The second man smiled faintly. “Greetings, Miss Swiftheart, I’m Eugene Gale. I don’t believe we’ve met before, have we? Ah, I did appraise a number of your items, I think. Most of it was when the Adventurer's Guild forwarded items to me, while you were busy in the field,” the man answered calmly. “I was told there was a disagreement over an item’s origin. I don’t have any vested interest in this, other than to understand the historical origins of this item. The early logging might have been deposed by one of my assistants.”

“Yes, we were disagreeing on the age of it,” Levy explained. He walked over to the gleaming tiara, and he pointed to it. “I think it's the fifth kingdom, she says it's the third kingdom. So, where do we stand?”

“I will need to examine it. May I?” Eugene asked politely. Fiona pulled out a key and opened the glass display case, and pulled out the tiara, which had errant beams of light still emanating from it, and snaking through the air like a sparkler from the Fourth of July. but they at best, felt like tiny little rays of sunlight on her skin. He took the item in one hand, and pulled out a jeweler's lens, and put it up to his eye. But the small lens looked like it had facets and little green lines traced across it, and a small grid of lines scanned across the device.

“That’s not gonna–”

“It’s just an informational scan. This will let me know the material composition of the base metal, without damaging it.” He waited as the scan completed, and then the lights winked out of existence from his arcane lens. He frowned, and pulled back the forehead padding just a little bit, to examine the mark. “Okay. I recognize this symbol. House Demir smithing? Oh, that’s quite in alignment with the third Kingdom. Great skill, but bad access to quality materials, the mithril is indeed of lower quality, consistent for the era. This explains the erratic nature of the enchantment.”

“Okay…” Levy clicked his fingers together anxiously. “What else?”

“Well…hmm…” Eugene trailed off, and examined the smith mark a little closer, and then the jewels. “This is interesting. The smith mark appears from the third kingdom, but they added a few flourishes in the fifth that you do not see here. But the gems themselves…these would have been rare, even unheard of in the third Timerian kingdom.”

“Eugene…is it possible this is from the fourth Timerian Kingdom? I’ve seen one example of this before.”

Eugene looked at both of them, and frowned. “This one is quite tricky. This is actually a rare piece from neither Kingdom, and represents a transition from the third, to the fourth Kingdom. Due to the upheaval at the time against the Timerian lords, very few items have been cataloged from that period as the castle, the treasury, and some of the nobility were ransacked. The treasures and artistic endeavors of the period were scattered about the surrounding Kingdom. Some items were found even across the Aegortin Sea. It’s an exceptional find! You both were partially correct, and very few experts would even find a sample to compare to!”

Levy was standing there, speechless–as did Fiona, who was surprised by this outcome. “Well, I’ll be real with you Levy, I didn’t plan for this scenario. Out of curiosity Eugene, how much would an item like this go for?”

“How much were you charging?”

“Six thousand? Guessing it’s worth more?” She knew this could be big money.

“The rarity of this item cannot be understated. This dragon knew a rare find when he saw one! At auction to a collector or to a museum…Five times that much. Easily.”

Fiona’s jaw dropped open. She’d been sitting on a gold mine even beyond her expectations. Levy was still there, stumping– and even getting watery-eyed.

That flutter on her heart was giving her a signal again. What was it trying to tell her, though? She tried to gauge his reaction. He wasn’t sad…was it…melancholy? No. It was something else. Like saying hello to an old friend, or a family member that had been gone a long time.

The answer to her came in the feeling of emptiness. An unfulfilled dream? Some personal connection to the item? A lifetime’s find for him? The possibilities seemed narrow as he sniffed, and pulled out a pocket kerchief to dab his eyes. “Levy, you know this item, don’t you?” she concluded.

“I do,” he said with a sigh. “I have hexagram images of this item that belonged to my great-grandmother, Beatrice Regala. When I heard the dragon had been deposed and all his hoard had been taken into possession of the guild…I hoped there might be a chance it had been recovered. She passed away a while ago, and I was hoping to return it to the family. I don’t think I could provide sufficient proof to establish that it is ours, but–I wouldn’t be auctioning it, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

“Show me.” She shoved aside her reservations, and he pulled out a small emitter, a glass square no more than five centimeters on a side. A small family of riverkin was projected by a small beam of arcane lights, emerging from the corners–A matriarch, her husband, standing a little shorter, and two children, a boy, and a girl. They all stood regally, and were dressed in clothing reminiscent of old-world nobility.

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And the tiara was on the mother’s head, with the same gemstone arrangement, and the same shape cut as the Tiara. Eugene frowned, and pointed to the children.

“I haven’t seen this. Mister Levy, why didn’t you show me this before? This is indeed the Regala family, from the transition period. I recognize the husband, they were forced to flee during the rebellion, and…had to leave everything behind in a hurry. The boy, would have been–”

“My grandfather.” Levy slumped. “He told me stories of how they left. How they had to take new names. They lost everything. And he spoke of his mother’s tiara, a radiant light in those dark times, and they…used it as bartering to get out alive.” He pointed to the figures. “Beatrice Regala. Trask Regala, my great-grandfather. Shona and Levy Regala, the first. I’m Levy, the third. Royalty is where my family came from… but things have changed.” He seemed to shrink slightly at that statement, glassy eyes gazing at the image with remembrance.

“Eugene? Can you conclusively say that this is the same tiara?” Fiona asked quietly. This nagged at her. Treasure always used to be just glittery prizes for working through dangerous traps, left behind by people too rich to store it all away properly. Or something that nasty monsters hoarded because of the value, or the magic in the items.

Now, it was someone’s stolen property, a possible family heirloom, long lost, with a chance of being reunited. She’d been cautioned this was possible in the guild, and if there was convincing proof, legally, it had to be handed over. She turned to Eugene, and spoke softly. “Eugene?”

The historian frowned. “It’s possible. I’d need to see more proof, but–”

She glanced at the urgent flapping on her wrist that no one else seemed to notice. Tell me I’m not about to do this. Tell me I’m not just about to give up a fortune.

A single flap from that winged heart, was the most telling statement about the feelings in her own heart. Fiona judged the mood in the room, and went with her gut instinct, and spoke softly. “How about we split it down to something reasonable, Levy? I still gotta pay a song to our illustrious leader for a bogus tax. Twenty-five hundred gold is the best I can do. Otherwise, I’m eating a loss on the sale.”

Levy finally smiled faintly, in a way that didn’t look like a deranged beaver, and he wiped his eyes. “It’ll be tough, but…I can do that. Thank you, Eugene, for confirming this one. I thought it might be the case for this one, but…I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, either.”

“Glad I could help. You know, we could use this in the collection of Timerian artifacts, we could put it on display and give it the level of recognition it deserves.” Levy sniffed, and nodded.

“I’d have to consider it. But, I did want to show this to my daughter, to point out our family history. Thank you, Miss Swiftheart, let’s finish the paperwork on this one, shall we?” he asked as he offered a hand, and shook hers firmly.

That empty feeling she kept getting, faded. She didn’t know what it meant, but it felt like more than just a transaction of gold went down, as she sat down with Greg and Levy to finish out the form work.

For once, she was glad she’d been wrong about her initial assessment

Later, after Levy and Eugene had departed, she couldn’t help but feel a strange sense about the whole thing. Even Greg picked up on it. “There could be more possibilities for reclamation of items possessed by Douglas the Red, you know. Salvage disputes happen a lot, and they’re a lot of unwieldy paperwork.”

“You think he was lying? Trying to get a good deal on priceless artifacts, and playing to my emotional side?” she asked with a drip of hesitation in her tone. He spent more than a handful of seconds tapping the counter beside her, looking at the scenic view just outside the main entrance, with golden sunshine reflecting off the lake.

He gently shook his head, biting his lip gently. “No. Actually, I think that item did have sentimental value, and a family connection. There’s enough proof of it, for my case, at least. Was it a good business decision? I don’t know. Theoretically, we could have just had it written off if we submitted an amendment to the tax office. Though, knowing them, they'd dispute it for months." Greg folded his hands as he leaned against the counter, glancing at her with a moment of ponderance. "Second-guessing yourself, on whether it was the right thing to do, instead of auctioning?"

“It felt like the right thing,” she stated with determination. “Imagine someone stole or acquired something very personal to you. Later, you find people putting your precious mementos on sale in a thrift store. There was a lot of that, in a few big wars back on Earth. Whole families were wiped out, and then their surviving kin spent their whole lives, trying to pick up the pieces, finding those precious items. They had to jump through insurmountable hoops to get them back. All from a bunch of cruel people who took everything from their victims.”

“Did this happen to you?”

She shook her head. “No. But, something doesn’t have to happen to you, for you to empathize with someone.” She scratched at her wrist, which had been tingling for a minute, but now it felt like shooting electrical pain. “Ow, what is going–”

It took a moment to register, when she saw her heart flapping animatedly, like it did on occasion. But, there was something different that caused her eyes to go wide. “Hey, uh, Greg. Newbie here on the class thing. Can the mark change?”

“It can, if you acquire a different class from testing with Administrators. People don’t lose them, so much as acquire more of them with the right training, or they morph into a more specialized version. Why?” She rolled up her sleeve and willed it into being for him to see, and he peered closely. “I don’t see…”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’ve never seen it animated like that before. That is quite interesting…” He finally saw what she had been staring at, and he gasped. “Is it…wearing a replica of that tiara we just sold?!”

She barely could manage a response, other than a distant “Yep.” Her winged heart was, indeed, wearing a sparkling, shiny crown at the valley where the curve of the heart was, and it was flapping energetically with its wings. Its behavior almost seemed almost…aloof. “Greg, what does this mean?”

“I have no idea.”