"Might he not want me to somehow submit or something, as a gift? Or make a show of not wanting to give him the gift so he can take it anyway, or something like that."

"Maybe he'd prefer that? If so, safer to just act like normal and make sure not to use phrases like "at your service." Even if he prefers taking things, he can't expect you to play along unprompted."

"I suppose you're right."

"Keep in mind I'm speculating. If you get there and you think something else is a better idea, you'll probably be better informed by then."

"Mmhm. We'll see when I get there. Also can I say I have missed having signal on my phone it's so great—"

"Welcome back to civilization."

"Thank you!"

She finishes showering.

When she's done, Johannes is fairly easy to find and has come up with a list of clients currently in the park who might be willing to hear her out on the money thing. Relatively speaking. He notes that they usually stay for a while on the scale of days, so if she wants to try suggesting it there's no hurry.

Yeah she might try that.

Some of them sound potentially unsavory. A headless horseman. A faerie from one of the winter courts. A Djinn. It's not a very long list; this demesne caters primarily to Others who remember the old days, and the older Others rarely have use for money.

None of the occupants will harm a practitioner in here, but Johannes offers to accompany Sadde if she thinks it would help anything.

She doesn't think it'll help, actually; they'll probably respect her more if she goes alone.

Seems plausible. Preferences on what order?

The fae sounds like a good one to start.

Her area of Johannes' demesne is in a shopping mall, or at least the weird reflection of one. Inside, stores turn into caves and escalators into winding paths. It's just generally a lot harder to keep track of a destination than any competent building designer would want it to be.

Up what seems to be a non-integer number of floors, there's a cave marked by a tree bearing a single enormous fruit with one proportionately sized bite taken out of it. There. It's unoccupied at the moment, except by a handful of vestiges dancing and not looking very happy about it. Not all of them are still standing.

The person she's looking for arrives soon after Sadde steps on a twig. She's ugly, is the first and most obvious sight. Could not be any more wizened and warped if she had appearance-altering magic and centuries of experience. She declines to give her name, but says that Sadde may call her Gwyll.

"It is an honour to meet you, Gwyll. I am called Sadde."

"An honor? Perhaps. Meeting you is at the least a curiosity, Sadde. You came here looking for me, a rare trait among those who find me."

"Yes. I have... an offer, and it's one I don't expect many would take but I honestly believe it will better the lives of those who take it in the majority of the time."

"The same could be said of quite a few interesting gambles."

"That's true. Mine's... less of a gamble, more of a custom of sorts? Non-practitioners don't really barter anymore—I apologise if I give offence, but I don't know how much contact to expect you to have with non-practitioner society and history."

"More than some. I am a gatekeeper of sorts. If you imagine a lone traveler with little familiarity with any one place, I know around the amount that they did."

She nods. "Non-practitioners trade in money, so they don't get disadvantages by trade. I—some sixty years ago—invented a magical equivalent. I believe everyone, practitioner and Other alike, can benefit from its use."

"And you're here to offer me some in hopes that I join your society of merchants?"

"Well my hope is that the entirety of society adopts it. I think late history shows that everyone gets richer when this transition happens."

"When I make a transaction between equals, it is nearly always with other faerie. You suggest introducing currency, and you may well be correct about it being more efficient. But it is also more mundane, and more boring."

"Hmm, when's trading with other faerie the most interesting?"