On the fourth day they met a merchant whose cart sat exactly in the middle of the road as if it had always been there and might always remain.
The merchant himself was cheerful, round-faced, and dressed in a patchwork of styles that belonged to at least three different decades. His name, he said, was Oren of the Provisional Present. He sold ordinary traveling goods—rope, dried fruit, spare boots—alongside small crystal vials that contained, according to his sign, “Slightly Used Possibilities, Guaranteed Non-Binding.”
Kael stopped dead. “I refuse to buy anything that comes with the word provisional.”
Oren beamed. “Excellent policy. Most of my customers ignore it. That is why I still have inventory.”
Sela circled the cart, notebook open. The vials glowed with faint, shifting light. Insid
