A little shop appears one morning on Daylight Square between “Peter’s Potted Petals” and “Burns’ Cuts and Crops” on a previously-empty lot owned by one Mr. Brittleson.

This shop is beautiful with woven green walls, a roof blooming lavender and a round door with a signboard right above that introduces the structure as “Piper’s Pied Potions”.

It is annoying the ever-loving daylights out of Mr. Brittleson.

“This! This is the problem with perchers, I tell you! You wake up one morning and simply find yourself robbed of a perfectly good lot!”

He doesn’t dare enter, however. In fact, he flinches when a man opens the front door and saunters out to the small garden in front.

Well, where to start describing this peculiar man, Dear Reader? He has silver hair loosely gathered into a braid that sways at his hip with every step. He has pale, freckled skin that starts blushing immediately upon greeting the sun. He has a dark teal shirt that billows at the sleeves, high-waisted black trousers that hug his slender legs and dark brown boots hiding his feet.

Most notably, he has a black, lace mask that mostly covers his eyes.

“Greetings, dear citizens of Solridge! It is my greatest pleasure to announce the opening of Piper’s Pied Potions. Be it sickness of the body or the spirit, we’re here to cure all your ailments!”

Mr. Brittleson clears his throat and puffs out his chest, still not taking a single step onto the shop’s grounds.

“It is not a pleasure at all, my good sir. Do you realize this lot you’ve perched your shop upon belongs to me? I am Alexander Brittleson and I cannot, simply cannot, let you run an illegal business upon my grounds!”

“I assure you, my Lord. My business is perfectly legal—”

“Well then, where is your contract? I simply don’t remember letting anyone use this spot. Show me your contract right this instant!”

“Is something wrong out there, Piper?” a woman’s voice asks.

The door opens once more to reveal a young woman in her early twenties. She has a light brown wavy bob of a hair upon her shoulders, strands tickling her neck as she peeks from behind the half-open door.

“Charlotte. Mr. Brittleson here and I were just discussing—”

“We were not, my good sir! I fear this subject is simply not up for discussion. I must ask you to leave the premises right away! This is burgling in broad daylight, I tell you!”

“Sir, we have not—”

“This spot belongs to me, young lady!”

“Actually,” Charlotte says as she fully steps out. “According to Article 21 of Verland Imperial Code, this lot belongs to nomad healers. Please bring a paper of banishment, signed by the authorities, if you’d rather we take our business elsewhere.”

“Is that true, mom?” an upbeat little girl asks as she pulls on the hem of her mother’s simple linen dress.

“Hush, my girl. Don’t get involved in their business.”

“But if it’s true…”

Murmurs among the onlookers continue as Mr. Brittleson gets flushed in his mustache-d face. “You shall regret this, Nomads!”

When he leaves, the watching people also return to their daily businesses. All of them, except for one scraggly boy in patchwork pants and a smoke-stained linen shirt.

“Excuse me, sir?” he asks instead as he steps onto the shop’s grounds. Braver than a perfectly adult man, this boy.

“Yes?”

“Can you really cure my mom?”

Piper’s eyes softly curve under the lace as he smiles down at boy. “Of course, I can. Where is she?”

“She’s that way. Walk up to the center of Daylight Square and turn right where the old houses are, along Sol Street. Our home is right at the end of that road!”

“I appreciate the directions, child, but I’m afraid I cannot follow you there.”

“But you said you’d cure my mom!”

“And I will. As long as she comes here for her treatment.”

“Why?”

Piper saunters to the edge of the small garden and, to the little boy’s astonishment, bumps into an invisible barrier that sends the healer down to the ground on his butt.

“My shop gets very lonely, you see.” He laughs as he stands back up and brushes dust off his behind. “So no, I cannot leave the perimeters. Charlotte, if you would go with — what was your name?”

“Jack, sir.”

“Okay, Jack. Pleasure to meet you. I am Piper and this lady here is Charlotte. Charlotte, I’d be thrilled if you would go with Jack to fetch his mother.”

“Anything else the shop needs?”

“Ah yes. Just a minute, please. I shall write it all down on a parchment.”

Jack stares at Charlotte as Piper disappears into the shop. “Are you an assistant, Miss Charlotte?”

Charlotte kneels to look at Jack at eye level. “I’m a beekeeper, young Jack.”

“Really? Where are your bees?”

“Up on that roof behind us. Can you hear them buzzing?”

Jack leans onto the tips of his bare toes, listening. “Oh! I can!”

“They love the lavenders from this shop, you see. It’s actually how I was caught.”

Jack looks back at Charlotte. “Caught, Miss?”

Charlotte chuckles. “In a sense, yes.”

Piper reappears with the list and hands it over to Charlotte along with a small pouch that she ties to the belt at her waist.

“Alright,” she says as she offers a hand to Jack. “Off we go!”

Mr. Brittleson barges into the Solridge branch of Imperial Agency of Law and Order, or I.A.L.O as abbreviated. It is a stone-and-clay building with intricate, sun-baked sculptures guarding its large entrance.

The insides are just as warm and sunlit with golden-and-red carpets lain along the floors but Alexander Brittleson pays them no attention as he marches straight for the Chief Officer’s room.

A clerk stands up and rushes after him. “Excuse me, sir, you cannot simply barge in—”

Chief Melody Lark raises a hand to calm the clerk. “It’s quite alright, Miss Emily. I always have time for a citizen of Solridge in need of help. Please sit down, sir.”

Mr. Brittleson looks down his nose at poor Emily, clears his throat and settles in the chair right in front of Chief Lark.

“I understand, Chief Lark.” The door closes behind and the chief turns her attention to the barger-in seated right behind her desk.

“Now, how may I help you?”

“My land has been stolen.”

“Stolen, kind sir?”

“Indeed! It was one of those perchers, appeared in one night.”

Chief Lark turns to her right and stands up to walk over to a row of drawers built into the cream-colored wall.

She glances back at him, “Your name is, sir?”

“Alexander Brittleson.”

“Brittleson, Brittleson…” she murmurs to herself as she hovers a finger over the drawers marked with ciphers.

“Ah. Here it is.”

She touches a drawer, making the cipher glow golden-and-red as she pulls it open.

Gathering a few parchments in hand, she returns to her desk.

“Now. Where was your land located, Mr. Brittleson?”

“It is on Daylight Square. The second lot on Nix Street.”

Chief Lark parses through the parchments, letting out an “ah”, when she finds the contract.

“Yes, you do seem to be the owner of the specified lot. May I ask who perched their building there?”

Mr. Brittleson frowns. “Why ever could you need to know that?”

“It is a part of the procedure, sir.”

“It was a nomad healer and his accomplice. They claimed they had rights to my land!”

“I am afraid they were right, Mr. Brittleson. According to this contract I hold in my hands, you were given ownership of the specified land on the condition that if a nomad healer arrived before the time, which is ten years, was up; you would relinquish your ownership.”

“My lady, it has been ten years already. I should have full ownership over the lot now!”

Chief Lark takes another look at the file in her hands. “It says here that you made the deal on the first Solday of the 19th Imperial year. As there are 6 days left until 1st Solday of the 29th Imperial year, I regret to inform you that your contract is now void.”

“But!—”

“I am afraid there is nothing to be done, Mr. Brittleson. I bid you a good day under Sol’s protection.”

Mr. Brittleson turns redder than the reds of the carpet as he storms out of Chief Officer’s room, stomping down the hallway as he curses it all in his head.

He bumps into someone in his rush, earning him a low grunt from his victim.

Mr. Brittleson utterly pales when he looks up and sees a man with a dangerous look in his green eyes.

“Watch where you’re going,” the strange man comments and brushes the shoulder of his dirty linen shirt.

Mr. Brittleson nods and lets the man walk in front of him as they leave the station.

The clerk from before, Emily, calls out to the man, “No more mischief or you will actually get arrested, sir!”

Mr. Brittleson looks between the clerk and the dangerous man, an idea starting to form in his head.

He lets the man walk out though, before running after him.

“Sir! If you would kindly wait!—”

The man stops walking along the street and glances at Mr. Brittleson.

“What do you want?”

Mr. Brittleson smiles as he walks up to him.

“Would you, kind sir, perhaps be interested in a small job?”

The man narrows his eyes at him. “What kind of small job?”

Mr. Brittleson rubs his gloved hands together. “A very, very small job, I assure you. And you shall be compensated handsomely for your troubles.”