Vhalar 53 722
Eternity had high expectations for her horse. She’d intended to take it to the marketplace but in reality, all she ended up doing was wasting time. She didn’t know how to ride a horse but with how busy she was lately it made sense for her to put her horse to work to conserve some of her energy. So, she’d had a neighbor come over and talk her through how to put the saddle on the horse. They didn’t have much time to stay and help her so she had to struggle alone until she got the damned thing on. Then she’d realized that she’d put it on backwards so she had to take it all off and start over again. It was frustrating for her. She'd been taught how to ride a horse when she was much younger and all that information had evaporated from her mind. She learned that if you didn't use it, you lose it.
When she’d finally gotten the horse saddled up, Eternity had trouble even getting on top of it. It took her no less than ten tries and the horse got increasingly annoyed with her. It wasn’t long before Eternity found that taking it to the market was not going to happen. She’d spent several bits sitting on the animal and willing it to take her to the market but it just went wherever it damned pleased. Clearly riding a mount was more complicated than sitting on it and telling it to move. It’d taken all of her willpower and a lot of help from random passersby to get the horse back onto her property and by then her entire day’s plans were messed up. Her first instinct was to curse the horse but she knew it was her fault for owning the damn thing without learning how to ride it first. Perhaps another series of lessons were in order. She pushed that to the back of her mind then steeled her nerves for a long walk.
With her breathing heavier than she had been when she had left for the market, Eternity walked steadily over the uneven ground. Eternity could reach the market in time if she kept at a steady pace without exerting herself too much because of how much she'd had to walk so far. The docks, though, remained a challenge. It was not an area that she usually went to, mostly because she didn't often eat fish or have any desire to sail. She struggled on, clearing a rise to look out into the docks, but it didn't lessen the fire in her thighs.
The ship that brought the supplies she had been asked to get as well as those she wished to buy on her own was docked, and she could see people walking around it. She didn’t know if it was exactly normal for trading to be done right outside of the ship but merchants didn’t seem to have any issue with selling their wares as their crew unloaded the ships. Eternity began the last leg of the trek with a deliberate intake and exhale. As she approached the docks she adjusted the straps of her practically empty bag, her feet shifting the stones to produce a soft crackling sound as they struck one another. As usual, the harbor was busy. She was particularly fascinated by a pair of people who looked to be arguing about who should buy a sheep that was standing calmly between them. Their argument ended with a punch.
Eternity avoided eye contact with anybody and browsed the goods, stopping to pick up the food her friend had requested as well as a few other things. She discovered that some of them were more expensive than she had anticipated. As she made her rounds, money was quickly and effectively exchanged. She had no idea what anything was properly worth in this market but that didn't stop her from trying to haggle prices a bit lower. Her go-to strategy was to say she'd go to another store and usually that was enough to knock the price down a little. She had a feeling that people knew that she didn’t often come to the docks and were trying to over charge her. She was right.
One of them was a tool to cut her grass. Although Eternity's could just hire a cheap laborer to do it, she didn't want people poking around her home lest they get a hint that she was a thief. Eternity was now quite content to learn how to cut grass. She would benefit from the physical work and it would prepare her for the challenges of the island. She wasn't as feeble as she was an arc ago.
Additionally, a sewing kit was bought for functional purposes. In her room, several of her clothes were nicely folded yet torn all over. She had no experience sewing, but the man who possessed the kit had promised her that it contained a couple folded pages that would teach her the fundamentals of the art; to the merchant’s dismay, she demanded to see it. Repairs were required, although elegance wasn't really a concern. It was well worth the money if she could take care of her clothes to make them last longer. She made the rationale that if fabric was taken out of a shirt, it would have to be inserted back in to be fixed, so she bought a substantial strip of fabric to utilize in the future.
After finishing her purchases, Eternity lingered near the ship, leaning against the hull and observing the interactions between the others. She was so busy with university nowadays so her social life had suffered to some degree. She would have benefited from spending a little time in the presence of others. Although she knew she would soon get back to living a studious life so Eternity had little choice but to begin the journey back to her home. Until it got dark enough that she felt compelled to turn around because she didn't want to risk walking in the dark while carrying her purchases.
The next set of crates she walked by was different than the last in that there much of a variety to choose from; instead, there were more people rummaging through the libraries and archives of books and journals in quest of something useful or valuable. When Eternity first looked up the gangplank and encountered the thronging people, she hadn't anticipated it to be this busy.
Books weren't particularly interesting to Eternity because she knew she could find almost any book she could possibly want at the library, but seeing them in a store where she could buy them made even the most basic notebooks seem more valuable. Like many around her, she moved hands and eyes over papers in quest of useful objects. There were all sorts of letters, satchels, books in all sorts of languages. There were plenty of maps available as well, but Eternity was not that interested in geographical exploration.
After some searching, she discovered a leather-bound, scruffy-looking book with meticulous, minute drawings of human beings, organs, etc. Notations were placed in the area where the diagrams should have been. Because of aging and use, several of the text close to the page edges were smudged. As she paged through it, she noticed that some pages were missing and that several different portions had been covered in blood that had a rusty hue. Even still, the information was fascinating. The seller of the item wouldn't accept anything less than everything she had in her pockets so she declined to trade. She didn't know what she would even do with such a book other than page through it when she got bored. What she really wanted was some book on horse riding but there weren’t any that she could see.
Eternity had allowed her eyes to skim across travel journals, awful poetry, even a book on fundamental baking methods. She could have spent all day finding entertainment from the odd assortment of titles but the merchants shooed the bystanders away to load everything up onto wagons where they'd invariably be taken to their final destination. The crowd had moved and begun to lessen somewhat when she spotted something of greater intrigue. It was a book bound in an odd mixture of stone and wood. The cover had what appeared to be jewels implanted in it, and the imperfections in the translucency caused their facets to distort the image behind them. Now that was a book worth getting for the wow factor alone, but it was too late for her to even get a second glance at it.
Eternity looked around, hoping that she could find the last few things she needed. She begrudgingly left the docks after her last purchase, a notebook that she'd use during her ensorcelling classes. She lacked so much knowledge and her existing abilities were so limited. She worked hard every day to become a better version of herself and to get control over the skills she was continuing to acquire. Eternity began walking home after adjusting the pack she was wearing. The light was slowly fading, and she could see a long trek ahead of her.
[Template credit to Pyrre]
