— Aster —

Stepping off the elevator. My floor looked just like any modern hotel, with long halls, vending, ice machines, and plenty of other rooms. I made it to my room, swiped my card unlocking the door, and took a good look at my home for the next week.

The room was small, containing a single bed, a small dresser, and a bathroom. In the bathroom was a shower, a large wall mirror, sink, toilet, and towels. I found just as many you would expect in a hotel. The lady must have been joking about them being extra. Surprisingly, there was a window that had a great view of the hat shop. While it was convenient, I couldn’t help but wonder if she knew.

I had a week and there was nothing more to learn tonight. My first priority was to clean up. I dropped my messenger bag, which I had been carrying all day, onto the floor. I rubbed my neck and felt remarkably lighter without it. It didn’t take long for me to clean up the blood in the shower. Before I knew it I was laying in bed passed out.

The sun struck my face like a solid blow, causing me to jump out of bed huddling against the back wall. My heart was beating fast, my breaths were short, as I slowly remembered where I was. I forced myself to take a deep breath to calm down. Everything is fine. I just fell asleep. I woke up. Nothing happened.

Each deep breath helped me to calm down as I forcibly brought myself away from the wall, and into a change of clothes. “Nothing happened. I was just in bed. This is normal. I was trying to ignore what just happened.

I took in one last breath before deciding to head down to check out the shop, after getting dressed.

Down in the pub area, I found there was a complimentary breakfast buffet. I was surprised since the way the woman spoke made me think I would have to find my own. The buffet had a simple assortment of eggs, bacon, pancakes, sausage all your standard breakfast foods. I felt the hunger, I hadn’t eaten all day yesterday and took the chance to grab a bite.

My hand suddenly began to shake violently as I reached for the plate. “This is not the same.” I chided myself. Taking a deep breath I focused on my breathing. Nothing else. Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly, the tremble in my hand became a manageable shiver, allowing me to grab some breakfast. Thankfully I was able to enjoy the food without anymore… incidents.

Finishing up, I stood and made my way across the street entering a big hat. Once I was in the shop I could see everything I couldn’t last night. The store was fairly large, with hats everywhere, and smelled strongly of old leather. This only served to further solidify in my mind that this was once an actual hat.

Hats weren’t the only thing in the store. There where an assortment of robes, capes, various accessories, and even some touristy T-Shirts. One said ‘I bought this shirt in a hat.’ It was so ridiculous I was tempted to buy it, but I needed to focus on my mission.

Casually, I began perusing the shelves looking for the pin. The search was kind of interesting. I didn't know there were this many kinds of hats. All the hats were labeled with their information. Most of the hats just amplified a person's concentration or helped the flow of power.

The most interesting ones were the enchanted ones, like the turban that kept your head cool. There was also a big black floppy beach hat that would put the whole body in shadow in the bright sun. One odd one was called a newsboy hat. It made it so everyone within thirty feet can hear your voice perfectly clear no matter the volume. After examining the shelves for a while I finally found what I was looking for. There was a whole pile of them sitting in a barrel, of other cheap items.

I stared in disbelief, this was what I needed to steal? The pins, if you could call them pins were really six-inch needles with enamel designs at the end. There was a large assortment of animals, dogs, birds, owls, foxes, bears, and cats. While looking through the barrel I saw the sign with the price below, ‘Two coppers’.

I never really understood these things. Hatpins were popular a few years back, to the point of people not wearing hats would wear them on their coats. Needless to say, it was a passing fad. Although there is a rumor that some influential people still collected them. Picking one of the cats up looking it over I wondered if I should just grab a pin and go.

I was still contemplating this when I heard a loud pop follow by a scream from outside. I placed the pin back in the bin before going outside to see what happened.

Outside the store, I could see what looked to be a teenager, also in a traveling tunic grabbing their leg and screaming. Just as I got a look at the teenager, a man in full wizard apparel quickly pushed by me to get to the man outside. The man was tall, with a long brown beard, skinny, and wearing a wizard robe and hat. He even had a gnarled wooden staff. I wondered if it was some type of uniform or if he was really into the wizard aesthetic.

The man was the clerk at the hat store. He casually walked toward the teen, seeming almost bored. A small crowd of onlookers had formed outside the street to see what was going on. The clerk made it to the boy writhing on the ground and calmly asked. “Where does it hurt?”

I don’t think the teen heard the clerk or even realized anyone was there when he just yelled, “MY LEG!”

Calmly, the clerk waved something over the kid’s leg. A visible wave of relief could be seen on the boy's face, as he finally stopped screaming and promptly passed out. I couldn't figure out what had the man had done, or see anything that would have caused the boy to scream. That's when the clerk reached into the kid’s pocket pulling out a small hat figurine. It was something you would find in a gift shop or a giant hat.

There was a small spark from the figurine as it left the kid’s pocket. The clerk didn’t seem to notice the spark, or maybe he didn’t care. I started to understand what the security system was and it seemed a little harsh. The clerk went back into the store, placed the figurine in a little basket by the desk while sitting down behind the counter waiting for customers.

My curiosity overriding my caution I approached the clerk. “Is he dead?”

“Nope just badly injured.” The clerk pulled out a magazine and began reading as nothing happened.

“What was it?” How did it suddenly electrocute him?

“Security system.” After that, he looked at me annoyed. “Are you going to buy anything?”

“Don’t know. Will I be electrocuted?” I needed more information if I’m going to do this.

“Only if you cross the threshold without paying.” The clerk waved the silver metal bar he used on the teen in front of my face.

This isn’t going to be as simple as it seemed, also how dumb was I to forget about the security system. That must be why I essentially had a week to do this. I needed to use the time to figure out how to bypass the security. “I’ll come back later.”

I needed to figure this out. I left to come up with a plan.

I spent the rest of the day wandering the city trying to wrap my mind around some type of idea. Wandering aimlessly through the city wasn't really helping. What I needed was more information. That's how I found myself at the front desk of the library. Standing in front of a big oak desk with a door behind it, there was a large man at the desk carrying a large shield on his back blocking the way. “Look, kid. You can access the library all you want once you have your class. Trainees aren’t allowed back here.”

“But why?” I didn’t understand why I couldn’t even take a look. It’s not like I’m doing anything dangerous...well maybe I am.

The man let out a long sigh, mumbling to himself. “I’m just gonna put up a sign.” After collecting himself the man spoke tiredly. “It will screw up your training kid. Look, can’t tell you more than that, so come back when you're done.”

I pleaded with him for a while longer, before finally giving in, “Thanks for your time.” I made my way back to the inn with more questions than answers.

All too soon an entire day passed, and the only idea I had was to stake out the shop. I was lucky I had the perfect angle to see into the shop from my room. I watched for a while finding that quite a few people go into the shop. I did find it interesting that the gift shop-type items sold the most.

After a couple hours of watching, I saw two incidents like the other day. The first time it was a girl, and she had hidden the item in her cleavage. This actually flustered the clerk as he requested one of the female onlookers to retrieve the trinket. The second incident I thought was smart, she had hidden the items in her purse, but it appeared the security system worked on the closest person in range going through the purse. After observing for a while I came to a simple conclusion. I have no idea what to do, and this is boring.

I let out a long sigh, I had learned the very important lessons that stakeouts were boring. All the man did all day was sit at the desk and sell things. He only got up to put out new stock or sell something. Through the entire day though I found he was the only employee of the entire store. Was he the owner?

While observing, I did gain some information. Every time someone purchased something, the clerk would waive the silver bar over it. I decided to call it a wand to make it seem more interesting, as I pretended he was casting a spell when he waived it. “Yes wizard, cast your one spell.”

My day crawled until he closed the store. “Grah.” I groaned knowing I was going to have to do this again tomorrow. I was exhausted, I had done nothing, and was exhausted. How is that even a thing? I had no energy to do anything else so I found myself in bed.

The next day, I awoke to find myself wrapped tightly in the blankets with my head hidden in the pillows. It was nice. I felt secure. I knew it was silly but at the moment I didn't care. I knew I wasn’t really alright, but I didn’t know if I ever would. The only thing I could do, right now, move forward, and that meant watching the shop. Wrapped in the blanket I made my way to the window.

As my mind slowly woke, I noticed something was different today with the shop. The clerk was using a different wand. The one from yesterday was silver, this one was bronze. Once I noticed that I focused more on the wand, it wasn’t long until I saw someone purchase an item, and instead of waving the wand over the item; the clerk waved his hand over it. That's when it dawned on me that it wasn’t the wand. It was him! The man was actually casting a spell

Now, what am I going to do? All the ideas I had were no longer viable. The only thing I had come up with in my entire time watching was to take the wand. Now I had no idea where to start… again. I needed to get away from this, get some type of fresh look. Dropping the blanket, I put my only pair of clothes I had on, and went out for a nice long walk.

The whole point of the walk was to get my thoughts off of this stupid task, but I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back to it. Throw the item out of the store and pick it up later? No, the clerk would see the whole thing and just go out to get the item. What if I had someone else buy it then I take it from them? That idea had promise, but it was skirting the rules by a lot and I would give it a ninety percent chance of not being allowed. Forget about taking it from someone who buys it, I’d probably get myself killed.

I came up with one useless idea after another while wandering aimlessly through the city, until I passed a hardware store. Seeing this finally sparked an idea, and I made my way into the store. One of the employees came up to me, “How can I help you today?”