The bell rang, signaling that someone had just opened the door of Quintus’s Concoctions and knocking Dzošajan out of her half-aware state. She’d been reciting the recipe for the Potion of Healing over and over for over an hour, until it had become a mantra for occupying her mind during the long periods of watching an empty storefront. Keep the mountain rose petals at a high heat but below a boil for ninety minutes, or until the petals have lost their colour. Skim off any oil which rises to the surface, for it is toxic to the digestion, but set it aside for it can be used in many other tinctures and oils. Use this time to press the Ascium Root…

It took a few blinking, confused moments before Dzo remembered herself. “Welcome to Quintus’s Concoctions, how may I be of service today?” After a moment, she realized the customer that had walked in was someone she didn’t recognize, and added, “If you’re a new customer, I can give an explanation of how we do business here.”

The customer was a slightly-built woman, lean and wiry, short to an orc’s eyes but probably about average compared to her species, if Dzo had to make a guess. Whatever species that was. Her eyes were pure black, except for a small white dot in the center, and her skin was about the color of freshly-sprouted grain that had yet to turn golden, and her long braids of blonde hair were interrupted by a set of six smooth cow-like horns. Dzo tried to suppress the look of surprise on her face, and did about as good a job of it as the customer did.

“Oh, no, I’ve been here before,” she said, calming herself with a flick of her serpentine tail. “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you…?”

“I am Quintus’s apprentice, yes. Currently on counter duty.”

The customer nodded. “Yes, yes. I just didn’t expect that—”

Dzošajan rolled her eyes. If she had a truegild for every customer who’d made sidelong expressions of confusion at the presence of an orc in a potion shop, she’d be able to afford her own room. “That Quintus would hire an orc?”

“Well, you have to admit, orc-hate is still unfortunately common in the Empire,” she said with a wince. “But I was more surprised that Quintus took on an apprentice at all. He always seemed such a perfectionist.”

“Mhmm.” Dzo understood perfectly how he would have given off that impression, but the cumulative weight of all the other reactions to her presence had left her feeling uncharitable.

“I’m sorry,” the customer said, after a pause. “You must be getting all kinds of bad reactions, and it was terribly unkind of me to pile more on to that. Let’s start over. My name is Claudia.”

“Dzošajan,” she said, awkwardly staring at Claudia’s stuck-out arm.

It took several seconds for Claudia to give up on whatever she was planning to do with her hand. “Dsosaijan?”

Dzo shook her head. “Dzoh-shah-yahn. It’s a ‘zz’ sound at the beginning, and the “shhh” comes a bit further back in the mouth so it sounds like leaves crinkling.”

Claudia spent a few seconds sounding out the various syllables, then made a second attempt. “Dzzošaijan?”

“Close enough,” she said with a shrug. Most people she’d met had had trouble saying “š” instead of “s”, so the effort was on some level commendable. “Now, what can I get you?”

“Oh, right!” Claudia went to a belt pouch, searched through it for a moment, realized what she was looking for wasn’t in that one, then went to another, from which she eventually produced a torn scrap of reed paper. “Let’s see… twelve Potions of Healing, five Potions of Revitalization, four Panaceas, two vials Oil of Sharpening, an Iron Hide Elixir, an…” She stopped for a moment, squinting. “Atomizer full of Charm Water? Tullius, I swear… Oh, and a Potion of Dexterity!”

“That’s a lot for one person,” Dzo said, devoting most of her mental energy to making the list stick in her short-term memory. Having to ask the customer to repeat themselves always made her feel incompetent.

“Err, it’s for my entire crew. I just drew the short straw.”

Dzo crouched down, searching the back side of the counter for the potions on the list. The  corked bottles containing the pinkish Potions of Healing were easy to find, considering there were easily three score of them. Dzo set a dozen on the counter. “You’re an adventurer?”

“We prefer the term ‘contract troubleshooter’, but yes.”

Dzo glanced down at Claudia and realized that she would have known from the moment she entered, if she’d been paying attention. She had a sword at her hip and a cross-belted dagger, but she wasn’t nobility or anyone else who would be expected to carry a sidearm. The outfit was telltale as well, thickly padded navy-blue cloth that must have felt like hell in anything but the coldest weather, but would do fairly well blending into nighttime shadows or standing up to a sword strike.

“Getting ready for a mission?”

Claudia nodded excitedly, proudly sticking out her chin as she said, “A group of poachers has set up camp in a forest that’s home to a pack of rare aurugenic gryphons. They’ve been flooding the market with unlicensed truegild, and it’s becoming a serious concern that they might hunt those gryphons completely to extinction, so the local governor set up a bounty. Of course, we’re far from the only crew in the area, so we have to gear up quickly if we want to get the prize.”

Dzo nodded. “Well, good luck with the killing. I’m sure that the fine product here at Quintus’s Concoctions will help you greatly with your task.”

“Hopefully we won’t have to kill them. At least if Tullius does his job properly.” Claudia paused as though trying to remember something, “Tullius is our negotiator.”

Dzo suddenly remembered where the Panaceas were kept, and hurried over to the end of the counter nearest to the wall. There were about a dozen vials of the thick green gel left; they were running low. “I didn’t know that adventuring crews even had negotiators,” she said, setting five of them down next to the Potions of Healing. “In my experience, most adventurers have more of a smash-and-grab approach.”

“If our fighter, Vît’raga, had her way, maybe,” Claudia said, her eyes glittering at the inside joke. “But then Tullius would be out of a job, and you do not want to know how much complaining he’d get up to…”

Dzošajan raised an eyebrow. “Vît’raga? You have an orc in your crew?”

Claudia nodded. “She’s a miracle with a halberd. A bit prickly interpersonally, but an excellent team player. Maybe you’ll get to meet her someday, if she’s ever not ogling the contents of every smithy in town.”

Dzo hmmed softly. She was at least a little curious to meet this Vît’raga. The concept of an orc adventurer had been something that had never crossed her mind before then. It sounded self-contradictory, like the idea of a tall dwarf or a short giant, two concepts that were so in opposition that no overlap could possibly exist. “Alright, I’ll need to go to the back to get the rest of that order,” she said. “Be back in a moment.”

“Of course! I’ll be right here.”

Dzo slipped into the storeroom knowing full well that at least half of the potions needed were still in stock under the counter or on the display case on the back wall. To tell the truth, she still found it a touch stressful having to search for the right items while under the watchful eye of a customer. The thought that they might get impatient was too much for her.

Claudia, though, was something else on top of that. In spite of the poor start to the conversation, and the fact that she was an adventurer, Dzošajan couldn’t find it in herself to dislike the woman. Maybe it was because she put more effort into making up for her mistakes than most. Or maybe it was just the way that the corners of her eyes wrinkled up when she made inside jokes about her crew that Dzo couldn’t possibly understand. 

While her mind was occupied with trying to decipher what exactly she felt about Claudia, Dzošajan’s hands went to work grabbing potions and oils and placing them into a small wicker basket for sale. Remembering the costs of each potion was a bit more than what she could manage, but she had a cheat; she kept a bit of charcoal in a pocket of her alchemist’s smock and made marks on the back of her wrist, one for every ten truegild. When the order had been paid for, she could simply wipe the charcoal off on her smock and start over with the next customer. 

The hardest part was pouring the bottle of Charm Water (properly named Extract for the Smoothing of Interpersonal Interactions and Enhancement of Appeal) into an atomizer, and guessing how much extra she could get away with charging for it. Once that was done, she put everything into the basket and, realizing that she’d been in the storeroom at least twice as long as necessary, hurried back to the front. 

At which point she bumped chest-first into one of the storage shelves. An immediate stinging pain rang through her body, dulling quickly into a profound ache centered around her right breast. She’d been hit in the chest before, by tree branches and boys who played too roughly, and it had never hurt like that. As her hand pressed into her chest, attempting to massage away the stinging remnant of the impact, she felt something new; beads of something dense and swollen between the skin and muscle.

Dzo used the euphoria of her newly-discovered breasts to put on the best customer service smile she’d ever managed, walking back out into the front room with a basket of potions hooked into her elbow. Claudia, meanwhile, looked deeply concerned.

“Is everything alright back there?” she said. “It sounded like there was some trouble.”

Remembering the shrill noise of shock and pain that she’d made upon slamming her tit into a shelf, Dzošajan shook her head, saying, “Nothing you need to worry about.” She set the basket down on the counter and began loading the other potions into it. “I assumed you wanted the basket, seeing as you didn’t bring anything to carry all of these.”

“Errrrm…” Claudia said, looking down at the pouches on her hip, then back at the basket, her mouth slightly open. “Yes, thank you.”

“Well, that’s everything. The total’s…” Dzo paused, leaning forward and tilting her wrist resting on the counter so that the charcoal marks came into view. 

“Can’t remember the price, can you? I can tell you what I think would be fair, if it’s too difficult.”

Dzo chuckled. “I’m new, but I’m not that stupid. It’s ninety-five truegild, including the basket and the atomizer.”

“I’m sorry?” Claudia said, blinking slowly. 

“Ninety-five truegild.”

“That’s a bit much…” Claudia said, scratching at the skin around the base of one horn, looking bashful.

“Well, if your friend Tullius can go without his atomizer, that would probably drop a couple of truegild from the price,” Dzo said.

Claudia seemed to seriously consider the offer for a moment, but then groaned and said to herself, “Oh he’ll be so upset, it will be a feud…” She spent several more moments in thought, biting softly on her tongue. After several seconds of awkward time-wasting silence, her entire demeanor suddenly changed. She flashed Dzošajan a sultry smirk, leaned over the counter, and spoke to them in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Now, I didn’t want to cause a scene by bringing it up,” she said, looking out of the corner of her eyes as though to make sure she wasn’t being eavesdropped on by an empty room, “but my crew actually has an arrangement with Quintus. We’re such frequent customers that we actually get discounts. I understand why he might not have told the new hire about it, though.”

Giving blanket discounts was about the last thing that Quintus would do under any circumstances. But at the same time… there was something rather cute about the lie, not to mention daring. “How much would you normally pay for this, then?”

Claudia hesitated a few seconds, pressing her lips together. “Eighty?” she said with a nervous smile and a flutter of her eyelashes. Then, again, more confidently, “Eighty!”

“Eighty-five,” said Dzošajan.

“Alright!” Claudia’s grin went almost from ear to ear, showing off sharp canine teeth, like those of a cat. “I mean, that’s a fair deal. Now where did I put all of the truegild again?”

Claudia did eventually find where she’d put all of her money, though there was quite a bit of panicked searching through various pouches and pockets before she could, during which time she very nearly bent herself in half. She handed over the truegild in stacks of twenty tied together with thread, then counted out the last five herself. Once she was done, she immediately dashed out the front door with the basket in tow, shouting thanks as she went.