Home.

I gently lowered myself into the comfortable chair in my living room. I groaned with relief. It was something of a mix between an armchair and a wingback. It was cushioned, had tons of pillows and was heavenly. An insistent gift from Elly, when she learned I liked to read. A reading nook, she called it. We had found it a few months ago, in the city's flea market. Well, it was a little upper scale to call it a flea market, but they did sell second hand furniture.

This particular piece could be connected with another three such chairs to form a massive couch. She had three, and gave me one. It was only the lack of space in my home or she would've really set it up here and never left from the spot, it was too good of a space for reading.

Heck, even I probably wouldn't have left. I chuckled at that.

Slowly took my shirt off and then my pants. It was warm inside, so it was fine. Closed my eyes. Rotated my neck, rotated my shoulders, little turn stretches to both sides to hear that satisfying crack in the spine. And opened my eyes.

I looked at the paper patches my thigh, knee and calf of my left leg, along with scars. Some jagged or faded. They were on multiple places on my leg.

The patches had yellowed with a hint of red showing along the edges of every patch. I groaned at that and rubbed my eyes.

"Great... Now I have to make another three?" I muttered. I shook my head, "...So another sleepless night then."

I peeled the white, blank tags over the patches. They were mainly to conceal what was underneath them. Just in case someone saw them and questioned whether I was turning into a hippie.

Swiftly, I followed the same with the patches too. A jolt went through my leg followed by moderate amount of pain. I breathed through my nose, slowly. In. Out. In. And out. And the pain subsided.

I stared at the now crumpled, Sustainment talisman. It was 5×10 cm, with Sústîenere written on it. Along with it were geometrical patterns that used to take me almost 40 minutes to get them right. And then came the etching the word itself. Which was to be added in specific strokes and positions only. Overall one little talisman took me an hour and half to create. The paper was another problem. Preparing required whole set of ingredients that **** me to go to the city. I was too frequent in the neighboring towns and I didn't want to risk it.

The script it was written in was another matter that had caused me many sleepless nights. I was still figuring out a few other characters and nuances in it. Though now I had it's functional capability.

If prepared well, the creation time now was 40-45 minutes approximately for a whole new talisman. And I was always prepared.

I sighed and grabbed my cane, which was plain brown, wooden and L-shaped with a nice grip. It was rather long, to suit my height. Therefore it had to be custom made. It was tolerable only because the guy who had taken the job had added a few, fun tweaks. I found it agreeable with couple of my additions.

**********

I stared at down at the ashes of burnt paper in my kitchen sink. Made sure the pungent smoke was out, closed the windows and turned on the fire alarm.

Washed my hands and let the ashes in the sink drain away.

**********

Sighing, I let the warm water flow down from my head, torso and then legs. The warm water soothing old aches.

Stepping out, I toweled myself dry. I turned as I heard a notification chime from my phone, rested on the wash basin counter beneath the mirror.

I picked it up as I dried my hair. And tapped on the J! icon. A message on Jobily, a platform like Craigslist, but for much for weirder, smaller jobs/services. For me, it was pretty convenient to advertise and accept some other type of work. The supernatural kind.

It's target demographic was also mostly local, so that worked in my favor. It had ad services, reviewing, requirement filtering, tags, messaging and forums. Those were pretty good features. But most important one was the choice of anonymity. Of course, one's identification data had to be given for registration. But anyone could make and delete email accounts these days.

In short, as long as the job/ad contents were not outright illegal they wouldn't remove it. It was a pretty legally grey website. Much like thousands of other, I was sure.

I checked the time, 12:10 AM. On a weekend? I was tempted to let it hang until Monday... But this could a case of supernatural after weeks of duds. I sighed. And stepped out of the bathroom.