"..."

And one of the knives had snapped in half from being swung around a little. This woman was potentially the worst con artist that Maria had ever heard of. Did she think people who see her outfit and be so struck by how fancy it was that they'd ignore how shoddy all the items she was selling were? It was pretty ridiculous. And now she was demanding reparations for the damaged items, even though Maria could see from here that the knife had been glued back together and that it had broken under barely any stress.

"..."

Maria picked the lump of charcoal and the string back up. Swiftly, recalling just how it had been wrapped, she tied it back around the charcoal in the same loose, haphazard fashion that she had first seen it, complete with a knot that looked like it would come apart at any moment. She sat it back down on the table.

"There. See? Just a lump of charcoal on a string. If it was the... whatever you said it was, it wouldn't be so easily fixed, now would it?"