Not Right to Be a (Thief in Ca-Elum)

It wasn’t right for Leah to be a thief in Ca-Elum.  She had always only ever stolen in countries of her own, like Fiore, Bosco, and Joya.  Back in Poolaria, her home town in a mysterious place that she sometimes wondered if was in a separate dimension or something, the redhead had always been polite and refrained herself from nicking things that didn’t belong to her.  Unfortunately for the population of that village, the girl had considered everything to belong to her, if she wanted it or thought it would be useful.  In fact, something the slightest bit lovely would immediately go into the girl’s mental box of possessions and two weeks later, when everyone had forgotten that Miss Lea had ever liked Miss Chari’s bracelet, it would disappear.  Nobody suspected a thing, and that was how the mage had always preferred it.

Except, this time they weren’t in her territory, and it was frusturating because the main reason she never stole in territories other than her own was… well, A) She was part of a legal guild now.  Oh, sure, Golden Phoenix was a band of treasure hunters and adventurers who loved to poke their nose in dangerous business (the girl herself could do without the second to be honest) but in the end, they obeyed the Magic Council and punished lawbreakers.  Leah was fairly certain that thieving fell under the category of breaking the law.  B) The girl did in fact have a conscience, and although that conscience did not tell her that shoplifting was wrong, it did say that ruining the reputation of Fiore was wrong.  If she did something not so nice while keeping up a fairly permanent residence in Fiore, it would reflect badly on them.  She didn’t want that, no matter how much she insisted to herself that she absolutely didn’t care about the stupid little place.

So here Leah was, chasing after a hammer thief in Ca-Elum.  It had happened that she was browsing the marketplace in Fiore when a man had come and nailed a poster to a road sign post that said a man’s favorite hammer had been stolen.  Clearly, he wished to get it back, but in doing so he had decided it would be a prudent idea to broadcast the mission to what seemed to be basically the entirety of Earthland.  Possessing a lazy streak but mostly a negative outlook on life, the redhead had expected five bajillion people to have called in to answer the job and to have been already rejected or accepted (in the case of that first very lucky person).  However, it seemed that today was her lucky day, for she managed to be the only one to answer to the man’s request (perhaps the rest actually attempted to make the physical journey to Ca-Elum before putting in an offer to help him get his hammer back).  The smith country itself was not particularly far away, and because the thief was low-class and had left a very obvious trail (a line of broken carts that he had smashed through in his efforts to escape) Leah had encountered no problems with arresting the man.  Subsequently, she had handed the merchant back his hammer, given a quick and sincere-seeming apology to all who had been forced to watch her chase around the thief, disturbing their city, and then went back to Fiore.  It was simple, but quite nice in reward.  The jewels weren’t bad, and it taught a lesson to thieves; never be second-rate.  

(But don’t be like Leah, either, and have an ego the size of Mt. Fuji.)

602 Words.