early enough to have a sudden urge to flee, too late to actually do so.

"Shefael," came the purr, right beside his ear, and shivers immediately shook him from his neck to his toes. He tightened his scarf around his neck, and as his hands brushed the wool, light sparkled faintly across his periphery. It needled across the red hairs that he saw there too.

"Greetings," he said, giving a dim smile and turning. "What business do you have here, friends?"

"We were shearching for you," said the spokesperson, with the usual gruff, mushy merhin accent. The gray of their skin gleamed silver and pink with gelatinous hydraurum-based applicant, so thick that Seph could stick a finger down all the way to his first joint before even touching their dry-fearing skin with the tip of his nail.

"Ish been a while shinsh you've come nearing Pearlushk, Shefael. Finally we conshidered catching you here, at Bazaar."

"You could have sent a letter," Seph said, laughing nervously.

"It ish a matter more urgent than the written word," said another merhin, and this time Seph straightened a bit — it wasn't the spokesperson this time, but the lead of them, with the longest beard, and with the most braids and little trinkets in it, one of which Seph recognized as the dried skull of a water fairy.

"We hear you have before traded talk with the Dragonsh?"

"Not...not necessarily —"

"We require your aid."

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