Maz

The familiar tinkle of your shop's bell fills your ears, followed by the eager thump of leather boots across your floor. You turn to meet your guest, and instinctively look down to meet the gaze of a green-skinned face that just barely pokes above the edge of your front counter. She grins devilishly, and gives you a wink.

"Hey, big guy! Got a great find for you today."

You've tried to tell her to use the back entrance for sales calls, but Maz has never really been a "rules" person. She reaches up and carefully places a long, oblong cloth-wrapped bundle on your counter. You carefully lift up a corner of the cloth, and are surprised to see the glitter of gold. Maz grins a rebel grin as she sees your reaction.

"Yeah, that's right. Solid gold! Or something. Had to take it outta the hand of some old dead guy, and he seemed to like it a lot. Ancient pyramid, lotta stuff in jars, yadda yadda yadda. But that's not the best part- I'm pretty sure the scepter has some sort of enchantment, though I haven't figured out what yet."

It's evening, and you're locking the door to close up shop early. The start of the year is always a bit tight for you, financially- your main clientele is bored nobles, and after the surge of the feast and holiday season they tend to tighten their purses a bit. You're about to head home to stop wasting lantern oil when you see Maz heading up the street, at a slow, sheepish creep rather than her usual sprint.

"Hey. I kinda need a payday. Had this sitting at the bottom of my pack for a while; you think it's worth anything to you?"

She holds up her latest offering for you to examine. It's an antique metal box- a money box, by the look of it, just a simple cube with a coin-sized hole in the lid. There's some decorative fretwork on the outside, but you doubt you'd find an eager buyer for something so pedestrian this time of year. Maz looks up at you hopefully as you examine it.

"I mean, if nothing else, you could use it to keep your change in."

The door bursts open, and Maz charges in without care for anything in the world standing between her and your front counter. Ignoring the potted fern she's overturned, or the sandwich you were just about to bite into, she slams her rucksack in front of you and starts rummaging through it excitedly.

"You'll never guess where I found this! I was just plumbing this cave, trying to see if there was another entrance into this ruin, right, and then I found this shaft that seemed to just go down for on and on and forever. And at the bottom was this huge empty cavern- I couldn't even see the opposite wall. I couldn't cover the whole thing, but I did find this!"

She sets a tightly-wrapped package on the counter with far more care than she's expressed for anything else in your shop. You can see why once she's opened it- it's a positively ancient wooden box, the lid covered in pictographic writing from a language you only recognize from history texts.

"This has gotta be the oldest thing I've ever found- open it, I wanna see what's inside!"

It's quite the find, but her enthusiasm might be misplaced- with your limited understanding of the language, you can see the writing just says "fig seeds".

An ethereal glow floats through the front window of your shop, throwing every corner into hazy relief and casting a bluish pallor over every surface. The second you see it, before you even see the top of her diminutive head bobbing under the window, you know Maz has to be involved. She struts through your door with a smug grin, holding a cerulean glowing sphere aloft like a trophy.

"I'm not topping this one. I have for you, my friend, a bona fide house fairy!"

She reverentially sets the blue sphere on the counter. It's made of pure crystal, with a small but elaborate silver mechanism around the edges to undo the seal. If Maz is right, then it's a properly lavish mounting for such a worthy prize- a house fairy is capable of doing all the work for even a large estate all on its own. You can't help but be impressed, and Maz's smile grows wide and smug as she sees your reaction.

"Alright, don't stiff me, big guy. I know what I've got and I can always take my sweet ass somewhere else. Go on, let it out if you're still not sure!"

It's another ordinary day in your shop, and Maz is back again. She strides up brazenly and drops a burlap sack on your desk with confidence and a light thud. She steps back, arms raised in a gesture that might have read as mysterious and enticing if her arms weren't so stubby.

"Now I know I've brought you a lot of stuff. But this thing? This is the most mysterious find of all. An item so intriguing, so elusive, so wrapped in the elusive enigma of the cosmos that binds us all, that even I don't know what's in that box."

You drum your fingers on the counter impatiently, waiting for the spiel to end. Maz drops her arms to her side with a sheepish expression on her face.

"Mainly because I completely forgot what's in that sack. But c'mon! It's a mystery, let's have some fun!"