There were days when the mask of Granuaile Greenbow weighed heavily. Night's like tonight, when fear and unease lay heavily across the people of Anvil, the instincts of a destructionist tingled in her fingertips. Magicka hung ready to be shaped to her will. Idly she imagined the way she would ignite one of the thatched huts in a pillar of flame, planned exactly how she would fan the flames with mystic wind to send a holocaust of fire sweeping down the alley to incinerate her enemies. With trivial effort she could sweep from here to the ocean in a storm of fire that would...

"Mademoiselle Greenbow?" the young woman asked nervously. Granuaile blinked the vision of flames from her eyes. By Dibella, what had her face looked like just then? Judging by the shocked look on the teenagers face it wasn't in keeping with the persona of a simple healer. She smoothed the stiff planes of her face into something that approximated a smile.

"Sorry, I was thinking of home," she apologized. The thought of two Nord bravos, charred and smoking on the floor where they fell, wasn't that much better but the girl, eager to be reassured, nodded with knowing sympathy that was wholly false in most people as young as she was.

"How much for this one?" the young woman asked, sliding a small copper bracelet set with beads of polished glass across the counter. It had a minor enchantment laid upon it that would make the girl seem more desirable to her intended partner. That was all people wanted, charms to please their beaus and potions to restore their waning vigor. It upsets an artist's soul to peddle such trash.

"Thirty septims," Granuaile told her and the girl hastily pushed a handful of coins across the battered wooden countertop. Granuaile swept the coins into her belt pouch and forced her face into an approximation of a matronly smile. The girl snatched up her trinket and hurried out of the store. Granuaile gave her a moment and then crossed and closed the door. Her small shop was not much to look at. A single counter, a few shelves, some basic equipment in the backroom for enchanting and alchemy. Even the poorest thief would find little worth the effort. In the six months she had been in Anvil posing, or hiding to give a thing its proper name, as a seller of potions and simple magics, she had seen little point in investing in herself. Sighing, she collected her cloak and stepped outside, locking the door with a large brass key as she went. She needed a drink and who knows? Maybe this killer would try his luck and she could get a whiff of that delicious burned pork smell after all? Chuckling to herself, she headed for the Dancing Donkey.

It was with a faint sense of disappointment that she made it to the inn without being molested, for all an overt show of force would have exposed her as more than a simple healer. Still if she had burned down half the town, they probably wouldn’t have been able to fix her that stew she liked.