Minnow
A SILENT DROP OF OCEAN

Minnow clutched the leaflet advertising the market in her hand as she walked past stall after stall of strange aja. Sure she’d seen them around, but never this many of them, and she had imagined some might be more like the aja at home if they were being sold off. Of course, the swamp didn’t have the black market that the mainland had to deal with, but she had heard stories passed along from cousins and neighbors about the horrors of ajas being sold against their will.

Nobody here seemed morally outraged in the slightest. The hole in her heart where Pyre was supposed to be throbbed as she looked at the lovely and well-cared for, but no-less ordinary looking creatures all over the fair. This trip wasn’t as much fun as she thought it would be, and it certainly hadn’t yielded the taste of home that a Xaran aja would have provided. (And, although she knew it was unlikely, even impossible, she had hoped that perhaps her aja had popped through with her, and had been just as lost as Minnow.)

She made for the exit, ready to leave and head back to the small inn she was staying at when she saw a boy and his aja, who looked fat and battle-worn, being denied entry into the fair. Minnow was confused as she listened to the reasons for the mare being denied entry. What exactly was wrong with the aja? She’d clearly been through a lot, which meant she was experienced and able, and she wasn’t any less common than the other aja at the fair.

As Minnow neared, it dawned on her that if the boy was taking the aja to the market, it meant he was selling her, just like everyone else in this place. Her stomach turned and a sour taste burned at the back of her mouth.

“I’ll take her” said, although the noise of the crowd and the auctions around her drowned her voice. She came closer, and reached for the odd apparatus around the aja’s head. The mare jerked away and the boy scowled at her.

“Watch it. Horse thiefing’ll get you thrown in prison.” The guard at the front said, and Minnow scowled at him.

“I wasn’t thiefing? I just, if you want to get rid of her, I’ll take her.”

Spotting a bleeding heart, the boy smirked. “She ain’t for free. She’s a fine, prize horse, and in foal to the top stud in all of Shaman. I guess I’ll give you a good price though. Five hundred dubloons.”

Minnow blinked and realized she had gotten herself in over her head. She’d gotten wrapped up into the aja trade.