La Belle Dame Sans Merci, or just Belle for short, was a collector. Her thing was collecting talismans, totems, items with potential magical energy. Strong emotions attracted magic like metal filings to a magnet and magic, or rather the potential for magic, was what attracted Belle. Her enhanced senses could sniff out objects imbued with even the slightest hint of magical potential, usually things associated with important emotional moments in a person's life. If you knew how to sense them you could find such objects all over the Enchanted Forest and it was to her advantage that so few humans could see that what was magically valuable wasn't necessarily valuable in the usual market value sense.

But wasn't that your average human all over? Belle thought, always placing value on precisely the wrong things. How many of objects of greatest power in her collection were ones she never even had to strike a bargain for? A shocking number in fact, had been found in rubbish tips. As the Dark Sorceress, La Belle Dame Sans Merci was quite lucky she could enchant her nose not to smell some of the odors, or she would've spent a good deal of her object hunting hours being thoroughly sick, considering some of the places she found her curiosities in.

Even though she was immortal, she did possess senses other than the olfactory ones that could be sickened by some of the less salubrious locations she occasionally found herself in.

Still, despite the nature of this particular market day's trading,the marketplace was a pleasant change. It was soothing in a way, to be surrounded by so much bustling movement, vitality and life after the silence of the Dark Castle.

Although Belle didn't need to eat, she was drawn to a cart selling savoury pastries, similar to the ones she'd had as a girl, hot and fresh enough to scorch a normal human's fingers at a touch. Belle touched them and felt nothing.

Her gaze drifted to plump chickens and rabbits in wicker cages. There were colourful rugs knotted in intricate patterns, perfect to stare into on a winter's night beside a roaring fire. There were carved icons of gods and goddesses from a multiplicity of faiths and other peddlers shouting out the prices and merits of their wares accompanied by sellers of drums and mouth harps, lutes and other musical instruments demonstrating the full range of their instruments.

It was all so delightfully distracting. She often came to such places to draw herself off from her dark internal musings, the ruminations obsessions of the spirit that lurked within her, always on the look out for ways to sew mischief, always tilling back the soil of long buried resentments in her mind, ready to plant chaos in such fertile soil.

Not that disorder was always a bad thing. Too much order was never any fun. It clamped things down and closed off possibilities. Without a trickster to shake things up now and again, the world would be so boring. Now if only she could convince those blasted fairies of her own necessity to the natural balance of things, she might finally have some peace. All she really wanted, she tried to convince herself, was to be left alone.

Left alone… unbidden thoughts of what waited her in the palace, came back to her. She thought of her silent library then. Libraries were supposed to be quiet, of course, but in hers the only sound that could be heard was the soft whisper of spider legs as busy arachnids wove their webs, and her own soft footfalls on the floor, echoing like giant's steps, on the cracked marble tiles of vast cavernous rooms, clouds of dust rising up in her wake wherever she trod. She could just see the few dust free areas where she was want to pace by the fire, just hear the tired floorboards creaking under her feet as she ascended the stair, but when she looked down all was straw beneath her feet and the dirt and dust of the market. It was a gloomy, grayish sort of day and lamps hung from poles around some stalls, giving off much needed warmth and light.

She had no need for lamps or lanterns, not anymore. In her true form even the mice scurried to hide from the large, lamp-like eyes that raked over the dark passages of the castle like twin search lights. In velvety darkness her scaley blue skin glowed, a thin rim of gold around each scale. The folk from nearby towns and villages called her home the Dark Castle, not only because of what once transpired within it, but for its present owner's utter disregard for all sources of artificial illumination.

Rifling through second hand trinkets this otherwise unmemorable Frontlands village, Belle let the scent of desperation overwhelmed her, trying to pinpoint the magical source that had drawn her to this out of the way place. It clung to certain items on the table like sticky tar, still strong and distinctive even after several changes of ownership. To a regular person, the magic contained in such items would remain dormant, potential power untapped, but Belle, both because of what she was and what she had taught herself over the years, knew the secret to coaxing magical energy out of seemingly ordinary objects and more difficult still, how to control and command the magic once released.

Ignoring the pricier offerings of gold and jewels on the table Belle bargained with the peddler for a well-worn toy rabbit, a pair of red dancing shoes and a fake pearl necklace. All told her purchases were hardly worth the trouble of the trip, but she wasn't ready to write it off yet. The slave auction had yet to start.

The man with the red woolen hat who styled himself a "a procurer of hard to find items" had tipped her off about this particular location. She'd been to it a few times already in different guises in the past month or so, without luck. Perhaps it was time to revisit Smee and take back the reward she'd given him, with a little extra payment for good measure. It wouldn't do for anyone to think the Sorceress of the Dark Castle was going soft in her dotage now would it?