### In the Marketplace
"Father."
"Mm."
"I said I wanted 'that' stick. The longer one. With the red string."
Edric Maren looked at his son.
His son looked back at him with the patient, immovable expression of a child who has identified something he wants and has not yet received it and intends to make this fact continuously legible until circumstances change.
The meat skewer in the boy's hand — a short, cheap cut from the corner grill, the kind where the vendor charges less because the fire isn't quite hot enough and the fat hasn't rendered properly — was being eaten with the focused, mechanical efficiency of a hungry child who had not forgotten what he actually wanted.
"This stick is fine," Edric said.
"It's short."
"It's sufficient."
"Sufficient," the boy repeated, in the specific tone children use when they have heard a word that is doing work they do not respect.
Edric looked at the vendor's display.
