Rosario, Leonie and siblings headed towards the other end of the station, past the cable car stop, and to a rundown park behind which they saw a three-story building with large windows and a glass pyramid roof. It gave the impression of having been a shopping mall in the past. Near the entrance of the park was a rope tied to a tree; it made its way through a series of rings fixed on trees all the way to the building, and Leonie pulled it a few times.

“The doorbell,” she explained.

As they walked through the park, they noticed progressively more dead trees as the distance to the old mall shortened. Scattered throughout the garden were large abstract sculptures, and the siblings soon left the path to take a closer look. The two women continued along the footpath.

“By the way… thanks for coming with us and for all the explanations,” said Rosario at last.

“It’s alright,” the guard shrugged. “I used to be a part time tourist guide back when I was a student and always had fun at it. I suppose some of it stuck.” Rosario nodded, and they walked in silence for a moment. “You’ve been traveling together for some time?” asked Leonie at last.

“We found each other a while back. We’ve been together since.”

“It must have been hard. Traveling around dangerous places with young kids. But being a traveling crystal hunter must also be quite the adventure; I bet you never get bored.”

“Well, at the end of the season I’m usually tired of everything,” Rosario laughed. “But after staying quiet over the winter, I can’t wait to be out there again. How is life in this town?”

“It’s alright. I’ve lived here all my life but haven’t gotten tired of it yet.”

“It must be exciting to see your town recover and do well. I mean, you’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere. You rebuilt it and turned it into a fortress, and the port seems to be thriving.”

“Somehow, we never lost the will to keep things going. Not even when life was rough. We were also lucky that some skilled people survived the Collapse and decided to stay--”

Rosario caught a glimpse of Stefan climbing up a sculpture that looked like a series of large tubes arranged in an arch and almost slipping. “Hey! Get down before you hurt yourself!” she yelled and looked back at Leonie. “Sorry about that. Sometimes I think these kids are made of rubber, but we barely made it out alive today so the last thing I want is for them to get injured now.” She gave them one last look to make sure they weren’t trying to climb on the sculpture again. “You were saying before that you also built a power facility using scrapped materials. Even if you had experts, that’s impressive.”

“Part of that credit goes to our mayor. He’s an old English guy who was working for an engineering company in the area when the Collapse hit; survived with some damage but couldn’t find a way to go back home, and ended up staying. He organized the few people who had some engineering and construction knowledge and built most of the infrastructure that’s making our town safe and livable.”

During their walk, Rosario noticed the path towards the smithy was decorated with several markers along it; whether it was wooden stakes, pieces of metal, or piles of rocks, all had a name inscribed in it. She noted one had Leonie’s name almost at the same time the guard stopped.

“Alright, this is as far as I will accompany you” the tall woman scratched her face, which was turning slightly red, as if getting irritated. “But looks like someone’s here to get you,” she pointed at the entrance of the building, where a short and skinny man in his thirties just walked out. “Hi there, Noah! You have visitors. I told them wonders about your work, so give them a good deal!”

“Can’t make promises!” he waved at her and waited for the three hunters to get closer before ushering them inside. Leonie watched them go before leaving.

*****

The building had clearly been a shopping mall; past the doorway, a wide atrium extended three stories above to the pyramid-shaped glass ceiling they’d seen from outside. Evening light illuminated the place, despite some panels having been replaced by metal covers over the years. The storefronts facing the atrium still had some of the old store signs above their entrances, now permanently open.

On the mezzanines overlooking the atrium hung crystals of all shapes and sizes, some sending off glittering dust that degraded before reaching the floor. In the center of the atrium, in a water fountain that no longer worked, now grew a linden tree that reached almost two floors up. Around it, evergreen shrubs decorated with additional colorful crystals gave the impression of a fantasy garden. The smiths had clearly dedicated some time to decorate that place, whether it was to make it feel homely, to show off their skills, or a combination of both.

There was light and sounds of machines and hammering coming from inside a shoe store and a hair saloon on the ground floor, as well as from a clothing store on the floor above, indicating they had been converted into workshops. In front of the hair saloon, a radio played old rock songs.

The bell to which the rope was tied to hung from a clothes rack near the main entrance, and Noah rang it again several times, looking exasperated.

“My colleagues will be here soon,” he said, making a gesture inviting them to a large counter on the side where the words ‘At Your Service’ were still legible. “Please accompany me to customer service,” he said with an unapologetic smile.

*****

Rosario unpacked the crystals Stefan and Franziska had found in the tunnel and placed them over a long table. Noah watched her do so in silence and gave impatient looks towards the workshops from time to time. Finally, the hammering stopped and the radio was turned off, and two people emerged from the workshops on the ground floor: a tall and heavy man with a grey beard, and a short but muscular woman who Rosario thought could lift her without effort. The latter also carried with her a box filled with instruments.

They introduced themselves as Carlo and Emilia, and after a brief exchange, she took out the instruments from the box and placed them over the table. It was an array of tools intended to measure the weight, size, density, light emission and other parameters commonly appraised in crystals.

“You brought you own set of tools?” asked Emilia.

Rosario nodded and placed her bag on the table; it contained a set of similar instruments. The common protocol for any transaction involving crystals was to measure the same parameters using two identical instruments. This had the purpose of avoiding doubts about the calibration or potential tampering of the instruments.

Normally, raw crystals were obtained by hunters and sold to the local hunter’s association, which in turn traded with the crystalsmiths, who refined the raw materials into crystal weapons. It was the smiths who would later make business with the local authorities. When no hunter’s association was available, it was acceptable for independent hunters to trade directly with the smiths. Such were the protocols in the region Rosario and the siblings were now.

It was not forbidden for any person to collect crystals, but the dangers of monsters, the essential requirement of being resistant to crystal poisoning, and the low prices they would get from the associations, deterred most. Likewise, anyone was allowed to refine a crystal to use and sell, and some people with moderate resistance did make their own basic refinements for personal use, but again, the risks associated with turning an already dangerous material into an even more hazardous one, could quickly become deadly. Plus, most would not buy a crystal that didn’t come with the seal of an approved smith; the risk of the product being unstable was too high. In addition, both hunters and smiths were quite secretive about the knowledge of their trade, adding an extra level of difficulty for anyone who wished to operate outside of the established organizations. Thus, collecting and processing crystals remained almost exclusively a task performed by licensed hunters and smiths.

“It’s nice to have a hunter come by. I haven’t seen one of you for a while,” said Emilia, as she placed a yellow cluster under an instrument that looked like a complicated pocket microscope with many interchangeable optical pieces. “Why did you decide to visit us?”

“Well… it wasn’t on purpose. We planned to get crystals from the fringe and then go back west, but our camper… broke down,” said Rosario, not wanting to lose her focus by going into more details, and annotating the weight of an orange cube on a sheet of paper with seven columns.

There was one sheet for every labeled piece of crystal, in which the first column indicated the parameters to be measured, and the remaining six were to annotate the results recorded with the two respective instruments in triplicate.

“Oh, I remember hearing there was a hunter coming in this direction,” said Carlo, who had taken the task of measuring the light refraction index of the fragment of a pink grape.

Noah looked up from his instrument. “Hold on, I think I remember now: strong accent, two blond kids, goes around in a camper… you’re the Spanish Tourist!”

Rosario rolled her eyes. Names were easy to forget, but that description always seemed to stick.

*****

Stefan and Franziska didn’t hear any of the conversation, and quietly walked away as soon as the measuring began; adults wouldn’t let them analyze the crystals anyway, and since it was such a delicate procedure, they quickly seemed to forget about the bored children in the room.

The siblings were near the linden tree in the center of the atrium, marveling at the craft it had taken to shape the intensely bright pieces of composite crystal used to decorate the garden; when looked at closely, every piece had a small seal on it, the unique symbol this coterie of smiths used to mark their creations. It was only a coincidence that Stefan noticed a girl, possibly a little older than his sister, looking at them from the upper floor. She first startled, but then waved at them and began walking towards an escalator that didn’t move.

Franziska saw her too and ran over to meet her, excited to encounter someone her age. “Hi! I’m Franziska! I like the crystals you’re wearing.” She looked at the bright pink and blue marbles that decorated the other girl’s dress. “I normally wear a blue tiara, but I had to take it off to come into town.”

“You could wear it in here. We can have as many crystals as we want,” said the girl in a soft voice; she had a pair of safety goggles on her head and gloves still on, as if she had been working just a moment before. “I’m Fatima, a crystalsmith apprentice.”

“We’re apprentices too! Oh, and that’s my brother Stefan, by the way.”

Stefan caught himself distracted from the conversation, looking at Fatima. He had seen those traits before; too slender, cheekbones too visible, eyes a bit too tired, and all he could feel was a knot in his stomach. He tried to hide this the best he could. “Ah! Sorry. I’m Stefan.”

“I already told her your name.” Franziska rolled her eyes and looked back at the girl. “Sorry, he’s weird.”

Fatima giggled. “I can show you my workshop. It’s the only one upstairs.”

*****