites but his father insisted on them making an appearance at every field regularly. Today they were going to evict a family who had not been able to keep up with the lease payments, and Aarn's father insisted that Aarn would do the eviction.
Cil - A recovering drug addict who had lost her family, friends and career to a designer drug that nearly killed her, Cil struggled every day just to find enough food to keep her alive while desperately trying to convince potential employers that her days of self-destruction were over. She was fighting the despair that came from yet another employer rejection when she tripped over something on the ground and slammed her head into a transport.
When she came back to consciousness, Cil was looking up into the face of a short compact woman with bright red hair and freckles. The woman was wearing the pin of a Kre Master, though Cil could not remember how she knew that was what that pin represented.