Just Your Average Time Traveller

Irrelevant.

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Before I start this chapter, I want to just say thank you SO MUCH for the constant support and encouragement that people have given this story. Especially, I want to say thanks to xxjustawriterxx and Inadartmoordaze, as they've been absolutely cherry-ish and not at all like banana milkshakes. I will now make an unbreakable vow with you to keep writing this book...AND YOU HAVE TO BE MY SLAVE FOR THE DAY!

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I'd kind of guessed by that stage how reckless Cassia was. As if the uncanny ability to scare me and make me grin like an idiot within the same hour weren't enough, she lied to people she was close to. She was always leading me into alleyways, dead ends, introducing me to people both shady and solitary. She seemed to think things through in seconds, if she thought them through at all. But this? This was insanity.

Cassia turned, deep brown hair whipping around and walked into the market square, illuminated by the light of the Italian sun on the fountain, despite being in partial shadow. My Visor was still in her grasp, and she held it loftily at her side as she walked into the square. From a distance, she looked confident, and I realised now what her plan was: disguise. I shook my head in disbelief. I was almost certain it wouldn't work. Her hair lacked length, her frame too scrawny...

But then she came under the full glare of the Sun. Her hair wafted in the breeze, each strand a piece of bronze wire lit with fireflies. The green attire looked fuller, more expensive. And bam. She was a rich, young wife of a Senator.

Nobody gave her more than a second glance as she passed into the crowded place. Urchins cleared a path for her every once in a while, heads low and gaze averted. Cassia plucked a wicker basket from a man who had turned his back on his goods. Nobody noticed. Hiding the basket was unnecessary - of course, nobody would question her.

Cassia then proceeded to pluck a dozen Brazil nuts and two chicken legs from a larger, red roofed lean-to, depositing them in her basket. All the while, she pouted and raised her chin obnoxiously. By the time she returned, my mouth was agape.

"How...?"

"That's one way to do it," Cassia said, suppressing a small smile.

"That was crazy," I told her pointedly, reaching for the Visor in her left hand. Our fingers brushed but I tried not to react, a warmth blossoming on my cheeks as I retrieved my device.  Cassia's face was stone cold.

"Don't touch me," she mumbled, an uncertainty in her usually calm butterscotch eyes. I breathed in sharply. Both of us were perfectly still, seeing who would make the first move.

That would be me.

"If you think I'm too foreign and dirty to touch you, then why don't you go back home and leave me here to die on the street?" My words boiled with barely concealed rage, hands twitching at my sides.

Cassia considered me defensively for a moment. "Yes," she drawled. "Why don't I?"

I glared at her, then thought about what I was doing. Since when did I intimidate people? I was the lanky ginger kid who had nothing to bring to the table when it came to talents. I was the one who people could only describe as nondescript. Hastily, I unclenched my fists and tried to look calm, and not like I was about to rip her throat open, which I was roughly five seconds away from doing.

Cassia continued warily. "If you're done thinking up ways to kill me..." Damn. "...then I suggest you go and have a try at stealing yourself."

"But I can't play some rich Senator," I protested.

"Irrelevant. There are other ways of stealing, some more traditional. Impress me. Your target is that unattended table there," she gestured to a small wooden table on the edge of the square, only ten metres away from where we stood. It held an array of writing implements, glazed pots of ink, long bodacious feathery quills. The lot.