Writing Prompt: August

"Come on Aethersmith, it's not like it's something you haven't done before, right?"

Cultured voice, coercive tones - mis-matched green eyes narrowed as they looked at the bloke across from her, both of their figures shadowed and shaded by the dim Ul'dah street lamps that flickered and swayed. The man stood hooded, he always was hooded as if it were the height of fashion, and in the darkness Aran caught a hand motion as if he made some grand gesture.

"I told y' b'fore, tha' ain't sommat I do," and she stressed that softly, words carrying a hint of steel to them.

"You did before."

"Then ain't now."

"So you're telling me you're afraid, is that it?"

Silence, heavy silence, before Aran abruptly reached out grabbed the box from his hand and flipped it in the air. "I ain't afraid 've sommat small like this..."

Which was why three days later she was staring at the box under the shading umbrella on the Free Company's lawn, empty flask uncapped and beside her and idlying drawing sigils with a finger.

Temper and pride really could get the better of her.

She needed to work on that.

The box was small but covered in gold gilt and encrusted with either cut glass or real gemstones (she hadn't stopped by an appraiser to see if they were real because if they were the box was worth more gil than she was ever going to get for the job) and the gold gilt was in clearly marked aether circles. At a glance she hoped it still looked like STOP's classic puzzle box and no one gave her funny eyes over it.

She turned it in first one hand then the other, lips murmuring as she puzzled out the symbols and turned the box this and that way.

It'd been a while, a long while, since she tried to puzzle through something like what she held in her hand, and if time was of the essence, who could she even turn to? No one she tended to work with in Ul'dah, for certain. They might have an odd feeling around her but she'd never done anything even as aetherical as light a candle near 'em. And Aethertide? She knew a few of them by face or voice (or thighs, but she shuddered to think of how Soren had dressed that night) but she didn't have a lot of experience working with them and didn't know who she could turn to.

She could reach out... except she didn't know enough about them yet to put trust to them.

But then again, maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Maybe if she reached out she could get some indication of what they were all like (when not drinking or dancing, which at the present was fine with her) and see how they'd react.

She turned it over in her fingers again and let out a breath. Eyes closed and she counted to ten, then began to quietly recite names and faces of the people who she thought might have enough workings with aether and who she could turn towards for help. A quiet litany, and one spoken a few times until she started winnowing out names, finger ticking the air as she mentally crossed a few out.