Leif sprinted across the pavilion while turning one way then the other as he searched the lower steps leading from the inn. A pair of musicians warbled about drinking songs and other tales, gathering tables nearby to use as an impromptu stage. Whilst their eyes drifted in his direction when he came running by, they quickly cast him off with murmurs of competition and outsiders before returning to entertaining their audience. 

I've a feeling Ambriel hasn't been making friends amongst his fellows.

A pair of women carrying their washing whispered in each other's ears as he came down the pavilion steps, cursing under his breath or not asking about Coltham's destination earlier. It seemed obvious in hindsight when he considered the old man's whereabouts were as much of a mystery as his daily tasks.  Leif scratched at his temple and turned his head up to the sky where the sun set lower than it had been earlier when he returned to town. 

It shone brightly, beating down on his skin while he squinted against the blinding blue until the green wisps on the breeze twinkled in his eyes. Anemo called to him in the zephyr's lilting voices and he answered back with a breathless laugh, chasing after their sprightly giggles. He meandered through the flowing crowd, tossing apologies over his shoulder when he'd clipped someone in passing.  As he was led back into the noisy clamor of the town's markets, it was harder to hear the anemo's tinkling bells and rustling leaves or move without nearly tripping over another person's feet. 

He whizzed past the stall markets, darting into the wide alleys between buildings in a mad dash across damp, packed earth. Puddles from the recent rains splashed as he passed over them, following the curling petals from wildflowers set adrift by the breeze. When the current veered left, a brisk heel turn sent Leif darting after it and back into the throng of bodies. He yelped when he looked up and saw a horse-drawn carriage, the stallion letting out a startled whinny as it reared back on its hindlegs. Its handler called out tried to soothe but as the horse's hooves came down, Leif staggered backward and caught himself on a post, hauling himself up into a sommersault as the horse stamped where his leg would've been.  

TAK!

Leif threw out his hands to steady himself when his boots thudded against something solid. When he looked up, a far-reaching view of the crowded streets and the sunlight arcing off the shingled roofs and gently turning wind wheels greeted him. Without the ogién to take refuge in lanterns mounted to the walls and near doorways, true light reflected off their dimmed glass and sparkled illusory gold across the streets. All the clamor rose up to meet Leif, nearly drowning out the zephyr's musical snickers and laugher as they twirled around on the breeze unseen to his eyes. 

A grimace mired Leif's cheer as he could practically hear Zopha's dismay as she cautioned him against blindly trusting the wind. But what else was he to do when the wind carried the memory of all who breathed air? If only the zephyrs weren't so mischievous, he might have had a chance at finding Coltham without making a spectacle of himself. 

He took a step forward, then froze when wood groaned beneath his boot soles. Looking down, he startled at the sight of a thick wooden plank coiled with leafy vines steadying his weight though its groans were quite ominous. 

"Oi, lad! Are ye alright?"

Leif startled, and peered over the precipice, seeing the horse's handler squinting up at him with his hand shielding his eyes. His other hand stroked the irate horse's mane as it snuffled and dragged its hooves in the ground, staring up at Leif bewilderedly.  

"Come down from there, yer gonna break the board and we've replaced it thrice already!"

"Huh? Oh, sorry."

He turned around, tail curling around his waist as he leapt down into the board's shadow. Peering around at the horse handler with a sheepish grin as the older man lit into him with cautions about jumping in front of carriages. Once his tirade subsided into a trickling ramble of admonishments, Leif sprung at the opportunity and asked, "Y'wouldn't happen to have seen ol' Coltham, have y'?" 

The man gave him a surveying look, then scrunched his nose, turning up his face with a grumbled, "Whaddya want with 'im?"

"Well, he did me a service, and I wanted to repay him," Leif explained, biting back a rude remark when the man laughed. 

"Y'got a talent for putting' yourself in another's debt, lad," the man chortled, shooing Leif away with a wave of his hand, "Ain' see him, go on now." 

Leif let his smile fall when the man turned his back to soothe his horse, whom he claimed loudly was still in distress. "Right, right," he murmured, fiddling in his pocket for his pouch. A golden lucre sat on the tip of his thumb nail as he raised his hand, stepping back into the board's shadow before letting it fly. The coin whizzed through the air, slapping against the back of the man's head. 

A pained yowl following Leif as he turned around and dashed across the winding gravel road, listening for the zephyr's airy giggles. They tittered somewhere overhead, looping down toward him until Leif could hear their compliments of his aim and their jeers at the man too slow to follow in Leif's footsteps reverberating in his ears.  

Once he found a space where he could slip between the buildings and toward the back roads, he followed the sound of rushing water and jogged along a road running alongside the upper bank of the river cutting through the village. 

The air near his shoulders felt strangely cool despite the humidity lingering from the crowds, and Leif resisted the urge to smile. Zopha would disagree, but at times mischief was the answer.

Leif held back from turning his head, fearing the disembodied voices would flee again should he draw attention to them too quickly. "I wonder where Coltham might be," he mused aloud, catching the hitch in the zephyr's conversation. "If I'd known he'd been this hard to find, I would've stuck to him like wet sand." 

"Shining One, what is a Co-em?"

"Coltham is my benefactor, and I'd love to repay my debt to him. He's a tall, scary-looking old man with sheets of solid water he uses to see. If only I could find him—"

"A tall scary-looking man?" One of the zephyrs whispered excitedly to its companions.

"Is it that one," another whispered, and Leif felt something brush against his chin like a finger directing his head to turn one way.

He looked down the river bank, seeing men and women handling their washing while the children too young for schooling played in the grass. As far as he knew, Coltham had no wife nor children and he doubted the old man would shirk his duties. Leif turned his head away, and heard the zephyr's cry of dismay as they followed him yet again. They pointed out others as he ran aground near the hear of Yun-Fe, an open plaza where people milled about in earnest. It was different than the markets, wherein the space was difficult to travail if one was not mindful of where they stepped. Leif walked on, spinning around on his heel with each of the zephyr's suggestions.

"This is tiresome!" One of the zephyrs shouted after awhile, and Leif winced at the harsh crack of wind against his cheek. "Shining One's eyes can only go so far!"

Another tried to comfort their temperamental companion, soothingly brushing against Leif's cheek before withdrawing, "Wait here for these ones, Shining One! We can go higher than you can."

Gradually, the cool shroud about his shoulder ebbed away and Leif blindly reached out to grab the threads of anemo left behind. "Hang on a moment— oof!"

He stumbled backward when he knocked into something solid, eyes springing open when he caught himself on his back foot. Ahead of him, a young man nearly toppled on his behind and Leif sucked in a harsh breath, reaching out for him with hand and tail.  Leif's tail wrapped around the young man's waist, tugging him upright into a stumble where his hands could steady him. 

Once he was safe, Leif unwound his tail and began brushing the wrinkles from his tunic and righting his collar. 

"Sorry about that," Leif said once his handiwork was done, and his tail swayed behind him as he patted the man squarely on the shoulders. "You alright?"  

Big, bewildered brown eyes gawked at him openly until a few rapid blinks seemed to break the spell the man was under. "Y-Yes," he squeaked out, bowing hastily. "I'm sorry for getting in your way, sir."

"You did nothing wrong," Leif began, gently pushing on his trembling shoulders until he was standing upright again. "It was more of my doing anyhow."

There was no reply at first, the young man seeming to avoid any bit of eye contact with him that he could.  Leif scrubbed a hand through his hair as he tried to place a face to name but he couldn't recall anyone with a half-tied up mop of tangled, curly dark hair partially hiding a soft rounded face. He looked rather young from the way his tunic and trousers hung off his lithe frame, and the dogged attempt at avoiding his gaze made Leif wonder if he was simply uncomfortable with eye contact rather than their run-in. Although, the dark rings around his eyes and the nigh-ripping grip he had on the rolled parchment clasped in his white-knuckled fist spoke more to the former than the latter.  

Leif folded his arms across his chest, eyeing the haggard young man and his parchment with wonder. 

"How about we balance the scales?" Leif offered, remembering the tattered and fresh pages pinned up to the board outside the Twin Steins. He pointed at the parchment in the young man's hands and asked, "That's a request for the Steins, yeah?"

The young man peeked up through his hair and hesitantly glanced down at the parchment in his hands, nodding when he glanced up at Leif. 

"Mind 'f I take a look at it?" Leif asked, resting his hands on his hips with a smile. 

The young man squeezed his hands around the parchment, pressing it closer to his chest as he darted his gaze away. "This job is a bit dangerous, you really don't have t—" 

"I may not look it much, but I am a mercenary," Leif said, ignoring the young man scrunching his nose at him or the disbelief in his eyes as he swept a cursory look over Leif's person.

"You're a mercenary without a weapon…?" The young man hedged, shifting his body away slightly as if he would make to bolt. 

Leif snorted, "Well, I can't rightly carry one with me in the open."

Or tell someone that I'm carrying one at all.

"Is this job dangerous enough that I'd need one?" Leif asked, coaxing the threads of anemo he'd grasped from the zephyr's departure to gather in the palm of his hand. While the haggard youth seemed to weigh his question seriously, his grip on the parchment loosened. Leif curled his forefinger and middle, springing the ball of kneaded anemo to burst into a brisk updraft. The parchment escaped the young man's hands as he loosed a startled ack and reached out to grab it. 

Leif lifted his hand and snatched it out of the air by one side, scanning the slanted messy scrawl. A penciled sketch of a garnished bouquet of long, spindly stocks topped with a bulbous bell-like petals tied together neatly at their base with twine was etched into the page. His gaze swept over the requirements and the large, curving signature shimmering as though the ink was still wet. 

"Alditha Ryfar," Leif read aloud, not missing the way the young man froze at the name. He tipped his head to one side and turned the parchment so they could both see the blossoms, tapping against the shimmering ink. "Is that you?" 

"N-No," the young man muttered, studying him for a moment with narrowed brown eyes. Then, he sighed. "My name is Vidrid Caldawen, sir…" 

"I see," Leif turned the parchment over and handed it back to him, then jutted a thumb over his shoulder with a jerk of the head. "Head to the Steins and find Marris, tell her that Leif's gonna be takin' this on. We'll sign the Party Agreement and all later—" 

"W-Wait a moment, Sir Leif," Vidrid shouted, clamping his hands over his mouth when Leif lapsed into silence.  

They stared at one another for a moment, onlookers returning to their devices once the spectacle of two young men shouting at one another came to a halt. Leif sighed after a moment passed, and asked, "What? Is that not enough to balance the scales?"

"N-No," Vidrid stuttered as he lowered his hands, blanching somewhat as he hastily corrected, "Well yes you're doing me a service by taking on this job. But I haven't told you anything of merit yet, and I hadn't been watching where I stepped so.. so.. if there's anything I can do for you—" 

"Well, you'll be compensating me, right?" With how quickly Vidrid nodded, Leif almost felt guilty for scaring him. "That's more than enough."

Vidrid trembled, but he refused to look away from Leif or take the paper back. Leif rubbed the back of his neck, and sighed internally.

Why do I always run into the strong-minded types?