By the time Abrial reached the village, the sun was high in the sky. Sweat dripped down her dark brow despite the coolness of the day. But, though she was breathing heavily from running for so long, she was also grinning lopsidedly.

“Feels like I just fought Instructor Wei,” she grinned to herself. “Except, there’s a lot more room to exercise here. Awesome!”

As she approached the clustered buildings, which were all made from a dark, sandy wood, Abrial recounted everything she could recall Finley ever mentioning to her about villages.

Villages? Well…they can be very small, or very large and crowded, or they may fall anywhere in between. They are all different.

Abrial, though I know you wish to meet more people, not everyone is friendly in a village. There are sometimes thieves and drunk men with violent intentions, especially in dark alleyways and at night.

The market is a crowded place where villagers purchase foods and goods for their homes. It is often crowded, and quite loud.

You must never perform magic on a street in a village, or a city. It is akin to asking to be killed outright.

There are taverns, where people drink alcohol. Women especially must be careful of drunkards around those places. I suppose women must be careful of drunkards in any place.

As she recounted Finley’s descriptions of villages, Abrial reached the edge of the cluster of buildings. There were some people working hard with gardening tools here on the outskirts of the village, wiping sweat from their brows because of the now-hot sun.

Abrial strode past them, not noticing the suspicious, puzzled looks they gave her.

Into the village she swept. Some villagespeople who were working small gardens by their houses stared at her as she passed. They saw this handsome, mysterious young woman in bright, expensive scarlet robes gliding past, and their jaws dropped in disbelief.

As soon as she was out of earshot, they started gossiping to each other:

“Hey! For real, what’s a rich young lady like her doing in Gananjag?”

“If only one of my sons could find a wife as beautiful and wealthy as her. Ha! It won’t happen, though. They’re all bums, unfortunately.”

“Don’t you think she looks a little fierce? Maybe she’s here to collect overdue debts?”

“Ooh, but she seems mysterious, don’t you think? What if she's a magical seductress or something? I mean, who’s ever seen a rich woman in Gananjag, anyways?”

“Shh! Don’t say such evil things! She must be the daughter of a noble family. No way would she do evil things like practice magic!”

Abrial didn’t hear any of their gossiping, and honestly, she hardly noticed any of them were there. Her stomach was growling fiercely, so she didn’t pay any attention to things outside her goal: food. She needed to find food before she could run off back towards the house. What help would it be if she starved in the hills on the way? That would just be stupid! And besides, she ran much faster when she ate well.

As Abrial forged deeper into the village, people turned to ogle and whisper wherever she went. There was a hubbub coming from somewhere, with many voices laughing and shouting and conversing not far off. Many voices, laughter, shouting — that must be where she needed to go. She slipped between two houses, rounded a corner, and stopped.

She had arrived at the village market.

It was just like Finley had described: overcrowded with people, loud, and lined with a ton of strange stalls. There were many a hundred swirling in the air: fried fish, honey, fresh baked wheat, and even the hot smell of spicy soup.

Automatically, Abrial’s mouth began to water.

Sellers were calling out things all around, trying to get people to buy from them:

“You, Miss! Buy some honey candy, two for one bronze coin!”

“Radishes, freshly harvested!”

“Real gold hairpins, for the one special to you! Real gold, it’s real, I swear! Hey! Why are you walking away?!”

The commotion was something Abrial had never experienced anything close to before. Being frank, she’d never even seen more than about five people in the same room that she could remember. This…was a lot. The sounds, the smells, the movement, the colors — it was to the point of being utterly overwhelming.

An awed grin broke out across Abrial’s face.

“Awesome,” she murmured.

After surveying the area for another minute from the shadows, she had formed a plan. Like a panther, she slipped into the crowd and disappeared into the sea of people.

A fruit stand was her first target. While the seller was arguing with an old lady who wanted to buy three pears for the price of five, Abrial swept by, slipping a fat yellow pear into her robes as she went and high-fiving herself at her smoothness.

Next, she passed a stand that was covered in robes of all sorts of unfamiliar patterns and colors. The man selling them was showing a wealthy, rather severe-looking woman an expensive violet robe when Abrial arrived. Upon seeing Abrial — in her bright, expensive scarlet silk — his eyes went wide. He left the severe woman immediately to talk to Abrial. The severe woman stuck her nose in the air and left haughtily.

“You must be a noble lady!” the seller grinned from ear to ear, showing slightly yellowed, crooked teeth. “Come, buy a robe, dear lady! See these? They’re sewn from the finest silk and golden thread in the whole empire of Gongkua! Just five silver coins!”

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“What does a silver coin look like?” Abrial asked bluntly.

The man faltered. His forehead wrinkled with uncertainty. Was this…some kind of test? He put on a smile and answered smoothly:

“Well, you must know best, dear lady! Round, with a square hole in the center, and engraved with His Majesty the Emperor’s sacred seal!”

Abrial’s eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement. “What’s the Emperor’s sacred seal?”

The man’s eyebrows furrowed deeply over his eyes. He was clearly getting very confused, and hesitant.

“Miss…are you not from around here? Are you from the kingdom of Geum, perhaps?”

Abrial’s frown deepened. Geum? The kingdom of Geum? Her geography tutor had never taught her about that. At most, he’d just taught her about land forms like hollows and rivers. She’d never learned about the makeup of the empire! How was she supposed to know what this Geum was?

Seeing her continued odd confusion, the seller began to slowly step back towards a young couple eyeing his robes on the other side of the stand.

Abrial noticed and huffed. This guy wanted money, didn’t he? A robe was too big to just grab and steal. She’d give him money, then! Swiftly, she reached up to the back of her head and pulled out the gold pin in her hair she had worn to her birthday feast last night. The section of dark, shining hair it had held up fell down her back. The pin glinted brightly in the sunlight, thin and precious.

Snap.

She broke it in half and held out one glittering piece to the man, scowling slightly.

“Will this be enough?”

The man’s eyes went wide and sparkling as greedy gems. He bowed, gesturing to his stand of robes generously.

“Yes! Of course! Which robe would you like? Pick anything, dear highest and noblest of ladies!”

In the end, Abrial chose a robe black as night. The seller kept insisting she pick something more extravagant, “fit for a high noble lady”, but Abrial only got irritated and wouldn’t budge. The black one was most practical, after all — why did he want her to get something else?! The fabric was light and left room for arm guards, which meant it could be worn while exercising. And it even looked similar to the one she always wore to Instructor Wei’s lessons. She didn’t want that other heavy, layered embroidered stuff. What would she even use it for?

After she broke off another minuscule piece of gold and gave that to the seller, too, he eagerly gave her a pair of leather arm guards and a sack to carry her things.

She pulled on the robe and left satisfied as he waved her away, beaming and bowing profusely, having made a whole years’ profit in one sale.

Abrial went all around the market in her new robe. Few people took notice of her when she wore this plain black, since it hid a large part of her expensive scarlet robes and let her blend in. That allowed her to more easily swipe loaves of hot bread, fruits, dried salted fish and other treats into her sack. Because she was so nimble and swift, no one even took notice of her. That gave her a thrill; she was quick enough to steal, but how far could she go before someone noticed her? Daringly, she snatched sweets and sugar-rolled bread from baker’s stands right after they were laid out. She’d never smelled anything so delicious. The cinnamon and sugar smell wafting from her sack made her mouth water with hunger.

Momentarily, she curiously stopped at one stand that was very crowded. The jolly seller was mesmerizingly pulling some sort of white dough over and over until it became a thousand strings as thin as hair. He wrapped pieces of chocolate with the light skeins, and spectators rushed forward to purchase the little wrapped candies.

In the commotion, Abrial swiped a single candy from the edge of the stand and left, popping it into her mouth. Her mouth exploded with flavor, sweetness and softness sparkling across her tongue. Her eyes went wide with pleasure. A grin spread across her face.

“This is my new favorite food,” she muttered gleefully to herself. She’d heard the seller call it, honey skein candies. “Honey skein candies! They’re like clouds! Mm!”

At another stand, a young man was squeezing oranges in front of customers with a wooden contraption, and handing them fresh orange juice in pointed paper cups.

When he saw Abrial, his face went slightly pink. It was undeniable that Abrial was very alluring in a handsome way. She was watching a little child chug a cup of orange juice in one go with an entertained look on her face.

“Miss! Miss in the black and red robes.”

Abrial looked up and saw the young seller waving at her. He was smiling sheepishly.

“Miss, have a cup of fresh orange juice!”

Abrial shook her head, frowning. “I’m just watching.”

“For free, I mean. Please have a cup for free!”

His face was a deep scarlet now. Abrial frowned, puzzled. One of her eyebrows tilted up in suspicion. Why would he give her a cup for free? Did he squeeze out some extra juice and just decide to give it to the closest person, or what? Huh. Well, it couldn’t hurt to try it, right? And the juice looked so delicious…

Abrial’s obsidian eyes sparkled excitedly.

“...Okay, I’ll try it!”

He eagerly handed her a paper cup, taking in her unfamiliar appearance.

“I haven’t seen you in Gananjag before, Miss. Are you from around here?”

Abrial lifted the cup to her lips and swallowed all of the juice in one quick gulp, sighing in pleasure at the sweet, citrusy taste and handing him back the cup.

“I’m traveling. Thanks for the juice! That’s some good stuff, heh.”

The seller took the cup, flustered that she’d drank so fast that there was no time for them to have a conversation.

“A-ah, I see. So…the juice was to your liking?”

“Yeah! It was really delicious! I’ve never had something like that! Where’d you get the oranges? They taste different than the ones I’ve had.”

“Ah, these are tangerines, not oranges. They are sweeter.”

“Tangerines. Huh. Cool!” With that, Abrial turned on her heel and disappeared into the crowd of people.

The seller was left standing there blushing, looking bewildered at that young woman’s apathy, rush, and complete lack of manners.

With her sack full of swiped food and her stomach tingling with delight at trying all of these new concoctions and talking to various new, interesting people, Abrial began to navigate her way back out of the market, using the sellers she had swiped things from as landmarks.

She had almost exited the market when a sign caught her eye. It was a wooden sign painted with swirling, extravagant characters in very faded black. It read:

Gananjag’s Only Fortune Teller

Face Readings

Salt Scatterings

Smoke Visions

And more!

The sign pointed to a small, dank underground entrance she had missed before in the hubbub of the market. It was hidden at the entrance of an alleyway. She must have missed it because it was cloaked in shadows.

Abrial glanced at the end of the market, conflicted.

“If Finley’s in trouble right now, I need to get back as quickly as possible,” she muttered.

She lifted her foot to walk away. But then, a thought struck her, and she paused. She turned back toward the sign slowly, frowning in thought.

“But a fortune teller could be really helpful, too, right?”

Couldn’t a fortune teller let her know whether or not Finley was all right? And how long it would take Abrial to get home? And what was happening to Finley right now? That could be really useful information!

She shouldered her sack of food. With a determined curiosity glinting in her obsidian eyes, she disappeared down the stairs of the dark entrance, and her head was swallowed by shadows.

Outside of the entrance, the sign squeaked in the breeze with anticipation.