Stepping over the threshold brought Leopold into a shop so colorful and cluttered that one could not tell where the counter or clerksman were even supposed to be.

  The air inside the room was heavy with the pressure of the countless aura-filled artifacts and instruments that lined the walls, ceiling, and floor of the shop. Many of them were spinning, clicking, ticking, and popping endlessly.

  Leopold could feel his red gem reacting and starting to slowly turn, twisting its chain and his earlobe. Aurastones tended to do that when collected in vast numbers within confined spaces like this; the energy within them would conflict and push the air around, whirling in hot spirals.

  For Leopold, all this aura pressure was no more than a nuisance that could easily be repelled with his own natural ability, but still, he spared the poor guard who was still stuck in the doorway, unable to overcome the awe he was struck with.

  "You may wait outside." Though he said it as an offer, he would also much rather have the coming conversation in private.

  As soon as the door was shut, Leopold took his first cautious but confident step into the chaos. Even before he could take the next, his path was blocked by a large, thick, unidentified roll of something clearly not parchment with gilded handles and furry antenna sprawling out from both ends, lying suspiciously still before him.

  In one fell swoop, he stepped over the roll, leaving a generous space between himself and whatever this object was all the way through the movement. And for good reason, as it turned out. As his second foot was almost past the roll, the antenna suddenly came to life, rearing toward him, turning the roll in their vigor.

  Whenever he visited the shop, Leopold found himself baffled at the endless number of aura instruments, which he did not even pretend to comprehend the purpose of. And though it brought him great joy to discover something new, there was no reason to needlessly come into direct contact with an aura device of unknown purpose.

  Leopold made his way to the center of the room, and soon he could feel the humming of a genius somewhere in his vicinity, but the many artifacts all calling for his attention made it impossible to pinpoint the exact origin.

  "?rvad, I know you are in here. Have you sat on a rune of dream again? Or are you conscious?"

  He called out into the chaos while lightly chuckling at the memory of finding the otherwise genius man slumped over a stack of aurastones, drooling a pool that had started drying out at the other end. It was truly a wonder how ?rvad had not succumbed to his own curiosity yet; in that sense, Leopold knew they had more in common than just their inclination to gambling.

  From somewhere behind a precarious tower of interlocked rings and humming glass panes, a hand rose into view.

  "Occupied," ?rvad's voice followed a moment later, muffled by clutter. "If you are here to get a remedy for improving your birth-given aura, no such thing exists, but you can try the yellow elixir on the third shelf from the window. If you are here to get an aura instrument appraisal, put it down gently and leave. I shall get to it eventually."

  The hand vanished again. And muffled struggling could be heard coming from behind the stack before a sudden and alarmingly loud slap made the whole shop go quiet.

  A moment later, ?rvad emerged from behind the stack holding some unidentified glowing object in his hand, his attention still half-elsewhere as his eyes swept Leopold in a quick, habitual appraisal. His mouth had already begun forming the shape of another dismissive remark when he stopped.

  Their eyes finally met, and ?rvad exclaimed in dry observation. "Well. That explains the pressure in the room." Then he tossed whatever he had been holding back in the pile and let his face return from scientific wonder to polite attentiveness.

  "I did not realize it was you who had crossed into my domain, your highness." ?rvad smiled from ear to ear, already playing the coming conversation like a game of Overherre in his mind, looking for the best words to say to gain the upper hand. "Have you finally come to have that blood gem evaluated?" A loaded question that could be played off as an innocent joke, but a powerful offer if it was indeed what Leopold had come for.

  "Always after what you can't afford." Leopold smiled and turned his earring back into place, knowing that soon it would have drifted out of place from the sheer strength of the aura flows in the room.

  "No, what I bring before you today is something of far greater interest. An object of unknown origin with unknown abilities."

  This tale was nothing new to ?rvads ears, but seeing as it was delivered to him by the Prince himself, Leopold could tell his interest was piqued.

  Leopold did not pull the tablet from the inner purse at his side just yet; he wanted to tease the brilliant mind in front of him before revealing the object.

  Carefully, he started circling the center of the room, feigning interest in the instruments surrounding them, but staying vigilant so as not to activate something.

  "It is a curious object you see, with multiple abilities." He made sure to speak in an offhand tone. "It can capture moments in time, freeze an image of reality, preserve it for months on end."

  ?rvad's smile diminished into a thoughtful smoulder; this could only mean that soon his face would be back in the folds of a scientist.

  Leopold watched from the corner of his eye and continued relaying his finds. "It has the ability to turn transparent like glass, but only in one direction."

  "Moments and a directional translucency, you say... perhaps it could be..." ?rvad was mumbling into his own hand that had started twirling the splitends of his mustache as his mind sifted through his mental encyclopaedia of aura use.

  "Well, there is more." Leopold was getting to the best part, the part he had sought ?rvad out to solve for him. "Though it can be awoken with aura, it responds to simple touch, the naked skin of man. And when it does so, it responds by showing a script not from the lands of Auropia."

  The notion of an unknown script made ?rvad's gaze wander somewhere beyond the confines of the shop. Then, as though the first part of Leopold's sentence had reached the genius after the first, he suddenly whipped his head around.

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  "It responds without aura? Well then, what do you need me for, your highness?"

  "Come now, ?rvad has my story not enticed you?" Leopold knew that it had.

  Then slowly and with measured movements, Leopold pulled the little tablet from his purse. As he did, he could tell even without looking how the man was leaning forward on his toes to get a better view. As the tablet came into view, the smooth surface caught the light of the many glowing stones in the room.

  Leopold poured barely any aura into the tablet, and the moment capturing the girl's smile lit up.

  Without warning, ?rvad approached Leopold and knelt before the tablet, taking every little peculiarity in at the closest view he could get. His eyes darted from the tablet to the prince's face, puzzling over the meaning of the tablet, the girl, and what it all had to do with the prince.

  Finally, he straightened back up into a proper posture.

  "May I?" He asked while already reaching for the tablet.

  Leopold retracted his hand ever so slightly. "You may, but know that if you damage this artifact, I shall make sure you never look at another aura instrument again."

  "You wound me, highness." Their eyes met in mutual thrill of discovery, neither mad at the other. "You must know I shall always take extra good care of whatever his highness brings before me."

  Then the tablet exchanged hands, and ?rvad was far away in his inspections before Leopold could even show him how to provoke the different abilities of the tablet.

  Leopold watched him with quiet satisfaction. There were few pleasures he valued more than witnessing a truly brilliant mind awaken, especially when it began to race ahead of his own, peeling back layers he had not yet known existed.

  "I shall send word when my discoveries conclude," ?rvad mumbled, waving a hand in the direction of the door, letting Leopold know that it was time to leave and let the genius think.

  The days that followed stretched strangely, warping into an endless blur. Leopold lost track of where one day ended, and the next began; all he could do was anticipate the messenger that would come.

  During council meetings, he found his eyes snapping to the door whenever someone entered, and a sense of disappointment growing whenever it was not a messenger for him.

  It was only when his advisor had given him an odd stare that Leopold noticed he had sketched out the symbols of the foreign script, whose meaning still evaded him on the margins of official documents. He stared at it for a long moment before crumpling the page away and starting over on the document. Nothing could be done, as the ink had already set.

  Nearly a week passed before word finally reached the palace. ?rvad had knowledge to share. The object, he said, could be retrieved at the shop.

  Leopold rose from his seat before the messenger had finished speaking.

  Though another meeting was due in a moment's time, Leopold didn't care; he had already called for his coat and was making his way out of the palace. He felt as though his feet had grown wings and were flying their way back to get the results from ?rvad. Even the guard following close behind seemed to have a hard time keeping up.

  As he stepped into the little shop, something seemed to have changed since the last time he was here; the chaos had collapsed into a denser, more treacherous mess.

  Leopold crossed the shop in long, precise strides that bordered on reckless, vaulting humming stacks of unidentifiable oddities and skirting jiggling tendrils hanging from the ceiling. The chaos barely seemed to register this time.

  ?rvad rose from behind a different heap than before, blinking as though dragged up from deep thought. A thin, knowing smile tugged at his lips.

  "Highness... your arrival is rather prompt."

  For a fleeting moment, shared appreciation for an unsolved mystery passed between them. Then ?rvad's expression sharpened, and his hand found his mustache.

  "I have ruled out more in six days than I care to admit," he said without preamble. "It is not aura-driven. It does not store memories, nor does it create them. It merely... shows the beholder the same cycle of images."

  He gestured vaguely, frustration threading through his words.

  "It reacts to aura only as a provocation, not a necessity. That alone makes it an aberration. No instrument crafted in Auropia would behave so indifferently to the very force that rules our world."

  Leopold listened intently, too caught up in memorizing the details to read ahead in ?rvad's mind.

  "Most of the symbols," ?rvad continued, twirling his mustache, "are numbers. A base-ten system, I am without a doubt in this. And yet once the countdown appears, it follows a sixty-count cycle. That combination does not occur anywhere on this continent."

  'The countdown', it pleased Leopold to know that his intuition about the counting had been correct; however, the numbers appearing in base-ten seemed odd, as it was only really used on the Kalarie Islands, and there was no possibility that the girl was from there. The Kalarie people were proud warriors with dark skin and black hair.

  "I briefly believed the images were aura preserved as an inclusion within the glass itself," ?rvad admitted. "However, no glasswork is perfect, and aura leaves traces in such a process..." He shook his head thoughtfully. "There are no traces, nowhere on the tablet."

  They stood for a moment in silence while ?rvad pulled the tablet from his apron pocket and threw one last longing gaze at the blank surface.

  "I simply cannot place the origins of this device anywhere on Auropia." ?rvad extended the tablet back to Leopold. "And I am no longer convinced it belongs to this world at all."

  The feeling that bloomed within Leopold was surprising, though he thought he would be disappointed if ?rvad did not find something; it turned out that hearing the investigation had been fruitless was exactly what he had been hoping for. Now he would have to visit the girl.

  "Highness, I have to ask, but where did you come across such a curious object?" The tone in ?rvad's voice was tinged with reverence, but not toward Leopold.

  "I got it from a merchant at the spring market." A smile was forming at the corners of Leopold's lips. "They wanted an outrageous two Mark for it."

  "How much did you pay? Two Mark?" ?rvad was already scrambling to locate a coin. "I'll give you a Kruna."

  Leopold let out an audible, amused laugh. "No can do! This object has to be taken to its original owner."

  "Original owner? I thought you claimed you were unaware of the origins."

  "That I am, but she won't be." Leopold turned his head to throw a playful wink in the direction of the distraught ?rvad as he made his way to the door, thoughts already on their way to the manor.

  Behind him, he heard the last desperate offer. "Two Kruna!" ?rvad exclaimed as the door was opening. "Please, your highness, let me have another look. I am certain there is more to learn."

  However, Leopold was already mentally on his way to the manor, leaving the little shop and the pressure of the many aura-humming objects behind without a second thought. Unfortunately, he could not just abandon his obligations in the capital, and his visits would have to wait until he could accompany his friend at the start of next month.

  As he walked slowly back toward the palace, the guard almost overtaking him multiple times, he felt the thrilling heaviness of the tablet back in his inner purse, and dreadfully remembered that tomorrow would mark the beginning of his very own birthday celebrations.

  These would last the month out, yet he was already sure that he would drift through them even more absent-minded than any year prior. Though the festivities would serve as a good way to pass the time quickly.

  He attended banquets and received gifts. He endured flattery and expressed gratitude. Days blurred together in a colorful flurry of dresses and dances that only barely kept his impatience at bay.

  Among all the lavish congratulatory offerings, only one insignificant present caught his attention.

  It was a batch of peerless roses tied in ornate bouquets, supplied by an eastern lord who grew them in the desert with an aura. Their story and worth were of no consequence to Leopold, but they made him think of the little dry branch he had given the girl.

  His fingers brushed one of the petals, careful not to bruise it.

  He could not help but picture the guarded and cold look she had worn while walking alongside him.