"Perhaps it always will. Some mistakes we can't erase, not with all the gold or diamonds in the world, and all we can do is keep going despite how they weigh on us."

He closes his eyes to face up at the sun, thinking about his own misdeeds.

....Headshake.

She doesn't want to be the kind of person it doesn't bother.

They sit in silence. A cloud covers the sun, casting them in shade, then passes.

"The dawn brings new light," he says, with the cadence of a prayer. "Each new day is an opportunity, a promise from Sarenrae that things will get better, here or in the afterlife to come."

Sure, from Sarenrae and not the natural order of the world, or the harmony of forces dancing that happen to have produced the current situation.

Oh, shut up, sarcasm brain.

"Well... Haaah. Sarenrae seems nice. If you guys need guarding or illusion services I could be moved to help maybe."

"The festival of Burning Blades isn't far off, illusionists are always welcome for adding to that spectacle," he says, brightening. 

"As for guarding, few Evildoers would ever dare to attack a temple of our goddess," the halfling says with pride. "Though if some of our faithful should need defending beyond this sanctuary, how should you be contacted? Shall I introduce you to the high priestess so that they know you for a Sending?"

He guesses that would be more reliable than expecting an adventurer to have a fixed address.

"Ooh, a festival. That would probably be easier than what I was imagining! Which was receiving messages at the coin priests' place. Weiss Faron, by the way."

"Ranik Brogan," he replies.

Ranik describes the goddess' festivals as they walk and wait, the ceremony where hundreds of worshippers dance with blades dipped in burning pitch and the mystery plays recounting her role in the defeat and sealing of Rovagug.

The high priestess is a busy older woman with darker skin than most of the locals, paging through a holy text to prepare the sermon for before the sunset channels as she receives the pair.

"Weiss, was it?" For a moment, she stares at her, then blinks, apparently enough of an impression to use the spell later. "How dangerous a guard duty would you accept, if we were to call on you?"

Huh. So at that festival maybe she'd be adding SFX and music and lights to a play? Something that might merit a rehearsal. Sounds fun.

"I'd rather not die but it'd be more a lich than a petty necromancer that'd do it. And I probably can't stick around forever, but chances to help in efficient high-impact ways are surprisingly hard to arrange, so, yeah! In fact, I'm probably after one of those later today. Petty necromancer, that is. I've fought a Gargantuan magic centipede before and that took a full party and army backup to finish if that helps calibrate."

She seems busy. 

(Most languages of Golarion of course have distinct terms for each of the size categories and an accepted ordering of them, because in a world where people can encounter giant predators ranging from horse-sized to taller than most trees it is much more important to have the words to quickly distinguish those.)

That puts her at around the high priestess' own level of might by her reckoning, fourth or fifth circle.

She nods and returns to her sermon-planning - she is busy - but offers them some candied orange pieces to take with them as they go. 

Yummy! 

She'd like to hear a bit more about Burning Blades from Ranik so that she's not working at cross purposes if she ends up illusing for it? Whimsy has its place in art but she doesn't want to crash someone else's festival.

Then he'll happily recount the usual order of events, spending the day in fasting and prayer, dancing with the ceremonial weapons as the sun goes down. There is a whole elaborate choreography to allow for dipping them in pitch as the sky darkens, and then the high priestess will light hers from the temple brazier, the flames spreading out from her as the whirling blades brush against each other until the whole crowd is banishing the shadows of night. 

"It's not as dangerous as it sounds, everyone's already spinning with their arms out fully so they can't reach much further even if they trip, and the ceremonial weapons are mostly blunted," he adds, in case that's a concern.

"Do you think dancing firelight in the sky would help the effect without disrupting things?"

"That sounds pretty, do you think you could make the wisps of flame rise up from the dancers' blades or make a pattern in the sky?" 

He'll excitedly suggest a few symbols of Sarenrae that could be displayed in the firelight: The sun, the dove, the ankh, and some of the constellations of the Cosmic Caravan if the skies are clear. 

Oh, that might be tricky for others but she bets she can do it, animating nice symbols in glowing fires rising from the festival... Especially if she goes and gets that headband.

"-I think I know what I wanna do between now and my appointment, is go back to the Abadar people and get a writ of me being good for 1600 platinum so I can try on the headband and see if it really would help as much as I think. I mean, it sounds like a lot so I'm not sure if I am truly good for it, in fact. Thanks for the chat and introductions, Ranik, I think I'm off for now if there's nothing else?"

It might mean she doesn't get around to seeing what life in the slum-y bits of town are like, but it doesn't really feel wasted.

...It's nice to be able to walk around and only get 'adventurer' looks instead of 'kitsune' looks.

Ten minutes later, she is back at the temple-bank of Abadar and shown through to the appraisal room, lined with lead sheeting as an inexpensive mundane anti-scrying defense and occupied by a lay appraiser. He does startle noticeably at her appearance, though he does his best to recover with some professional courtesy.

"Lock me! Ahem, my apologies, you are here to have some valuables, er, valued?"

"Lock-? Er, yeah! I want to see if I can get to sixteen hundred platinum in assets verified or whatever so I can try on this headband I saw in a shop up on the hill. If I can't I might want to buy a Splendor or rent a headband of same for five minutes if that's cheaper, to check how much it helps. So, I have gold silver and copper coins, some gems and stuff, a few magic items - wands and scrolls - that I think aren't really in the local paradigm, some jars of spices and travelling supplies... I think that's about it for major assets."

Ah, an adventurer. No doubt just returned to civilization from plundering an ancient tomb, the coins spanning three millennia and the jewels freshly pried from the eyes of an animated statue by daggerpoint. Maybe she'll have something to challenge him, like one of the trials of St. Neddelsohn. He opens up his reference book on Thassilonian numismatics in advance, and gives his usual pre-appraisal spiel of confidentiality and coin-weighing and scratch-tests. 

"...and an Eagle's Splendor from the temple will run you ten platinum, or six if you're willing to pay half in advance and wait until morning," the appraiser finishes.

Okay, laying it all out, she has...

Her travelling supplies. Clothes, slightly magical tent, masterwork stainless steel camp stove, a nice but not exceptional steel longsword that she barely uses and mostly only has for appearances, a make-safe-drinkable crystal glass bottle that you have to channel magic into, some preserved rations and about two dozen largeish containers of various spices and sauces from across Tirra. Of that, the spices and water bottle are the things she's most willing to part with. Maybe the sword.

A pile of Tirran currency, various mintings.

The small copper coins are honestly almost too much fuss to bother with for such low value but this place seems like a good place to dump 'em all at bulk rate. She's fine with losing, like, a relatively large portion of their value here.

The large copper coins, silver coins, and small and large gold coins at least purport to have consistent weights and compositions according to Atsosi-Noten Standard, but, well, they vary. By about 1-5% in her experience. She has quite a lot of them though, from decades of steady bounties on lesser monsters and the occasional big bounty for big monsters, and not really spending it in quantities beyond securing a decently comfortable lifestyle back home.

A motley pile of small and generally not-too-rare or high quality gemstones, kept as a more value dense reserve instead of being fenced, and also just because having a bunch of gemstones is a nice feeling, okay, don't judge. There are no big standouts in here, while there are a few diamonds but they're mostly real little. None of them are in the standard sizes except by coincidence.

Her wands and scrolls. Almost all made by her ??friend??/acquaintance and sometimes party member Sinnah, who invented Sinnah's Fly, but Tirran wizardry is NOT local wizardry, like, at all. Something is up here because the magic shop lady said 2000 platinum for the wand of Sinnah's Fly with eight charges left and that seems like Way Too Much.

Sum total here:

Wand of Sinnah's Fly with 8/10 charges. It lasts thirty two minutes and can reach 200 miles an hour, and requires skill to use/does not have safeties against hitting things, and casts Feather Fall when it ends.

Three scrolls of Mind Purge, which removes all ongoing mind-affecting effects, including things like drugs and curses and sometimes trauma, both positive and negative.

Five scrolls of Golden Chains which is sorta like Hold Person except it manifests temporary physical restraints in the form of magical glowing chains.

A wand of Golden Chains with 4/6 charges.

A scroll of Blizzard (120 foot 60 degree cone ice damage, knockdown/obscure vision)

A scroll of Sunfire Beam which has special anti-undead properties (hits harder than Fireball and less hard than Meteor Swarm),

One each scrolls of Repel Filth, Stop Bleeding, Seeking Arrow, Message, and Stop Pain, which are 1st circle ish and do what their names say.

And finally, the big bucket: Loot from the latest Cryptid hunt, which ended up in a long-abandoned missile silo where they defeated The General, as they nicknamed it, and purged a vast nest of cursed beings with fire and magic. Sinnah and Marquess Fortinbras claimed most of the magic stuff and Vee claimed most of the weird trophy-like stuff, leaving her with mostly valuable bits of metal and gems and a few miscellaneous bits.

A few impressively tough ceramic-titanium-alloy-of-some-kind armor pieces, gauntlets and gorgets and such not full chest pieces, designed for Large humanoids.

A dozen unpolished but high quality ruby rods, finger-width and about ten inches long, pulled out of weapons that fired searing light.

A pile of miscellaneous silver and gold jewelry with various gems (and thaaaaat's a Wish diamond but Weiss doesn't seem to realize it's special),

A bunch of silver-platinum and copper-gold medals/ribbons/uniform accoutrements.

Some Tirran challenge coins (mostly silver, each carrying symbols of a specific long-dead military unit),

Some ancient Tirran coins and gold bars a couple millennia old, looted by The General.

An unenchanted dark metal titanium bracelet with white sapphire insets.

An extremely well made and elaborately embroidered red and black cape that The General was wearing. Actually flexible metal and not cloth, some kind of flexible shape-memory alloy.

Some more bits of aluminum and titanium scrap, mangled weapons and such, kept on the logic that they're pretty rare metals even if she doesn't know any specific smith who'd want them.

Longsword: 15gp
Tent, masterwork, minor magic, used: 100gp
Stove, masterwork: 20gp
Decanter of Purify Food and Drink, mages only: 1250gp (provisional)
Trail rations, 4lb: 2gp (Adventurers.)
Spices, exotic, assorted, 24oz: 50gp (provisional)
Copper coins, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 15lb: 10gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Silver coins, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 4lb: 16gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Gold coins, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 6lb: 240gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Gemstones, moderate semiprecious to moderate precious, assorted, non-standard cuts (?): 3000gp
Wand of 'Sinnah's Fly' (extended Fly?), 8 charges, eighth-circle duration (?): 7500gp (provisional, subject to upwards revision on confirmation of maximum sustained speed)
Scrolls, 'Mind Purge' (Third-circle analogue to Absolution or Break Enchantment?), x3: 350gp ea., 1050gp (provisional)
Scrolls, 'Golden Chains' (Second-circle analogue to Hold Person or Shackle?), x5: 150gp ea., 750gp (provisional)
Wand of 'Golden Chains' (See above), 4 charges: 350gp (provisional)
Scroll, 'Blizzard' (Fourth-circle analogue to Ice Storm?): 630gp (provisional)
Scroll, 'Sunfire Beam' (Searing Light?): 350gp (provisional)
Scrolls, assorted first-circle, x5: 25gp ea., 125gp
Armor pieces, mixed, Large, unknown material (mithral?) x3: 1000gp ea., 3000gp (provisional)
Ruby rods, flawless, unpolished, approx. 180 carat (?), x12: 1600gp ea., 19200gp (provisional, consult expert on Numerian gemology)
Jewelry, mixed —

The appraiser frowns and takes out a couple more tools when he gets to one of the items of jewelry. He inspects the specific piece more closely, holding it up to the light, doing a quick scratch test. Then he suddenly starts speaking a lot faster.

"This diamond appears suitable for use in casting Wish and so is worth substantially more than all other items here combined (with the possible exception of the ruby rods), you may wish to know that for windfalls of this magnitude we can also offer the service of erasing the past five minutes of my memory and having the Archbanker take over the transaction to better safeguard information about your valuables, but with that five minute time limit you would need to come to a decision on that soon, the charge would be, um, song-sorcerer scroll, fourth-circle - rush fee - Archbanker's time - memory loss compensation - ah, approximately 2500gp, under a tenth of how much the diamond may be worth."

He starts rummaging around for small hourglass to track how much longer is left on that option while awaiting her reply.

"Uh whyyyyy would I want that, that's a big chunk of the staggeringly expensive headband, that could buy a lot of, like, famine relief or orphanagery-"

"Because, the usefulness of diamonds for wishcraft is enough to tempt an archmage to theft? Or anyone else who wants an archmage's favor. The marginal odds of you being targeted because my mind happened to be read are probably less than ten percent, true, but if you were to be robbed they might take other valuables or cause other damages in the process." But he does slow down his speech again as she seems to be unconvinced, and relaxes a little as he resumes appraising the rest of the item the Wish diamond is set in.

"That's... Diamonds are useful to wizards but mostly as dust... Uhhhh I'm selling it so it becomes your problem. And then I get a number in an account that I'm good for and that's a lot less of an issue right?"