Once again, Oakley was out of his element.

He should have been used to it by now, what with all the running through forests, fighting beasts and speaking to magical people, but this was the first time he was actively provoking his fate.

He stood on the corner of a street, at a cross roads of a couple cobblestone streets, waiting for his opportunity.

He had made a deal with the man called Aren Bryne. He didn’t like the morals of the deal, but he kept convincing himself that it was okay, as this entire world wasn’t real. Of course, it was real at the moment, but as soon as he managed to catch Hariel Paerilith, he could get home. At that point, this world might as well have just been a horrible dream. He would never reach Hariel without Aren’s help- which justified what he was about to do.

He had the peripheral of his vision continually on one house in particular. There was an item of value to Aren, somewhere within that house. Aren needed Oakley to fetch it and bring it back to him. Once Aren had the item within his possession, he would divulge what he knew about the man called Hariel.

It all sounded so neat and tidy, ignoring the fact that Oakley had to commit multiple crimes in order to fulfil his end of the deal. He wondered what made the item so special to Aren, but he honestly didn’t care enough to dwell on it for too long. His mission was to get home to his family. That was all that mattered. Oakley had even gotten to the point where he didn’t mind if that sounded harsh.

He had been told the homeowner, of the house that Oakley was scouting out, lived by a strict schedule. He was due to leave his home any moment for his weekly trip to the alchemist, to pick up some potion he required. Oakley translated it into his own mind as the man needed to pick up his medication- though he wasn’t yet sure if this world had medicine yet. Only ‘potions’, like the one that Oakley had partially drunk to stave off his dehydration. If they all were as useless as that one, he was shocked that the apothecaries had any business at all.

Right on cue, a thin, severe looking man in a smart suit walked out of his home, locking the front door as he did. His house had the tiniest front garden, surrounded by a waist-height iron fence. He walked out of the garden and turned down the street, the opposite way to where Oakley was lingering.

Oakley waited another minute, just so it didn’t seem obvious that he was waiting for the man to leave his home. Aren hadn’t told him anything about the man, likely to spare him any chance of feeling bad for stealing from him.

Oakley, while emotional at times, also knew that he was an analytical person over anything else. He liked to know what was going on, how things worked and how other people ticked. This fascination was starting to help him detach from the more questionable things he was doing, such as killing the dog or, now, stealing from a stranger.

Oakley strode down the street, trying to keep an eye out for anyone watching him. He was alone, from his best guess, so he hopped the iron fence and walked around the house- looking for any open windows. The last thing he wanted to do was break something on the way in and alert any of the locals. He was new in town and they wouldn’t hesitate if they found him at the scene of a crime barely one day into his stay.

Oakley found an open window, though it wasn’t open by much, and poked his fingers through to unclip the latch. It was latched to the windowsill to keep it at a specific angle. Oakley found it easy enough to swing open, though the window itself was small. He was grateful for his slim figure, otherwise he would have had no chance in pulling himself up and into the house.

Oakley left the window ajar, so that he had a definite exit plan once he’d found the item.

He hadn’t been told where exactly the item was, only that it was a small, brown leather pouch, containing something he mustn’t look at. Oakley didn’t really know why it mattered for him to avoid looking inside the bag, nor how he was meant to identify the correct bag without looking inside. He was told there was a crest sewn into the bag, something depicting a flame over a book.

With those few facts to go off of, he only had the amount of time it took Mr. Severe to walk to the alchemist and back to find the pouch and escape unnoticed.

“Where would I keep something of value?” Oakley asked himself, muttering to break through the tense silence of the empty house.

It was a modest home with a ground and first floor. He had hopped in through the kitchen window and noticed a flight of stairs- starting close to the front door- as well as doors into other rooms from the central corridor on the ground floor. There was a distinct lack of decorations, though Oakley wasn’t surprised, looking at the man who owned the home.

As an artist, Oakley kept on having his mind wander over how he would decorate the home differently- or at all- in comparison to what was currently on display. The homeowner seemed to pick his appliances and furniture on expensive taste, firstly, and then on necessity. He had a small dining room, just off from the kitchen, and a living room beside it. Oakley figured that nowhere on the ground floor would be efficient enough at hiding something of value, so he jogged upstairs as quietly as possible.

He could feel his pulse, pumping through his hands and up his neck. Oakley had never done anything like this and his nerves were gradually getting the better of him, the longer he stayed in the home. What if the man found the open window? What if the man found him?

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Oakley had to hurry.

Upstairs was more of the same. Wooden floorboards and expensive, yet boring, taste. The staircase led up to a small landing with three doors leading out of it. One door led to a small study, which Oakley wasn’t surprised about at all, the other two led to a bathroom and a bedroom respectively.

Oakley would have hidden something valuable in either his bedroom or his office, if he were the one hiding it- so he didn’t have long to check both. He first decided to rush through the bedroom, as it would be easier to hide under the bed if the man came back while he was searching. He would be in deeper trouble if he was caught in the office when the man returned, so he wanted to leave that till last, just in case he found the pouch before needing to go in there.

The bedroom had a little more style and thought put into its decorations than the other rooms that Oakley had looked through. There was a four-poster bed with deep red sheets and thin red curtains pulled apart and tied to the posts. The window looked out upon a small back garden, and Oakley could see some of the streets beyond the garden from that angle. He couldn’t yet see the man approaching, but he needed to hurry nonetheless. Aren had warned him that he stuck to a tight schedule and was sort of a topic of gossip around town with how he was never more than a couple minutes out of time with his plans.

Oakley could see a wardrobe, a chest of drawers and two bedside tables- one on each side of the bed- in the bedroom. Quickly, he began rifling through one of the bedside tables, finding nothing useful whatsoever. The first held a few stray coins and a book with a bookmark partway through.

The second seemed to be used to store socks and underwear, though Oakley didn’t understand why the man didn’t just store them in the chest of drawers with the rest of his clothes. Perhaps the man just liked putting his socks on before getting out of bed?

He was about to close the drawer on the bedside table when he had a second thought and pushed his hand down into the bundle of socks. There was something else in there. Oakley pulled it out, revealing a leather pouch. It, unfortunately, did not have a crest of the description that Aren had given, so Oakley looked in it out of curiosity.

This man was rich. Oakley wasn’t knowledgeable of the currency in this world, but even he could tell the number of coins, and the style of them, meant that the pouch was worth a lot.

He placed the pouch back in the drawer and closed it, unwilling to steal any more than he needed to. He still had his collection of coins from the dragon hoard, so he didn’t need to go stealing from others.

Satisfied with his good deed of not stealing, Oakley got back to the task at hand and started rummaging around through the chest of drawers. He knew the time was being quickly poured away, so he started to take less care with how he was placing the items as he put them back. The man was likely going to have some creased shirts the next time he decided to wear one.

Oakley didn’t find the pouch anywhere in the bedroom and cursed quietly, taking another glance out of the bedroom window to see if he could see the man returning. Nothing yet.

He hurried out of the bedroom and into the office, knowing that this room would take the longest to search and be the hardest to hide within.

The office was one that even Oakley admired. One wall was lined with bookshelves, from end to end, and each bookshelf looked to be close to collapsing under the weight of the books upon them. In here, Oakley could see where the man spent most of his money, as there were books in almost every direction he looked. There was a window, though it was covered partially by a curtain and had stacks of books lined up in front of half of it. A desk and chair sat in the center of the room, with papers and books sprawled across it.

Oakley wondered how the rest of the house looked so neat, while the area that this man did his business was so disorganized. Shrugging off the thought, due to urgency, Oakley started to pull out the drawers of the desk to look through them for the pouch. Most of the drawers were filled with either writing implements, or paper. Some of the papers were clean, as of yet unused, while others were covered in all kinds of writing, most of which, Oakley couldn’t read.

In the second to last draw, Oakley finally found a pouch sitting alone. It matched the description that Aren had given and he happily pocketed it, wanting nothing more than to get out of this man’s home. Oakley didn’t even consider looking into the bag, he was in such a rush. He closed the drawer and started towards the door of the office, only to hear a key enter the lock of the home’s front door.

Oakley swore once again, trapped in the office and unable to spot anywhere to hide. He couldn’t even consider escaping out of the window due to the books covering most of it.

Oakley watched the man, with perfect posture as he entered the home, close the front door. The man then sighed and slumped slightly, relaxing a little now that he was in his own home. A safe and solitary space, he likely thought- mistakenly.

As quietly as he could, Oakley inched out of the office as he saw the man continue along the corridor. Oakley heard the clink of cutlery and crockery. The man was in the kitchen, the furthest room away from the front door. He only had one chance to get out of this unscathed.

Oakley tiptoed slowly across the landing, hoping there were no creaky floorboards in this expensive home. As he reached the top of the stairs, he felt faint. His heart was going at such a rate due to the nervousness and tension of the situation that he had to stabilize himself with the banister, feeling dizzy.

The tension got to Oakley, unused to this situation, and he sprinted down the stairs, not caring about the sound. He heard a surprised shout from the kitchen area, but reached the front door and swung it open rushing out into the open air.

Oakley couldn’t see anyone else in sight, so he darted around the side of the home. He would easily be spotted by the man if he ran into the street, so he hoped to duck into one of the other streets while the man was searching the wrong one.

Oakley heard the man’s shouts of annoyance and confusion, but he didn’t hear any of triumph. He was in the clear. Oakley hopped the fence of the back garden- as the fence ran all the way around the home- and started to walk normally down the street he had now entered. If he ran, he would only draw more attention to himself.

A couple moments later, Oakley heard the man call after him and he turned around to face the man, feigning a look of ignorance.

“Did you see anyone running this way?” The man asked, breathlessly.

“Not that I’ve noticed,” Oakley said, shrugging as he did.

The man paused for a little longer, eyeing Oakley, before nodding to himself and hurrying off in the other direction.

Oakley smiled to himself, feeling the pouch within his pocket. He had done it.