The Golden Mirror

Niyika took several deep, steadying breaths before stepping up to ring the doorbell of Ponderance House. The door opened instantly. Not after a few moments, not after the towering butler within crossed the lobby to stand by the door. Instantly. Between knock one and knock two, which was never to be, but still left Niyika offbalance on the doorstep, in front of the immaculately dressed hyur. Which wasn’t fair, because evidently he hadn’t had to cross the path of a mob of confetti tossing miqote that morning. She opened her mouth.
“The servants’ door is around the corner. Good day.” The door closed.
A minute later, Niyika rapped firmly on the servants’ door. This time, there was time for brisk footsteps from within, and an elegant Elezan maid answered and studied the pile of fecal matter left on the doorstep. Well, she studied Niyika, but the expression was the same.
“Young lady, you have confetti in your hair.”
“Good day, my name is Niyika, of the—“
“The Perfectly Ordinary Courier Company, yes, I recall. You have performed inadequate services for Ponderance House in the past.”
Inadequate?! “I believe I delivered the Panorama of Eternity quite promptly, if you recall,” Niyika retorted.
“It was in two pieces.”
“It was in one piece with some brand new, shiny hinges which I didn’t charge extra for.” It had been a very expensive repair too. Who would have anticipated a chocobo race would take place right when she was carting it across the street?
“What do you want?” asked the Elezen, at the end of her patience.
“I have an item of interest for Lord Nanar Cici.” Niyika reached into the messenger bag and rummaged, and ended up with sticky hands. Not the honey jar for Lady Ferina…
“Any items of interest from you can be assessed at the servants door,” said the maid, primly.
“But this is—“
“The lesser servants’ door. It’s around by the stables. Good day.” The door slammed shut.
Niyika rapped on the ‘lesser’ servants’ door, which really just seemed to be the kitchen door. Nobody answered. Well, not to her, anyway. There was screaming within, something about the live lobsters not being live, or the dead lobsters being live after all. Either way, she opened the door and nearly trod on something which looked alarmingly like a fingertip, before it was scooped up by a bawling Roe in a chef’s hat. “Hello, is anyone able to assess an item of interest?” she asked, plaintively.
“Psst, here!”
“Where?” Niyika huffed, looking around and seeing only the rampaging chefs, and the white robes of a doctor trying to chase down the inexplicably fleeing Roe chef. A hand grabbed her ankle and she yelped, stumbling away from her assailant. It was only a Lalafel woman, hidden on the bottom shelf of a serving trolley. “What are you doing in—oh, I see.”
It was a tight squeeze for two, but Niyika ended up nose to nose with the skiving chef, who offered some suspiciously alcoholic smelling raisins to Niyika, who of course snacked on a handful, and whispered, “You mentioned one of the Lords items of interest? You have confetti in your hair, by the way.”
“Oh, yes. One moment.” She rummaged through the bag. It wasn’t her fault the Roe was running about, and the doctor was running about, and the trolley was such a tight fit that her elbow stuck out the side, and that the Roe tripped over her elbow and crashed to the ground, and that the doctor tripped over the Roe and, well, crashed to the Roe, and a call went out for the doctor’s assistant to attend with haste. She was just retrieving the mirror.
It was a beautiful device, if you didn’t include the severe looking woman glaring into the middle of it with half her face painted a precise matt white. It was gold inlaid with pearls, and further studded with rubies, with intricate scrollwork tracing around the reflective oval in the middle. The handle even felt expensive, like if you held it for long enough a banker would pop up and remind you that you seem to have forgotten about the secondary vault they opened for your extra gil.
“That is a real pretty thing isn’t it?” The lalafel murmured in wonder, and when she reached for the mirror, Niyika let her take it to examine. After all, if she tried to steal it, she could always punt her across the kitchen. “Beautiful. Yes, this is definitely an item of interest. I should fetch Miss Thalla so she can fetch the Head Butler.”
Not Miss Thalla. Not the Head Butler, again. “Well, you could just take me yourself,” Niyika mused, hopefully.
Avarice shone in the little woman’s eyes. “Why yes… yes! Why should anyone else get credit for my hard work? Come on, come on.” She skipped out from the trolley, and was practically out of the room by the time Niyika unfolded her stiff body and straightened up. And stopped fuming about who had done the hard work. Why, she had… not adventured, never adventured, but been adventurer adjacent in a very scary ruin for quite some considerable time to get the damned mirror!
She caught up to the stubby legged woman before they left the servants wing, and stepped into Ponderance House proper. She counted six Niyikas in the narrow corridor that led to the servants wing, that no noble would ever traverse or simply die of the shame of it, twelve Niyikas in the connecting hallway which overlooked the atrium on one side, and lost count in the next room, where there were Niyikas off to infinity on either side, and freestanding Niyikas cluttering the middle of the room, and a giant Niyika astride the left wall, and an upside down Niyika on the right wall. The excessive number of Niyikas was of course down to the excessive number of mirrors adorning every surface in Ponderance House. No wonder all the Niyikas looked so incredibly tense.
“Lord Nanar Cici’s study is at the end of this corridor. Oh, and if you spot a mirror you might want to sort your hair, you still have confetti in it,” said the lalafel woman.
A couple of long suffering sighs later and they were admitted into the Lord’s study. Eight Lord Nanar Cici’s were facing off together in the middle of the room, each stood before an octagonally shaped desk, each lost in each other’s eyes. “Lord Cici?” Niyika eventually asked. He didn’t notice.
“Use your mirror!” suggested the little chef, finally offering it back to her.
“How?” Niyika asked, and hastily wiped some raisiny smudges off the mirror.
“Just… show it to him. That’s not him. Not that one either. Haven’t you ever seen a mirror before? This one!”
Finally, an increasingly irate Niyika held the mirror in front of the one Lord Nanar Cici in the room who wasn’t a reflection. “Oh my, who is this handsome devil?” he asked cocking his head to one side and stroking his perfect, tiny beard as he studied himself in Niyika’s hand mirror. “The gold hue of the reflection really brings out your luscious skin, doesn’t it, my Lord. Why yes, I believe it does.”
Niyika tilted the mirror, and the Lord almost fell off his chair following the reflection to the bitter end. He glared up at Niyika instead, and what a poor substitute she was for his own magnificence! “What is the meaning of this, bring me back. I require that mirror.”
“This mirror? Well, I suppose I could sell it to you. It’s probably fed up of reflecting me,” Niyika said, peering reluctantly at her own reflection in the gem encrusted device.
“Yes, yes, you are a sight, aren’t you? What do you want for it? Money is no object.”
“How about… ten thousand gil?” Niyika asked, hopefully.
“Are you insane, woman? I’ll have you whipped! Oh you make me so angry. My gods, look at me when I’m angry. I said look at me!” Niyika and the chef hurriedly looked at him, which was thankfully enough to soothe his temper. “It’s about time. I’ll give you one thousand gil for it, and not a penny more.”
Niyika held the mirror away from his grasping hands. “Now wait a minute, isn’t this mirror better than all the ones in this room? Doesn’t it captivate you with your um… magnificent magnificence when you just look at it? I bet you haven’t a mirror like it in your whole collection.”
“Well no, not since that bloody oaf snapped the Panorama of Eternity. Ten years I hunted for that blasted device, you know! Not an angle in space or time that it wouldn’t show me. You’re getting confetti all over my desk by the way.” He narrowed his eyes and scrutinised someone else’s face properly for the first time that day. Unfortunately, it was hers. “Hold on…”
Niyika thrust the mirror into his hands. “I’ll get the butler to pay me the thousand gil, thank you very much, my Lord!”
All in all, it wasn’t that bad a day, Niyika figured to herself, walking out of there having haggled her way up to a tidy nine hundred gil. It’d buy her some potions, curatives, the essentials. Beer.