Tinted Spectacles and Transactions

The Grand Agama Market

"Haaaaw? For real? There's no continuity between these criteria and tradition! All this is is targeted exclusion of an emergent folkloric tradition one codger doesn't like!"

With no thought spared for the browsers and passerby forced to take a silent detour around her, Jasmine stops without warning, never looking up from the book in her hand as she grabs the pencil tucked behind her ear and scrawls a note in the margins of the open page.

Someone’s comment on her outfit goes unnoticed, the woman tuning out the transitory idle chatter and the transactions of the market as she focuses on words fixed in print. Few pay her any mind, most opting to treat her as an obstacle to be avoided, even as she finishes jotting down her note and continues onward, trusting herself - apparently - to avoid walking into anything as she turns the page and picks up where she had left off. Even fewer take notice of her once she begins moving again, with nobody noticing that, for all her focus on her book, the woman occasionally spares a glance, out of the corner of her eye, at the stalls and booths she passes.

Clothing, home decor, potions, and other goods get her attention only briefly, some items available in the market, she notes, worth returning for, but nothing strikes her as a necessary and urgent buy, so onward she walks.

Then comes the flash.

A reflection of the sun’s light, that was all it was, right? If she had seen it correctly, though, it couldn’t have been reflecting the light, could it have? Well, perhaps she had missed something. Perhaps she had been mistaken…

It takes but a moment spent looking back over her shoulder, finally giving the market more focus than she gives her book, for her to know with certainty that the light isn't deceiving her. No sunlight strikes the crystal ball, set out on display and yet seemingly hidden in the shadows of the heavy black curtains hanging where most any other stall would have a sign, but, nevertheless, its gleam reaches her eyes.

"Shining in the dark?" Maybe early in the morning, given the angle of the sun and the position of the stall’s curtains, the orb could catch the light. At this hour, though, it, by any logical reckoning, stood no chance of so strongly reflecting the sun’s light. "What's up?"

xxx

 

Oh, did it ever hurt. That ache, sitting for too long of a stretch only ever made it worse. When had they last taken a walk today? Eight in the morning? Nine in the morning? The exact hour hardly mattered; it had been a few hours, judging by the movement of the sun and the movement of people through the market. Well, maybe the time for another walk would come in another hour or three. The early afternoon walks were getting tiresome. A walk in the evening would make for a change of pace.

Settled into a lawn chair - the flimsy piece of equipment wasn't comfortable and didn't help with their aches whatsoever, but it was cheap and low enough to the ground to let them sit while getting a good view through the gap below the hanging curtains - at their stall, Seam pushes aside the thought of a walk. Peering out through the curtains, preparing to spend a few more hours watching those who come and go in the market, they notice a woman, a book tucked under her arm and a pencil in her ear, approaching.

With a little effort, the ragged merchant pushes themself out of their chair, muttering as they prepare to push aside the curtains. "A customer? Been a few days since the last one…"

"Welcome to my seap." Curtains fully opened, the merchant gets a view full of Jasmine, the woman already smiling, as if she is already confident that something good is bound to come out of her visit to the odd stall.

 

xxx

"Name's Seam, spelled S-E-A-M," the merchant continues, as Jasmine, in turn, gets a good look at them, the revelation that a worn-down stuffed cat mans the stall only further convincing her that something worthwhile will come out of this little excursion. 

"Don't have much here that's not junk to most. Collect odds and ends and sell 'em. Name a price if you see any junk you like." As tired as they sound and as hoarse as their voice may be, she can’t say that the merchant fails at trying to be friendly, wearing a smile, if a strained and weary one.

Ignoring the other assorted knicknacks out on display, the woman points right towards the crystal ball, the flash of curiosity in her eyes unmissable.

"What's with this?"

"With it? Don't have any junk that goes with it. Guess I could sell you a package if you're lookin' for a deal." The question seems, mostly, to leave the shopkeeper confused, Seam's forced smile faltering as they show their befuddlement plainly on their face, but the hint of interest that colors their voice convinces Jasmine to probe further.

"It's enchanted though, right?"

"Hmm…" They take the crystal ball in hand, raising it into the air and bringing it closer to their face, as if inspecting and contemplating the glass orb itself while searching for an answer to the woman's question. "Normal glass," they answer, after a moment, setting the orb back down. "What made you ask?"

Acting like they didn't know? When there was so much more energy in their voice now, while they asked a simple question, than at the outset of the conversation?

"I can see the shine of an enchantment," she states bluntly, taking the orb into her own hands for her own inspection. Whatever they were hiding, she figures, she could get it out more easily by directly saying what she knows already instead of by beating around the bush. "Even when it's kept out of the light, a gleam comes off of it."

As far as she can tell, her attempt at cutting to the chase is well-received, Jasmine watching as a more natural smile spreads across the shopkeeper's face, turning into a crooked, three-fanged grin as they crack a joke.

"Guess you have a good eye. No, guess that's me. You have two good eyes. Ha ha ha ha…" When their strained-if-earnest laughter subsides, they finally offer up an explanation, apparently in higher spirits, if their grin and tone of voice provide any indication. "Had that enchanted a long time ago to make it durable. Couldn't go shatterin' it if I wanted to, now, without removin' the enchantment. Guess I don't mind that. Havin' it out gets customers, now and then."

"A durability enchantment? That's all?" Useful, but not useful enough to shell out money, she decides, feeling for the cash in her pocket. She hadn’t intended to buy anything big today, and hadn’t brought much with her, so, unless she were to come across something extraordinarily useful, saving her cash was the best option. “I might come back for it.”

“Can’t promise it’ll be here next time you come. Can’t promise it won’t, either,” the cat states, frankly. “Don’t mind if it moves or if it doesn’t, for my part.”

Her curiosity sated, Jasmine sets the orb back down, taking a moment to look at the other wares the cat has on display, her eyes quickly passing over the old dolls, the handheld mirror, the novelty glasses, and all the other out of place items in their strange assortment.

Was that one crystal ball really it? Was there nothing else magical or useful here?

“Don’t have much left with any magic. Ain’t lookin’ for more of that, are you?”

“I don’t need it to be magical, but I need it to be something I need.”

“Think you might want to go to a restaurant or a real estate broker, if you’re lookin’ for a need.” Once again, the cat flashes a fanged grin before bending down, seemingly searching for something on the ground just out of Jasmine’s view. With a groan, they straighten back up and dump a black cloak, ravaged by time and by fire, as evidenced by its patches, holes, and scorch marks, over top of the wares on display. “Might be the most useful piece of fabric to pass through my seap. It was burnt at one time, but now it resists fire entirely.”

Presented with the cloak, Jasmine takes the matter of probing it into her own hands, lifting it up, turning it over, looking for that familiar glint coming off the dark fabric and running her fingers along its scorched portions.

“I’ll take it.” She finally relents, fishing money out of her pocket and putting it in front of the cat, who takes it and disinterestedly counts it up.

“It’s yours now. Do with it what you will.”

As if in direct response to the wording of the cat’s instructions, she drops the cloak right back on Seam’s display, muttering something to herself and dramatically pointing a finger at the cloak, causing it to erupt in violet flame. Bathed in the glow of the mystical fire, she holds out her hands expectantly, as if waiting for someone to gift her a bag of goodies. For their part, Seam, wearing an expression of surprise, notes quickly that the fires before them give off no heat. Light and smoke all, as far as they can tell, that the flames produce, they calmly pull a pair of deeply-tinted - one might even say, if only seeing them for a moment, black - spectacles from their robes.

Silent and grinning all throughout the proceedings after equipping their spectacles, the merchant merely sits back and watches as the flames fade away, leaving behind no trace of the cloak, but a thin, hardcover tome which falls right into Jasmine’s hands. Ignoring their aches, they lean forward, trying to get a closer look at the newly-created - or perhaps newly summoned? - book.

“It’s quality transference magic,” Jasmine offers without prompting, noticing the cat’s curiosity and puffing up with pride as she begins her explanation. “What I do is take an inherent or imbued aspect of an object and contain it in a book. Here, I’m taking the quality of being fireproofed from the cloak and sealing it away. Later, I’ll transfer that quality from this book to a bag. My sister’s always on me about letting things happen to books I borrow from her, so I’ll make my bag resist fire so any books in there won’t burn while I’m down here. It does mean losing everything else about whatever I take a quality from and sacrificing it, but that’s no big deal.” Taking her old book and the new tome in one hand each, she awkwardly crosses her arms, posing triumphantly. “When she has me to look out for her, we’re a freaking amazing team!”

“The longer I live, the stranger, yet stranger I find in this world. Yet, power transference isn’t even among the strangest that I’ve seen! Ha ha ha ha…” Disconcerting as the cat’s strange laughter and grin may be, they seem, as best as Jasmine can tell, to have no malicious intentions. “Don’t suppose,” they begin, removing their spectacles, “you have the time to tell an old cat more about you and your sister?”

“Sorry, but I’d rather finish looking around, and I have someone to meet later,” she says, admittedly not too regretfully, as she cracks open the book she was reading before, ready to get back to it. “I’ll be back sometime to visit a few other stalls, so I might come back for that ball.”

“Makes no difference to me. Don’t mind if you come back. Won’t be mad if you don’t. You already entertained this old cat today. Can’t be mad at someone who did that.”

With Jasmine departing, the shopkeeper draws their curtains shut and slinks back into their chair, prepared to wait for the next customer to actually take an interest in their wares. Eye adjusting once again to the relative darkness, they resume their watching of passerby, trying to ignore their aches and to pass the time.

…well, they could walk in a few hours, right? And, more importantly, the excitement would start in about a month, yes?

Just had to pass the time until then…