For a coastal city with so much trade, there was surprisingly little security to be found in Aborline. Moss eyed two beggars that were nestled behind some wooden crates in the middle of the square. One of them turned his hollow-looking eyes towards her. She stared back piercingly until the wrinkles around the man's mouth creased and he shrunk back under the heavy weight of her gaze. Moss pressed her lips together. The Beymarsh guards would have run these beggars out of town for daring to show their faces in a place of honest trade.<br/><br/>She took a deep breath to control the itch to cut more lines onto the rumpled planes of the old beggar's face. Instinctively, her hand fell against her belt. The blunt edge of a knife hilt pressed back comfortingly, soothingly. She imagined tracing the wrinkles on his face until the skin peeled away in long spindle-like layers, exposing the delicate muscles underneath. Her fingers twitched in anticipation, but she curled them in so that they would stick in the space between her belt and her breeches, hoping that physical restraint would be enough to suppress the temptation. In Beymarsh, the local authorities turned a blind eye to her little pastime as long as she caused no trouble. Here, she had no such arrangement to fall back on. It would not be good to make a scene. Sunset, she reminded herself. After sunset, she could come out and play.<br/><br/>Her other hand reached up to graze the edge of her black coat, pressing the palm flat against her collar. A small pouch of coins was attached to the inside seam. Two silvers and ten coppers, certainly enough to buy herself a new shirt...possibly better boots as well.<br/><br/>She turned away from the corner of the market that sheltered the beggars and watched the more respectable members of Aborline go about their business. People were spilling everywhere like a cloud of disturbed bees. Moss slipped into the crowd and let its momentum carry her through the marketplace.<br/><br/>All at once, the mass of people stalled and split off, diverted by something off in the distance. Moss scowled and tried to squeeze though to get to the stalls on the other side. A wolf pup suddenly ran by, right behind a relatively tall black-haired woman who was clothed in a blue and white robe.<br/><br/>Moss knew that design -<span style="font-style: italic">Elf</span>. Quickly, her eyes flicked up to the woman's head, where the long black strands of hair moved just enough for Moss to make out the long triangular ears of the Vironurians. Moss had only seen an elf once before, and that was at a far distance. It was a rare, and foolhardy, elf that traveled to Minst with peaceful intentions. She narrowed her eyes like a predatory cat at the woman's back as the latter slipped into a tavern. Did an injured elf bleed the way humans and halfings did? Did they have the same exhausted terror in their eyes when they stepped on the threshold of death? Would they beg for their lives, or would their pride prove to be as long-living as their people? Her right hand was tightly clenched around her belt, and she tasted sweet metallic blood on her tongue. No. Not good. Sunset. Sunset. She repeated it in her head until she could feel the cloudy bloodlust loosening its grip on her mind. Sunset. Sunset. Sunset.<br/><br/>With one last look at the tavern door, she turned around so hard that the ends of her coat slapped her thighs rather painfully.<br/><br/>First, she would get a new shirt.<br/><br/>After that - screw the boots. She was going to the weapon-smith.