It was somehow hard to reconcile the money-hungry, greedy little Elflet with the information that she knew the name of a random girl working at her parent's stalls.

Somewhere in my head, I expected the two things to be exclusive, but they hadn’t been. They had never been.

It had been an illusion of my own mind that those two things were mutually exclusive; it was, in fact, two things that went together hand in hand in their own way. Sure, you could use indentured labour and not need to care about them at all, but these were presumably free people. They could leave at any time.

I felt it said more about me that I believed she didn’t care that much about her people. It said something about how I thought that people who wanted money lacked the empathy to care, and something about my situation, or the state of the world I was raised in that relied so heavily on the abuse of those who produced value, that I imagined her as about on part with that level of detachment.

“You know, Gunther,” I told her, “I think I owe you an apology. I thought you were one thing, and that was a very rude thing to think. You have my sincerest apology that I thought so little of you.”

Something in the way I said it, or perhaps my timing, or some other obtuse in and out of a conversation I was too uncultured to understand with my bottom-of-the-barrel charisma, got her to look at me like I had just told her some horribly off-topic remark of a grotesque nature.

“Just what do you think of me that’s so bad you feel the need to apologize? I don’t know if I should feel insulted or not, and that’s not something I generally care for. What’s going on in that fuzzy little head of yours?”

Selly kicked my head and muttered about remembering honour, but I tuned her out and paid attention to Gunther.

“You know my shtick; I’m from a long, long time ago. And back then, there were still money grubbers. But money-grubbing people didn’t care about their people. They just cared about how much money they brought in. Your form of money-grubbing isn’t like that. It's still money-grubbing, but you care about the people that get you money and the people in your employ, and that’s a world of difference.”

“Oh. Is that it?” she said, no longer worried about my apology. “Things change, kid. It's fine to be out of date, it happens… Just don’t overthink it, and accept things as you go. That’s how I do it. I think I’m wearing clothes older than half the people in the marketplace, it's out of style by, like, two generations? One and a half? Something there, and it doesn’t matter. I realized that like thirty years ago, and I just keep it to fuck with people who know. Just recognize the change and live with it.”

She said it with her pointy, too-wide smile that gave her a very chaotic Goblin look. Part predatory, part smug, and one hundred percent what I would expect with Gunther. It was very in line with that first look she gave me over the table.

It was a bit annoying and reassuring in equal measure that I had given her a heartfelt apology, only for her to almost laugh it off. And as nice as that was, it was a little annoying.

So, I looked down at her and said, “Well, I’m glad to know being outdated isn’t bad. You look like a Goblin right now, no offence.”

It was a little offensive to her, and she slapped back with something about Goblins being, but I started to fall into a back-and-forth with her, where she would jab, and I would jab back while we made our way to her office and got to work.

And it was fine.

Gunther was fine with jabs and japes. If anything, she was weirder with open honesty than messing with messing with one another.

The work went suspiciously fast, but by the end of two hours, we had whittled down the pile on her desk, combining them until there was a short list of values about a quarter of an inch tall, and Selly could walk up them like stairs, and we were out of work.

It felt too fast for all that Selly tried to converse with the both of us to pass the time. Gunther used some form of severely misused skill combination to talk with her, and I just talked to her tersely while I got my mind to perform the boring, repetitive calculations that I hated so much. It was too fast and too simple for math, which, for some reason, I expected to return to tortuousness.

Gunther got up from her chair, scooting it back, before she stood and stretched, her arm reaching up to chin level. My head decided it was an important thing to pay attention to that the semi-hostile [Merchant] could choke me, but I focused on standing up and stretching my legs instead of giving that information any weight.

Besides, she didn’t strike me as the strong type; as hard as peeking at her magically in any quantitative way, qualitatively, she seemed to be less strong than dexterous. It was some form of balancing thing, like when types merged. It was like… mixing paint. You could make yellow from green and red, but the balance of the green and red made different yellows.

I wonder if that’s why Anna does painting and dye work, some kind of magical practice. It’s a weird thought, but knowing how much Anna likes magic, I wouldn’t put it past her. And I wonder what would happen if I piled way more heat in with the air mana when I make fire, would that make... super fire? Fire becomes blue-white when it gets hot, would it just turn blue? What’s the limit on that?

Maybe I’m yipping up the wrong tree here. I’m probably going to end up going down death magic street instead of fireball road. Still… I think I’m on to something there, maybe I’ll ask Anna… Or just try it all on my own. It's not like I can’t find a use for fire just because I become a death mage.

It was funny. How such tiny things could lead to a train of thought like that.

“So we're good? Were square for the deal? You’re not going to turn around to ask me to pay you more for working less? Because I’ll be brutally honest, if I walk away and you come looking for the coin, I’m going to be mightily pissed.”

“Don’t… Ugh… Get your tail in a twist,” she said, with a moan of satisfaction as she stretched, while there were a few quiet clicking pops from her back. “But yes, don’t worry, your pointy little ears. You did a little more than you bargained for and worked less. It all works out; if this is everything, then that’s everything… And besides, this is going to make me way more money than a gold coin.”

She let out a little cackle as she said it, grinning off into thin air. I imagined what she saw in her mind’s eye, a rain of gold coins pattering down on her until she could swim through them like a lake.

“Well, I wish you the best. It's just nonsense numbers to me, but if you think all of that means something, I suppose it's your madness, not mine. Here, let me get you the four gold I owe you, then I can head on my way.”

She turned to me, the sound of my jingling my coin pouch drawing her eye from the far distance where she drowned in glimmering gold to the present, and she looked at me confused before recognizing that I was holding coins in her direction and planning to leave.

Selly flew up and over to me, her wings buzzing lightly before she landed and kicked me in the head lightly.

“You’re forgetting to get your haircut and where to find the strange man, you silly git.” She reminded me.

I managed to stop myself from nodding, a quick save for her convenience.

“You right, thank you, Selly,” I told her before turning to Gunther, “Almost forgot, I need to know where to find Strause and where to get my hair cut. You know the [Barber] by name, so I assume you know where he cuts hair? Could you give me some directions?”

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Her hand had started reaching out to mine, as if the gold drew her hand to it by magic, as if I were Fontaine’s demon, holding power and wealth out to her to tempt her to vice and inevitable destruction.

“Huh,” she said, looking up at me like a deer in lamplight.

“Strause and the [Barber], can you give me directions or not? Because I need to get some stuff done. I won’t ask you to bring me there because we’re both busy people, but if you know where to find them, and you would be so kind as to tell me, I would like to know.”

Her mouth gabbed open and closed a few times, wordlessly as her fingers vibrated in mid-air like she was having a fit. She looked at the picture-perfect description of a person having a stroke for a moment before she found her words and started talking.

“For Strause, you need to make your way to the wall; then you walk south around the noble's district to the last major road before the church district. It’s a two-story tavern of sorts; the sign is a mug with the symbol of hospitality on it and a feather on top of the mug rim. But I can lead you to Ciliart, I promised to do at least that much.”

“Are you sure? I was assuming it was a busy day, I would hate to be a bother,” I told her, but she quickly waved me off.

“Bah, tomorrow is busy, today is legwork. I won’t stay, but I can lead you there. Come on then,” she told me, quickly readying her coat before quickly moving towards the door.

I loped after her, following out of the building and back towards the cart where we had gotten the bowls and down a few narrow streets over through a throng of stalls and to a small stall with the green banner of the West Winds. It was an approximation of a storefront but topped with a slant of rugged fabric held up by four rough buttons and a set of wooden poles to let the heat out.

“This is the place. And thank you for your business,” Gunther told me.

I looked down and saw her holding the four pieces of gold in her hand like some great artifact of old. Like what I expected, but not the way I expected, it was an adequate way to describe her. So greedy, but not beyond hope, not beyond decency.

She backed up, placing the gold in her coat, and waved, “Pleasure doing business,” and like that, she was gone into the crowd. Her short legs carried her deceptively quickly and cleanly through the throng, and out of eyeshot, then out of earshot, and into the wide world of the markets.

“She's an odd one, ain't she?” Selly mused, “I can’t rightly tell what you tall folks deal is, but hers is somewhere between you hard and the fake one.”

“His name is Strause, and he’s Anna’s brother.”

“I don’t rightly care if he’s Titania’s brother; he’s a strange breed of person, and I don’t trust him as far as I could lift’em. You can never trust a person with a fake smile who talks like a Thesbian,” she commented.

“Don’t you mean a [Thespian]? A [Performer]?” I asked her, unsure because of her accent and the way she didn’t use the class.

“Nay. I mean, like you, if you decided to put down the shovel, use your head, and take up a late career as a [Playwright] yeh daft woman, you.”

I blinked for a few moments, then, unwilling to rise to her jabs, walked in, shooing her off my head.

“I use my head plenty; if you don’t like it, you can sit on my shoulder you... I don’t have a pun, but I dislike your comment greatly, and I am disappointed,” I told her while I pulled the front curtain aside and looked in.

Inside the abode was an old fashioned, half-back rocking chair, with some padded cloth with a step stool sitting in place of anyone atop it. Over to the side, there was a furnace with a pot of boiling water and several rags and, a medic bench off to the side, a series of boxes on shelves that held small wooden and metal gadgets that had a torturous look so beyond reason that it reserved them for old, brutal [Barbers] tools, the type that pulled arrows out.

And amidst it all, an old cat man with the same-coloured coat as the girl from earlier, a kind of wheat and brown coat of short but thick fur. He, for there was no doubt it was a he, was dressed in human clothes and sat drinking beer on a stool next to three small casks, one listed ‘water,’ another ‘High+,’ and the last with a symbol of the church of life, it's two eclipsed rings starkly burned into the bright white wood.

He looked over at me, and it was not like the girl. The man had more cats in him than the girl had a dog, and I could see it in his amber, cat-slit eyes. He opened his mouth and spoke in a deep, flowing rumble like a purr.

“Welcome to my shop, funny little nieces…” he said, his c’s & s’s long, “Can I assume, between you and your tinny friend, one of you is here for a shave and a haircut?”

There was a musical nature to the phrase, and I let slip “two bits” before I could think.

We held each other’s gaze for a moment before I was overcome with a sudden, near-irrepressible urge to walk out like I was playing a joke and never come back.

The old cat crackled a hissy laugh as he got up, tail flowing behind him as he put down the mug on his stool and waved me in.

“I’m not so cheap as two bits, I’m afraid. Come, come. My name is Ciliart Swiftfur. Be welcome in my shop… sit. How may I help you today, miss?”

I stepped onto the smooth wood panel floor, the part of my sandals softer than the closing of the curtain. I felt Selly land on my shoulder. “Hello, Mr. Swiftfur, my name is Saphine. Just Saphine, no last name,” I told him as I moved over to the seat that he had prepared and sat down.

It caught me for a loop, however, when Selly introduced herself, and I went to introduce her and realized that I had never changed dialect.

“Welcome, Saphine. Swiftfur is my clan, you need not be a stranger, simply call me Ciliart. And Selliban, if I may be so bold?”

“You may, good sir,” she said far too magnanimous obviously tickled pink by the fact that there was someone else to talk to.

“Thank you,” he said, working in a gracious bow as he moved over to the shelf and grabbed what I would expect for a haircut or a shave. Something about him spoke of smooth confidence. I could see it in his gate and movement, the way he picked up the curved fine-edged blade of a razor and spun it in his hand as if he were used to pick up something else, another fine blade.

There was no hostility, but I could imagine him being some form of [Fighter].

He stopped as he picked up everything and turned to me.

“How may I help you this fine day? Shave? Haircut? Thinning?”

“Just a haircut and a shave,” I told him, and he nodded, walking over towards the back of the chair.

“I can do that. Three silver for a simple shave, five for a haircut, eight altogether,” he said.

I reached into my pouch and pulled out eight silver. It was a fair price. I had someone’s recommendation, and he was obviously experienced. If he had half the experience I expected him to, it would be worth it easily. Metal didn’t come cheap, and metal blades fine enough to be used as razors, I bet, were beyond costly.

“Eight silver is fine with me, so long as you don’t make me bald,” I told him.

“I would never. A good [Barber] knows what to cut and what not to cut. Measure twice, cut once, no? Half up front, and if you hate your hair, you can leave with the other half,” he said smoothly next to me.

I gave him all eight, and while he raised his brow, he took it and slipped the coins into a pocket, and we got to cutting my hair. He asked, and I told him about how short Anna had suggested, and he got to work.

He didn’t speak a single skill, but I could feel mana moving, wafting around him like a shroud of smoke.

And I waited until he got through my hair, first shaving my hair, the blade gliding through my mane and against my skin, revealing my neck to the warm air, then trimming it down, shortening the hair on my head.

I looked down at Selly, who had gotten off of my shoulder and out from underhand, sat on my lap and reached out with a finger. As the hair I had let grow out of control during my mourning fell to the floor, flicked off and away by skills. Every stroke lightening my head, bit by bit.

As stupid as it felt to me, cutting it helped a little. Hair was strangely important, letting it get long and unkempt could make you feel unkempt. Maybe it was how close it was to my head, the feeling of it on my neck and around my ears, or how it hung into my vision if I didn’t move it. But whatever factor it was, cutting my hair was like cutting away a bit of that weight and stress.

Selly was active and vocal, and I could tell it was more like last night than our trip. She had a public face, but she was pointy and sharp and had been snappier. I wondered if Selly had something like that, cutting away the fluff. She had painted herself black in mourning, but I barely had the guts to ask, it didn’t feel like something you just asked someone, but it was absolutely not something I would ask around a stranger.

And then he pulled back and pulled out a little silver-backed mirror and let me see myself.

“What do you think?” He asked.

I barely recognized myself from the last time I had seen myself reflected in the cave, ash covered in the dim light of the cave. My eyes were the only thing that reminded me of the change, reflecting back at me, twin candle flames fluctuating in an ethereal breeze, tiny sparks of gold light puttering off like a popping fire.

I looked almost like I had before everything went wrong. Cleaner, younger, and like I had never lost my mother, died and come back. Gone, except for the eyes I hated so much.

Something about it made me want to tear up and got my eyes tingling, but I blinked the tears back and agreed with him. And he pulled the mirror back and returned his things to the shelf.

Selly buzzed off my lap as I stood up, and got up and onto my head before complaining, “I can barely hide up here.”

“Then stand on my shoulder, the birds won’t try to get you either place, not when I’m here,” I told her flatly, not feeling like banter.

“Your shoulder’s not cushy, your head is like a bed, though there’re less short fluffy hairs now. I suppose we’re off now yeh? You remember how to get to the tavern?” She asked empty cheer in her voice.

“Yeah, thank you for the cut Ciliart. New hair looks great.”

“Have a good day, young niece… Don’t be a stranger,” he told me, getting back to his drink.

I left the stall, and felt the threat of tears recede.

They would be back. Like everything recently, I couldn’t keep it buried forever. I didn’t have the skill to get over or rid of it. All I could do was wait for it to rear up as my scars wept in the dark of my mind next to my instinct.