Tryn had a filling breakfast — thick bread, slices of ham, two poached eggs, and a steaming cup of tea — while sunlight spills across the floor like gold dust. It's one of those rare mornings when Rockshire feels almost kind.
The day is particularly good. Dali's season has begun, and the streets are blooming with color. Market stalls burst with flowers of every kind — baskets of marigold, violet chains, roses in shades even poets would hesitate to name. The scent of pollen hangs in the air, tangled with the smell of horse dung and roasted chestnuts.
A good day to shop for herbs.
Floral herbs are tricky business in alchemy. They're delicate — too soft for the fire, too alive for the jars. Yet, they hold the strongest charms. Tryn knows it. Preservation, however, is a curse. Dried leaves and coated roots survive in Sipowder or alcohol, but flowers… flowers diefast, and there is still no known method in alchemy to preserve the flower as potent as they are when plucked, and that's what is most important when brewing floral serums.
As Tryn walks through the crowd, his boots splash through puddles left by last night's rain. Quinn Company employees in polished uniforms wrinkle their noses as they pass the flower vendors — mostly gypsy women in bright skirts and headscarves. Grey Rockshire wears a strange new brightness today, colors blooming in the cracks of its cobblestones.
He still has seventy Darics left from the last job. The aerocleansing had cost him only thirty — including the puffer cottons he'd "unofficially" wasted. So, he wanders through the stalls, ignoring the shouts of vendors trying to sell him "love-petaled roses" and "divinity chrysanthemums."
He's looking for the odd ones. Three-petaled roses. Pink Wisehysteria. The sort of flowers that don't belong on a human street. Yet to be found with keen eyes, which Tryn believes he has.
By the time he's done bargaining — which involves more sarcasm than silver — he's spent seventy Siglois and earned himself eight strange species. A fair trade, by his count.
He takes out his little leather notebook and ticks a line under "Flowers." Three more tasks to go.
The second is to visit Lewis Conpra from Mawka.
Lewis is a hybridian. Tryn's known him for years. A brilliant craftsman, terrible host, and possibly the most paranoid man in Rockshire.
Tryn knocks on the door of Lewis's cramped workshop. Steam curls out from under the crack, and a metallic clank echoes somewhere inside.
A slit opens. One bright brown eye peers through.
"Hello?", said a short man with a dark complexion. Looking even darker, his face is colored with coal dust.
He is a compact, sharp-eyed man with warm brown skin and neatly cropped hair. His every movement is quick and deliberate, his grin half-innocent, half-wary. Dressed in a patched waistcoat stuffed with tools, he smells faintly of metal and oil—like a lightning storm squeezed into human form.
"It's me, Lewis! Tryn!"
The joy in Tryn's voice earns him only a squint. Lewis narrows his eyes further. "And what is it you want?"
"Just a way to store my flowers!" Tryn shows his handful of paper wrapped flowers.
"No." The door shuts.
Tryn blinks at the wood. "Can't a friend get some help?"
"Not this kind of help!" Lewis's muffled voice comes through. "You want to store flowers, buy yourself a machine freezer."
"You know my finances, I can't afford one!"
"And I can't afford to lose my license! State law — no performing hybrid charms outside registered labs!"
Tryn sighs. "You're a terrible friend, you know that?"
"The best kinds often are," says Lewis.
There's a pause. Then Tryn leans closer to the door and says, softly, "Ever heard of a metal that's transparent?"
The sound of moving gears halts. Silence.
The door creaks open. Lewis's eyes gleam with suspicion and curiosity both. "If you're lying," he warns, "your flowers are mine to sell."
Tryn smiles. "Deal."
Lewis's workshop looks like a clock exploded and never apologized. Brass cogs, wire coils, and glass cylinders clutter every surface. He gestures to the flowers. "All of them?"
"Not all," says Tryn. "I'll keep the two Pink Wisehysteria."
Lewis raises an eyebrow but says nothing. He pulls out a small wooden box embedded with a tangle of gears and sigils. His fingers hover above it as he mutters a few quick words in a language that hums more than it speaks. The air ripples once. The gears shift.
Then, silence. The box looks ordinary again.
"Put them in," Lewis says. "They won't heal, they won't decay. They'll stay exactly as they are."
Tryn places the flowers inside carefully, one by one. When the lid clicks shut, the little clock on top freezes — hands locked at exactly eleven o'clock.
"Neat trick," says Tryn.
Lewis smirks. "It's not a trick. It's stasis."
Plenty of time left in the day. Tryn takes a shared carriage back home — one of those public ones where everyone looks equally miserable.
At home, he shrugs off his coat, rolls up his sleeves, and sets to work. He lines up his glassware like soldiers on parade. A funnel, a vial, a wooden frame to hold it steady. The Pink Wisehysteria petals go into the funnel, soft as breath. Above it, a dropper tube drips blue liquid — one slow drop every minute. Each drop lands with a delicate plink, dissolving into the flower's essence before sliding into the vial below.
He checks the timing against his pocket watch. Perfect.
While the drops fall, Tryn pulls a blank receipt from his desk and forges one in neat, official handwriting. "The Eastern Shop, Lorinn Market," it reads, with a generous list of alchemic ingredients totaling 120 Darics. He stares at it, chewing the end of his pencil.
"Thirty for convenience…" he mutters, then adds another twenty. "Fifty sounds more honest."
He tucks the receipt into his coat pocket, along with fifty Darics in fresh bills. He grabs his satchel, locks the door behind him, and steps out into the bright Rockshire afternoon — off to pay a visit to the City Sanitation Department.