Interlude - Truth Bearer

“Cutta by way of cross burned me on these. Or at least, that’s how the tide goes by sound. You would be the one to see her crash.”

The Yordle’s eye twitched. The Truth Bearer considered crouching down to keep the thing from craning her neck up, but the last one she’d done that with had gotten sore about it.

“Right, so you’re asking…?” She waved a small blue hand from on top of her stool and drawled an open ended question.

She bent her knees slightly to grab one of the crystals and held it in front of the Yordle’s face. The baby blue almost matched her skin. She wanted to pet it. They got very sore when you did that.

“I’ve no feel for mana, can you tell me if this is real?” She spoke slowly and bit the consonants in the way the mainlanders did. "I spent a lot on these."

The Yordle wrapped both hands around the tiny crystal and put it between one of her eyes and the gas light. Whale oil light. Piss for light and smelled rotten. The kind of smell you didn’t forget once you had it in your nose. Burning fat, old socks. Most had magelight by now. Far safer in a town made of driftwood. Smelled less like curdled discharge. Better light too. Burning whale oil said something. She just wasn't sure what.

“Oh, they’re real sapphire all right.” The Yordle whistled.

The Truth Bearer blinked and picked up one of the other ones from the counter, looking at the light through it like the Yordle was. It was blue. That was as far as the untrained eye got.

“Yes, but is it magic?”

“Well,” The Yordle spoke slowly as if to a child, “It’s sapphire. Sapphire is magic.”

After another long moment looking at the light through it, the Truth Bearer shrugged.

“So it is.”

“These seem like awfully pure specimens, big lady, where did you find these?”

She set the crystal back into her pocket and picked up the other one, the Yordle kept looking through the third in amazement.

“I told you, a cutta traded me for them. I wasn’t sure if I had been ripped off or not until I could actually verify that they were magic.”

“A cutter? Like a stone cutter?”

“Purse.”

The Yordle finally set down the third crystal and whistled.

“That explains it. Considering you still have all your arms and legs, he either didn’t know what he had or he sold you some hot goods.”

The truth bearer picked up the third crystal and wrapped her fingers around it confusedly, then pressed it to her face.

“Hot?”

“As in, not just stolen, but the person they stole it from wants it back really bad. You might want to be careful who you show those to, lady.”

“I will have to bear that in mind.”

The shop door swung open behind them and a figure walked in. Robed, hood down. Conspicuous in how much they were trying to look inconspicuous. Kind of sight fit to make somebody wary.

“Course you look like you can take the heat, but if you decide you don’t want to, I can take them off your hands. I’d be willing to give you about what you paid for plus some store credit. Three hundred and forty-five gold a piece, that covers the inspection fee, plus a discount on anything you see that you might want.”

That was a trick she’d seen others make since she’d been in town. Tell the buyer or seller that your price was above or below what you actually meant and let them haggle you to it. The brain liked round numbers, it also liked feeling like it had outsmarted another brain. She didn’t pay it any mind, watching the new figure out of the corner of her vision. She seemed to sit like a dust mote in the eye, blurry and almost painful to look directly at. Some manner of cloaking, conspicuous if you could get past the basic deterrence factor of it. Force your brain to sit in the moment, to look at the thing that seemed too bright to look at and too dim to see, slowly it took shape. The shopkeeper seemed not to notice her, seeing the Truth Bearer as staring off into space.

“Even a big, strong person like yourself must want a weapon. I haven’t spotted any on you and if you don’t know how dangerous it is in these parts without one then you’re exactly new enough to be on the verge of finding it out the hard way.”

“I’ll be careful.” She responded flatly.

“Suit yourself.”

The figure lingered in between two of the shelves of piled trinkets, trying to look like it was casually browsing to anybody whose eyes needed something to glance over. But something was clutched firmly in its hand, it was just waiting for a moment where things seemed clear to leave with it.

“I am curious,” The Truth Bearer turned her head slightly to push the figure out of her peripheral vision and to keep the door in it, “Outside of knowing which materials are and are not magic, how exactly does one tell what to look for?”

“Fellow non-mage, eh?” The yordle leaned back, “The mages think they’re so smart and so above it all, but anybody with a working brain who knows what to look for can see through all of it. Almost all of us have a little of it, so when your eyes see it it’s almost like static electricity.”

“Do you think all magic is the same?”

“That’s a weird question, big lady.”

“Let’s say hypothetically,” The figure had moved to between two other shelves now. More things were in its hands. “There is magic in the motion of the waves, magic from deep within the earth. The trees and plants set roots deep into the soil and feed from it. Birds swoop to peck at worms that crawl through it and seeds grown in it. The waves that crash on the shore and the fish in the deep are all stewing in it until they come to the sand or up in nets. It would seem then that the magic which the eye makes note of is merely the colors which it has not become used to. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Gee,” The Yordle scratched her head, “I think what I’d say is that it seems like you have more opinions about these things than I do.”

“Forgive me,” The figure was moving to the door, the truth bearer hefted her bag and straightened up, “I once spoke face to face with the goddess I had worshiped my whole life. I fear the encounter left me… changed.”

“Oh, really?” The Yordle sighed and rolled her eyes, “What did she say?”

“She told me to break up with my boyfriend, but that I was otherwise doing great.”

The figure slipped from the door. A moment later, so did she.