The morning light of the rising sun woke Nina up early in the morning as per usual. Her hands rubbed at her eyes and she buried her head into the crook of her arm, trying desperately to grasp onto a few more minutes of sleep before properly waking up. She'd had a troubled sleep that night, she'd dreamed of arguing with Inti and it hadn't made for a restful night. After that last argument two months ago she had let the matter of his 'improvisations' drop as she was tired of having the exact same discussion every other day. Her being scared of driving him away from her had not weighed in that decision at all. Not a single bit. It's not like it was a concern for her in the first place anyways so how could it hold sway over her choices? Well, whatever her reasons had been the arguments were gone. The one big negative of it all was that Inti had gotten even bolder and more reckless in his excesses.

She doozed off for a bit and her thoughts lazily whirled away in no particular direction, seemlessly going from one subject to the other as she rested for just that little bit longer that made mornings so much more bearable. Ugh, mornings were the worst. She'd take a trip to a temple of the Virtues over a morning... Okay maybe not, but it was close! Or probably not. Upon those very wise and thoughtful... thoughts? Thinkings? Anyways she finally gathered enough of her will together to sit up and properly open her eyes to the newest day in her life.

She got up after making a quick breakfast off of last night's leftovers and stood immobile for a few seconds with her eyes closed in a quiet happiness that she'd only recently been able to enjoy as her leg had healed. Even though it had been weeks since she'd removed the splint she found that she still relished the sensation of being able to stand, walk, run and climb on her own two legs once more. Her crutch laid abandoned on the stone floor of her alcove, unused except as a prop to better pass as a begging child which suited her just fine.

Her restored health had opened up her and Inti's playbook considerably and thanks to that they both ate quite comfortably these days and even Inti's siblings were afforded three meals a day, a luxury for any child living without parents in the Districts. Also a luxury for some who did have parents actually. Though Nina didn't know how she felt about their recent success. She had originally thought that with the abundance of food her companion would have been content with their lot. That he would have dialed down his recklesness and daring a little. She had been wrong. It had only emboldened Inti even more. Now that they could ensure a plentiful amount of food he often insisted that they attempt to acquire costlier products. And despite her reservations Nina would sometime let him convince her that they should steal clothes, spices or common alchemical products like scented soap. It made her uncomfortable as the merchants who sold those things were much more protective of their stocks. Stealing an apple here and a loaf of bread there would go unnoticed at best and irritate their owner at worst and rare was the food seller who mourned over the half-dozen of items inevitably missing from his stock at the end of a day's work. Why mourn over half a copper's worth of losses when you made ten times that every day?

Things were different when it came to clothes or anything other than food if Nina was honest. Even the kind of cheap, uncolored and coarse linen dress that Nina used to wear was still worth a handful of copper, a day's worth of hard work for the average worthless. The merchants who sold these less essential products tended to be much rarer and more wealthy than mere food sellers would be. They did not frequent the multitude of small markets that was found deep into the districts and rather preferred the larger ones that were situated closer to a temple of the Virtues or to the more upscale parts of the cities. These markets would sometimes be close enough to the upper class parts of Rhea to warrant a small presence from the clergy of Order and that was only the first of many difficulties surrounding the acquisition of these unnecessary (in Nina's opinion) goods. Then they had to contend with the fact that they were just harder to grab, sometimes hidden behind wooden flaps or inside baskets which, combined with the heightened watchfulness of the merchants, made any kind of ambition of their thefts going unnoticed into a pipe dream. And finally given their greater means, their more precious stocks and the prevalance of thieves on the markets of Rhea these merchants usually hired one or more guards to watch over their stocks and catch said thieves. Guards who, unlike most of the people comprising the ranks of the clergy of Order, had grown up much like her and Inti on the streets of the districts which made them much more difficult to evade or escape.

She'd been forced to be significantly more creative when attacking the problems that these issues created, though the few successful approaches she'd come up with were rather inelegant and crude. Worst of all it had been impossible to keep their appearances from being seen and as such remembered by their targets during their thefts. No thug would easily forget a girl who'd thrown an apple at their face to taunt them into leaving their charge unattended after all. The consequence of that had been that they'd had to restrain their more normal thefts to markets where there weren't thugs actively watching for them with a grudge to settle, a number which was getting smaller and smaller with each of the daring heists that Inti suggested. It wasn't all bad however, they had found quite a bit of success and Nina would be lying if she said she did not enjoy the bar of soap that she used to properly clean herself and her clothes once a week or the beige sleeveless shirt of coarse linen and the ankle-length pants of the same make that had replaced her old tattered dress.

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She put an end to the light stretching she'd been doing while her thoughts reminisced the events of the past two months. A habit that helped quite a bit with the stiffness that came with sleeping on naked stone every night. She couldn't help but smile to herself as she nimbly left her tiny hideout and climbed onto the street, it was time to meet up with Inti.

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"No." Her tone was categorical. This was where she put her foot down or so she told herself. Stealing clothes and soaps was already dangerous enough but this? What her partner had just proposed was so risky it was downright stupid.

"What do you mean no?" Just where in the world did Inti find all of this baseless confidence he constantly pulled from, she would never know.

"It's too dangerous, we are not doing this." And it was a wonder that she even had to say it.

"You're exaggerating." She rolled her eyes at that.

"I am not and you know I am not."

"Look, I'm not suggesting this randomly, I've picked out a good target. The shopkeep is an old shoemaker who's on his own all day. He has doubles of the doubles of every tool he has so he won't miss one or two. Come on it will be easy." She raised an intrigued eyebrow, for Inti to have gone through the trouble of actually scouting out a place meant that he was very determined about this crazy idea of getting themselves tools suitable for picking locks from a shoekeeper's workshop. He apparently had gotten the tip from an older rogue, an adult one who lived in the same building that he and his siblings squatted in. It wasn't too bad of an idea on its face but actually obtaining the tools was the hard part. They were expensive things and no craftman would part with them easily. Well if he was so calamitously bent on this idea of his she could at the very least encourage him to elaborate.

"How many entrances are there?"

"Just the door." Ah.

"So only one way to go in or out. What's the inside like?"

"I uh... I don't know that much. Look it's just a single old man Nina, he's probably so old he can't see or hear anymore." How very accurate.

"Probably?"

"Uuuh."

"So you don't even know how old he really is?"

"Well Helene said he was very old." And that explained this. Helene was one of the youngest of the other orphans he took care of. The man had probably called her a rat or made her cry one way or another.

"Do you even know where the shop is?"

"Oh come on, you know me." She gave him a long, silent look. "What? Of course I know where it is. Look Nina, if we can get those tools and learn to pick locks we could steal from any shop at night while nobody is in them. We could have everything we need anytime we want! And risk free too!" That was true and, to give him credit, probably was a much bigger part than petty revenge of his motivation for this. Being able to break into the shops of the wealthier worthless, those that weren't runically warded at least, would solve quite a few of their current issues with their diminishing hunting grounds while also allowing them access to luxuries like decent cloth with none of the risk that getting them from a street vendor implied. She gave him long and deep sigh.

"So you want me to come up with a plan to steal very expensive tools right under the nose of a man currently using them inside a shop we don't even know the size of that only has a single door as an entrance or exit. Do I have everything right?" He blinked before answering with unshakeable certainty.

"Yes, that sounds about right."

"How do you expect me to do that?" Its not like she was a miracle worker in that regard, by the Virtues it had taken her months to come up with any plan that did not involve her getting beaten up in the process! And before that she'd never even had a plan.

"Your plans never fail." It was the absolute trust in these words that she saw in his eyes that finally won her over. The inexorable belief that he put into them. The near reverrence in his voice. Even though he deviated from them half of the time he still thought of her schemes as perfect. He trusted in her completely. Relied on her. And it was the greatest feeling she had ever had in her entire life.

"Fine, I'll come up with something. But you have to promise me to follow everything I will tell you to do exactly okay? And also the next time I say that we are not doing something because its too dangerous you will listen to me." She would make this stupidly reckless idea of his work, she couldn't disappoint him now. He... he relied on her after all.

"I promise I will do both of those things" She knew he wouldn't but at least he believed it when he said he would. And that counted, a little.

"Alright then, let's go find ourselves some lunch and I'll think on it while we eat."

"You'll see, it will be easy. We'll be in and out so fast the old fart won't even notice we came in." She really doubted that, but she'd try her hardest to make those words true.

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It was only two days later that they found themselves in front of their target, ready to act. Not that it had taken that much time for Nina to come up with a plan of action. After all, however risky it was, stealing a few tools from a workshop wasn't the most complex of endeavors. No it was simply that she'd been very cautious and had insisted on gathering information on her own before doing any sort of planning. Her plan might end up being simplistic but it would be watertight, she would make sure of it.

She'd found the store easily and had bribed another rat for a handful of candy to take a look inside and tell her what he'd seen afterwards. He'd quickly ran out of the shop along with a loud volley of imprecations likely coming from the old craftsman. Still, despite how brief his stay inside had been the rat had proved himself quite the observant boy. She'd learned where the craftsman kept his tools as well as the general layout and the size of the store. He'd confirmed the man was old but claimed the darkness of the windowless interior had prevented him from seeing quite how old.

It had been more than enough information to come up with a simple but efficient plan of action and here they were, ready to put it into practice.