A caravan of traders.

Viviana walked through the crowded streets, hands on her hips, shoulders back and bust forward, majestic breasts held just barely in check by a flimsy bikini top. All eyes were on her, and she felt her self growing aroused by their stares. Mingled lust and disdain. Oh, how they hated her, for dangling what they could not have before their eyes. One man reached out, attempting to grope her heart-shaped ass, only to be flung back, wrist broken, and fall into a screaming mess on the ground. She layered her wards strongly, as every local new. This man was a foreigner, no doubt. None of the townsfolk would be so foolish.

She noticed a lot of unfamiliar faces, in fact. The night market in the town square was abnormally dense, tonight, with brightly colored stalls. She remembered, after a few seconds delay, that a trader caravan was scheduled to come around now.

She smiled and began to skip down the street towards the stall, laughing as she thought of all the things she was going to buy with her deep reserves of silver and gold. Her curves reacted to her skipping quite salaciously, and the men in particular were so overwhelmed that they almost did not move out of the way in time before she plowed them over.

Dozens of stands caught her eye. A perfumer- no, she could make better on her own than any one could. A wine-seller. Yes. she would have to check if they had one of those lovely blackberry wines she adored. Fine clothiers, lots of food stalls.

Viviana was, of course, quite wealthy. Everyone in town came to her for treatments to their ailments, for scrying the future, and for the odd love-potion. And on top of that, she had inherited a great sum of money from her mother, who had also been a great witch, before giving up her power to bear Viviana.

Viviana shuddered as she recalled. A witch who fell pregnant would loose her magic forever, as it was absorbed by the growing child inside her. A witches firstborn was always a female, a witch in her own right, heir to her mother's power. In this way, each living witch stood at the end of a long chain of mothers and daughters, each of which had given up their power to pass it on to the next.

Not Viviana, though. Her magic was everything to her, and even if there were a way to keep it, the prospect of becoming pregnant, and raising a child, filled her with animal terror in a way that nothing else did. She habitually wrapped herself in a network of wards as strong as a stone fortress, and shielded her womb in a web of anti-fertility seals, parallel and entirely separate, such that one could fail entirely while leaving the other untouched. She had spent a great deal of time trying to find a spell to scour her womb barren, once and for all, to no avail. In the meantime, she avoided men like poison snakes, a single drop of their white venom able to take everything from her.

Maybe someone would be selling spell-books? There was also a stand overflowing with jewelery, which seemed to draw her eye like a lodestone drawing iron.