[Silver]

The golden thread. Every year they held a festival for it, and though she was sure that it meant something to someone, she found herself unimpressed. She could remember, barely, how she enjoyed the festivities as a child. Nowadays she could hardly muster the effort to be excited about it. Whether she liked it or not, being here meant that she had to endure it.

Calla did a good job of blending in, despite her reservations. Her interesting choices in hair color and makeup were less out of place than usual with the city flooding with travelers. There were also all of the parades and costumes to compete with. All things said, she was hardly on anyone’s radar.

[Silver]

Something good might come of this outing after all. The glint of sunlight off metal caught her eye. More quickly than she could have said ‘ooh, shiny!’, she darted off into the depths of the market. They had all the usual stuff - food and souvenirs mostly - but none of that mattered to her.

She was after the blades. Tucked away against an alleyway was a shady looking businessman and his collection of decorative blades. He had a huge assortment of things from small hobby knives all the way to full sized swords. They were questionably legal in these parts, so he was quick to shoo away anyone he thought might cause him trouble.

[Silver]

The man grinned a sleazy grin as Calla approached. She looked just like someone he could sucker into a purchase. He was about to start off on his sales pitch for a particularly flashy looking item when she quickly shot her hand up to silence him. He was so caught off guard that he complied.

The salesman had assumed from her appearance that she wanted something flashy and impractical. All of the girls dressed in black with their dramatic eyeliner wanted something that was pretty and overdone. The more he looked at her, however, the more he realized that there was something different about this one.

[Silver]

“Nevermind,” she said, turning to walk away. She had taken a quick look over what he had to offer, and it was all flash and no substance. They were just decorative enough to distract from the fact that they were poorly made and impractical.

“Wait!” the salesman called out, reaching out to grab her. Her reactions were too fast and he nearly stumbled over the stall trying to straighten himself after she pulled away. “There’s more!”

Calla was curious enough to stop walking away. She would give him a few seconds to redeem himself before she left for good. Calla turned back and looked at him with an expression that suggested he better impress her quickly. She would have been fine with wasting her own time, but if he continued to drag it out, they might have a problem.

[Silver]

He pulled out a briefcase seemingly from nowhere and dropped it haphazardly onto the table. It seemed like he didn’t really care about the contents of either case that much. He fiddled with some locks and the case sprang open to reveal its contents. He immediately grabbed a blade with a colorful handle and proudly explained the origins of the materials in it.

While he was explaining where the blade in his hand was from, Calla stared into the rest of the case. Everything here was questionably shady, but the stuff in this suitcase was especially bad. Many of the things inside were clearly made of materials that were not easy to come by. She kind of liked his enthusiasm for it, as odd as it was.

[Silver]

“This one,” she said, reaching into the case and removing a small, straight knife she found there. It was one of the few not made of some extinct animal or another.

“Yes, yes, very lovely. It suits you,” he said. She would roll her eyes if not for the social pressure to be polite. He then said a price, but she wasn’t really paying attention.

“Here,” she said, dropping a small handful of coins into the case.

“That’s hardly enough for…”

“Is it enough for me to keep quiet about what you have in there,” she said in a soft but firm voice.

[Silver]

The man looked flustered. He knew full well what the risks of doing this sort of business were. It wasn’t exactly as though he could go to the police and report his highly sketchy briefcase merchandise had been stolen. They would laugh him right out of the market.

“You can hand me back the knife or you can hand me the cash. Your choice.”

“Sorry. Are you threatening me?” she said with a faint growl in the back of her voice.

[Silver]

Before he could respond, she continued. “We both know some people who would love to know where you got this.”

“How about this one? I know a lovely little kitty who would really want to see this.” Her voice was soft and pleasant the entire time, as though they were having a friendly conversation about the weather.

The salesman was an interesting mix of very angry and slightly afraid. What she said was no mere threat to report him to the police - he could handle them - but instead she suggested that she had powerful allies who had more than a casual interest in what he might be doing here.

[Silver]

Eventually he broke the tension by slamming the case shut with her pitiful offering of coins inside. He whisked it away to where it belonged and glared at her the entire time. Nonetheless, he did not try again to stop her from leaving.

As she walked away, he tried to think of where he could go from here. Clearly he could not stay here, not after what she had said. Even though he let her leave without her following through on her threat, he couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t follow through anyway. There was no honor among thieves, at least not of his caliber.

[Silver]

She was bluffing, of course, when she threatened to tell her friends about what he was doing there. She had absolutely no intention of doing so. Not because he gave her the knife, but because she simply couldn’t be bothered. It was far more effort than she thought he was worth.

The gloomy look that Calla had entered the festival with faded away. She quickly disappeared into the crowd with her new blade tucked safely out of view. Her thumb gently stroked the flat of the blade as she found a place to sit and watch the festivities. Even having it there gave her a sense of peace that lasted the entire rest of the day.

[Wild Pet Found]