Orrison Prompts

"Hello! Do you have a moment?"

The shopkeep peered over the top of her book to see a little immanu standing in front of her stall, decked out in the brightest and ugliest jacket she had ever seen in her life. The same immanu who had talked her ear off about some composer nonsense for half an hour earlier in the evening, in fact.

Hoo, boy. She was not going to get anything done tonight, was she?

The kid evidently took the pause as a yes, since they didn't even wait for her to put her book down before launching into their spiel. "I dunno if you remember our conversation earlier? I'm Axiom Antares. You know - "

" - like Antares Manufacturing, yeah," she finished, resigned to her fate. "Are you going to buy something this time?" She gestured down at the rows of daggers neatly laid out on the stall between them.

Axiom put a hand to their mouth. "Oh! I'm sorry - I totally forgot you were still on the clock here. I must be holding up your other customers, huh? I'll be as quick as I can, then. Have you seen my coin purse anywhere around here? Green silk, copper clasp, about yea big? I definitely had it before I talked to you the first time 'cuz I remember I was checking if I had enough left in my budget to get something nice, but now it's gone and I can't find it anywhere. So I was just wondering if you happened to pick it up?"

She stared at Axiom in disbelief. Here they were, a tiny little immanu in a market full of criminals, between a stall selling poached goods and another stall selling illegal charms, asking a woman with a hundred knives about their lost belongings as if she were going to hand them over with a smile. Were they extraordinarily confident or just stupid?

"Kid," she finally managed after a short pause. "This is the Nightmarket. We don't have a lost and found. You're responsible for keeping an eye on your own belongings here. Got it?"

Axiom's shoulders slumped, and for a split second she almost felt bad for them. "I really liked that purse... but I guess you're right," they sighed. "I'll have to go grab more money from my hotel room, then. Thank you anyway!"

They turned and scurried away. She watched as they disappeared into the crowd, then reached beneath the stall and pulled a bulging green coin purse out of a small lockbox.

"Rich kid, huh?" She muttered to herself, hefting the purse. "Figures."