Arete had to admit it. Being the mistress of the Condos heir certain had some perks. One of the most notable was the sheer amount of free time the young woman now had. When she had lived in Doralis, any time that she had no spent at Nikos’s side had instead been spent deep within the recesses of her father’s pottery studio or in the household under the lazy eye of her mother. There had been no time for casual strolling through city markets and the girl had no real reason to either. After all, what was the point of exploring the various stalls if you did not have the coin to spend on the treasures you liked? Arete never forgot to thank the gods that this was no longer the case. Due to the threat that the war posed, Nikos decided to move Arete to the capital and she had also made the dual decision to not inform her family of this change in locale. Even though this action on her part might seem selfish and cold, it was necessary as now she was finally free from that studio out in the middle of nowhere.

Now instead of needing to be cooped up in a pottery studio all day with mud caked on her fingers, staining them a light brown, she was free to do whatever she pleased… just as long as she found her way back into Nikos’s bed at the end of the night. Arete had at first been giddy with freedom. The generous coin purse her lover had given her had been emptied in just a few days as Arete lavished herself in all the fine cloth and jewels that the market had to offer. However, now that she had been in the capital for a week or two, her desire to buy everything she touched had been somewhat curbed. Somewhat. She was still rather prone to extravagant purchases, but she was at least more aware that even though her lover was seemingly a bottomless pit of money that he had no problems spending on her… there was only so much storage space in her rooms. Between her own purchases and the gifts that Nikos had given her when they had been in Doralis, she was quickly running out of closet space and she had her doubts that even the comely Ophelia would be willing to lend her brother’s ‘whore’ some room in her closet.

That was mostly why Arete had decided that instead of pursuing her typical corners of the marketplace that specialized in the goods that she wanted to adorn her body with Arete was instead moving towards the other side of the market; livestock and agriculture. The young woman normally would not have been caught dead near any of the smelly animals or stinking butchers, but she did have to prevent herself from buying more things in any way that she could. This was just one way of doing that. After all, every minute here was one not spent fawning over the things that she really wanted. Hopefully, the rotten stench lingering over this section would be enough to tempt her away from other things.

Even though this was Arete’s intention in regards to wandering over to this section of the market that separated the luxury goods from the more practical goods on the other side of things, she soon found that this logic was not aligning with her nose. As she passed by a pen stuffed to the brim with goats, the sheer smell of fur, urine, and shit was simply overwhelming to her nostrils. That combined with the deafening noise of their bleating had poor Arete rethinking her decision to taking an interest in seeing what actually ended up on her plate. Covering her nose with one hand, Arete started to hurry away from the goats and more towards the safer part of this section. Truly, she pitied the poor fool who would have to clean up after the wretched animals… if they were even cleaned up that is. After all, those goats were destined to be slaughtered. What did it matter what their coats looked or smelled like if their worth was what was underneath the fur?

Either way, Arete had never been more grateful to end up in front of stalls filled with fruit and amphoras overflowing with wine. Glancing at the nearest one, she wondered if it was filled with Condos wine, the mainstay of her lover’s fortune. It was likely that it did, given how expansive their wine production was, but there was still a chance that it didn’t as some of the other families were keen to give the Condos a run for their money. As if they could even compete with the family who rightfully deserved the throne. Though in truth, this wasn’t really what captured her attention even though the source of the drink within had been her first thought. Not when her eyes were naturally drawn to the designs on the amphora before her. It was commonplace for potters to include artwork on the clay pots they made as it was a surefire way to make sure that their handiwork stood out at the marketplace. All her life, Arete had been the one to paint the pictures on the side of her family’s products and it was for that reason that her eyes still tried to take note of what others had done.

On this particular pot, she could see that there was a standard depiction of the story of Odysseus stabbing out the cyclops eye. This was a rather commonplace thing to see on anything meant to contain wine as the tale depended on the monster growing too drunk to notice what the stranded sailors were doing. It was a good way to let potential customers know what was in the amphora. However, Arete was more focused on how the artist was using the space. Size and depth was a rather difficult thing to portray on a clay jar and a cyclops was supposed to be massive compared to a human. Yet in an effort to not waste any space, all of the humans were the same height as the beast who was now sitting in order to convey how large he was. That was a rather interesting technique and it caught Arete’s eye. As she looked over the jar, following the pattern, she tried to take note of all the other things that the artist might have done.

All the while, she was completely unaware that she had been wrong in her previous assumption about the merchants never cleaning the pens was wrong. Some poor boy was currently being sent in to try and make things a bit cleaner in order to tempt any of the pedestrians passing by. However, the boy was young. He was a bit careless. Without meaning too, he forgot to lock the gate behind him and did not notice right away.

The goats did though.

Within a moment, all of them came streaming out of the gate and started running all throughout the market, wreaking havoc at every turn and even though Arete and others around her could hear the commotion, she wasn’t so worried about it at the moment. However, this was a terrible mistake as little did she know that the wave of goats was heading right for where she stood and in just mere moments she would be practically trampled by little creatures that barely were taller than her knees.