Hozxi looks at the sack as it sits lopsidedly on the table, the scroll cases not totally aligned with one another in size or length. Her eyes glisten with the candlelight.
There came moments in life where one feels the precipice. Where, at the deepest part of the stomach, beyond all rationale and reason, you simply know that a decision you make will change the course of your entire life.
She had felt that precipice the day she left the Tribe. They had been camped in the very western reaches of the Zeraphi desert. A small village that had grown by the head waters of the river that flows all the way to Shemashk. Since the Sundering and the founding of the City of Pale Gates magi would transpose in great rituals to the headwaters and buy items for sale from beyond the desert, trading arcane knowledge and sundries to those who made up the caravans.
One day where she had simply gone out to make a sale and had instead taken the job of guide for a group headed out.
Each morning, she had said to herself, I will go home once I have guided them sufficiently, and each day she had stayed on to go further, until they had gone so far from the sands that she had no reliable means of returning.
But that very first moment, of saying yes to a situation where all of her upbringing had taught her to say no, that was the true moment she had leaped the precipice.
"Generation upon generation, the tribe without end. To those who live in the desert, their tribe is their world, so the distinction is lost when you write it down."
Hozxi sets her teacup down.
"You live so meagerly as it is. To take your bread from your mouth, it would be wrong. I can only accept as payment a promise of a fair portion of whatever future riches these pages hold."
