Twisted Envoy

The two black coins were all I could think about. I couldn’t keep them on me, otherwise I would start to get sweaty and nervous anytime somebody walked up to me. Keeping them stowed away was just as stressful, but at least I didn’t have to worry about being attacked.

The coins themselves were nondescript. Pitch black, like you were looking into glass, but they were definitely metal. They were always ice cold. It felt like they absorbed heat somehow. I tried to take care of them as well as I could, but they didn’t seem to scratch easily.

I kept to myself for weeks, only going out for food. Then, one day, as I walked through a busy market street in the middle of some foreign village, someone came up to me out of the crowd. They walked slowly, with a large walking stick, and had a lot of layers on so that I couldn’t make out much about them.

It was a woman. Her face seemed to be middle aged, but it was rough, like she’d spent most of her life outside.

She stood, staring at me, then gestured towards an alleyway. I shook my head, and she came closer, hobbling now.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” she said, and handed me a third coin.

Immediately after that she collapsed in the middle of the street. She fell flat on her face, and I could tell by the way her limbs splayed that she was dead.