The marketplace of Tyrella was a world unto itself—alive, breathing, and shifting, its rhythm dictated by the cadence of footsteps and murmurs, the clinking of copper coins, and the thrum of barter. Sprawling across the heart of the ancient city, the roads were paved with weathered cobblestones long polished by sandaled feet. Stalls held the finest luxuries from the four corners of the world: cinnamon sticks curling like fragrant scrolls, bolts of lavender silk shimmering under sunlight, and amphorae brimming with exotic oils.
Jesiba stood among the tapestry of fervent sounds and colors, rooted to the spot. At sixteen, her duties had always been confined to her father's modest pottery workshop—quiet, dull, predictable. But today was different. Her father had insisted on her visit to the market, as though sensing something, though he had couched it in simple orders.
"Go see the other artisans. Observe, Jesiba. Open your eyes to the world of commerce."
But here, amidst the kaleidoscopic offerings and sheer weight of humanity, Jesiba felt her place shrinking. She wasn’t a born merchant—she had no love for bartering and louder voices. Fine crafts belonged in hands that appreciated their creation, not reduced to mere currency exchange. Yet, behind her father's steady voice had been that unspoken concern. His cough was worsening. The sickness was not leaving.
Everything—Jesiba, the shop, their livelihood—was teetering at the edge of survival.
She let herself wander, heart heavy, past the stalls shimmering with glass and bronze, past the shouts of vendors hawking their goods. Tyrella thrummed with hierarchies—the nobleman’s gilded chariot clattering up towards the acropolis, the swift-footed boys dancing between stalls with messages from powerful patrons, all as if the Gods themselves had laid the city’s geometry under law.
Her fingers traced the lines of an ornate column that twisted, vine-like, up the side of a building. All around her, greenery bloomed in ways that seemed half-wild: small olive trees sprouted proudly among the stone, tiny bright flowers clung to hidden cracks.
This was her world. It was familiar.
"Pretty sight, isn't it?" came a voice from nearby, hoarse but knowing.
Jesiba turned, finding herself face-to-face with a foreign-looking man leaning in the shadows of a silk stall. His skin was the deep, weathered bronze of someone who’d traveled beneath many suns. His hair, a streak of grey in the otherwise dark mass tied back at his nape, reminded her of salt still clinging to the nets of fishermen just arriving from the sea.
"The vines," he clarified, catching her startled glance. "Can't seem to grow them so well back home. But here, they thrive among all this stone."
Jesiba offered a polite nod, unease stirring inside her. It was not proper for her to speak with strangers so easily, especially not men. She looked down and moved to pass him by.
"You're a potter’s daughter, no?" he asked, still in that low, strange way that unsettled her. "Jesiba, was it?"
Her feet halted as if dragged by some invisible weight. She whipped her head around. "How do you know my name?"
The man stepped forward from the darkened alcove, but kept a respectful distance. Now, in the light, his eyes gleamed—a rich celestial grey, stark against his rugged face.
"I have eyes, as do all men," he said. "And these eyes bear witness to many things. Your father... he's sick, isn't he?"
Fear clenched at her heart. "What is this? Why do you speak of things you know nothing about?"
But he held up his hands, palms outstretched. "Calm. I meant no harm," he said softly. "I merely speak what is true. I am a wanderer, a traveller with no home but the market roads between the cities. I hear much, and your father's story is known. I’ve seen those shadows before, Jesiba, on men who can no longer fight the battle with their own lungs. You are alone now, aren't you? Trying to hold together a world that's slipping."
Bitterness surged in her chest. "If you know so much, stranger, then what use is it? You offer nothing but grim news."
He smiled—not warmly, but as though he expected that response. "Ah, but that is the beauty of this place. The market, it whispers solutions, possibilities. But only to those who listen. Are your eyes truly open?"
She frowned but couldn’t pull away. He reached into the folds of his cloak and produced something wrapped in red cloth.
"Here," he said, offering it. "The market has chosen you today."
Jesiba hesitated, but something in the way the stall’s shadows stretched across the cobblestone—not threatening but inviting—urged her hand forward. With a swift pull, she revealed a small, intricate disc of metal, about the size of a thumbprint. It was black, smooth, with a single eye etched in the very center, like the lidless gaze of some ancient god.
"What... is this?" she whispered, tracing her fingertips over the flawless grooves.
"An old talisman," the man replied. "All seeing. Perhaps it will guide you to what you seek."
Jesiba tucked the disc into her palm, looking back up at the stranger. But he was already disappearing, melting into the sea of bodies moving fluidly through the marketplace. Her immediate thoughts rushed forward—was it a trick? A stranger, offering mysterious gifts in times of need? But the weight of the metal was real. She looked down at her hand. For a moment, the world around her shifted, and it almost felt as though she stood looking down not just at the old disc, but at the entire marketplace from above—a bird's-eye view unblocked by the press of carts or people.
The smells and sounds fell away, becoming distant as the image of the bustling market rearranged itself in her mind—less chaotic, more like intertwined pathways waiting for a thread to follow. And then something sparked in her: a single stall, the way the silk-draped canopy of it glittered just off to her left, as if caught by a secret light.
She followed the instinct and wove her way forward, heart quickening, slipping past murmuring merchants and pulled carts until she found herself standing before a modest stall tucked between two towering linen sellers. An elderly woman sat behind it, selling small, hand-carved statuettes painted with the precision of master hands. But these were not mere household trinkets.
Jesiba bent down, eyes widening. **Pottery tools**, delicate but undeniably powerful—a whole series of engraved implements designed to shape clay like never before. And beyond that—some of the idols themselves were worked from refined ceramics, a stark contrast to the stonework beneath.
The elderly woman's deep-set eyes met hers.
"These tools," Jesiba stammered. "Where did you—?"
"They were given to me," the woman explained, her voice like old sand shifting. "But I was waiting to pass them on to someone... deserving."
Without knowing why, Jesiba clutched the talisman tighter, the eye on it gleaming faintly in the fading afternoon light.
And Jesiba knew. She wasn't meant to stay coiled in the safety of her father’s shop forever. She had more than mere survival ahead of her. The market had whispered its secret to her, and her future—her craft—was about to begin anew.
For in the Eye of the Market, all things could be seen.
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