Sarah practically skipped up the stairs and into the hallway of many doors. Most were bedrooms, but one of the doors led to a nice little library she had going on, with tall, ornate wooden bookcases that covered whole walls, a pretty arched balcony window and a cute little sofa in front of a round coffee table with a fancy looking lamp on it. She had seen Thancred seated on the aforementioned sofa in this room through the open door. "Whatever did you wish to talk to me about?" she queried, perching herself next to him.

  "Ah, well." Thancred then did that cute little shrug he does. 

  Patiently yet impatiently, Sarah was waiting for him to say what he was going to say, but right when he opened his mouth to speak she heard Melody bolting noisily up the stairs whilst yelling.

  "SARAH, WE SHOULD GO TO THE MARKETS!! I WANNA GO TO THE MARKETS!!!" Melody yelled, running into the room and coming to a stop once she reached the sofa. She then noticed Thancred's existence there, so she smiled at him and said quite energetically, "Oh, hi Thancred!" 

  "Hello," returned Thancred. He was a bit upset about how he didn't get to tell Sarah what he wanted to, but oh well.

  Sarah hopped to her feet, seemingly forgetting all about how Thancred had something to tell her and agreed eagerly, "We should go to the markets. Wouldn't that be fun, Thancred?"

  Both Melody and Sarah smiled at Thancred as if they were trying to trick him into coming with them to the markets. 

  "Please, come with us?" Melody asked Thancred innocently with her hands behind her back. 

  Thancred sighed, "Perhaps I shall." He rose too, and followed the enthusiastic pair back downstairs.

  Alphinaud was sitting and drawing on the couch, when he heard Melody's loud, ridiculous laugh he immediately looked up, "Oh, hello Melody!" 

  Melody skipped the last step on the stairs and happily walked over to him, "Hi, Alphinaud!" she glanced at his sketchbook. "What are you drawing?" she asked him, with a big smile on her face.

  He seemed flustered, and fumbled with his sketchbook, making an attempt to quickly put it away. "Oh-- nothing, nothing at all!" he blurted out.

  Melody seemed confused. "Alright... well... Sarah, Thancred, and I are going to the markets so--" 

  Alphinaud then cut her off, but he didn't mean it to be rude. "May I come with you?" he seemed eager to go, for whatever reason.

Sarah overheard this, and she jumped onto the last step of the stairs for no apparent reason at all. "Absolutely not," she announced, crossing her arms and looking overall very much unimpressed.

  "Sarah!" Thancred said to her in a scolding tone.

  She flicked her ear back and uncrossed her arms. "I jest."

  Suddenly, Melody remembered Fandaniel. "Do you know where Fandaniel is?" she inquired.

  "Fandaniel is here?--"  Alphinaud looked and sounded very confused.

  "Nevermind, let's just go," she quickly said.

  So they did go, and once they had gotten there, Melody's attention was stolen by a strange device that looked like a headband with a screen on it. 

  "Woah..." Melody was amazed, and she picked it up and stared at it with wonder.

  "Hello, miss! Are you interested in buying anything?" A cute little lalafell with lilac hair, violet eyes, and pink top asked her.

  "Oh! How much is this? And what is it?" Melody handed the strange headband to her.

  "That is a very expensive and very special device that reads minds. How I got it, you may ask? You don't want to know." She stared off into space and began to smirk evilly. "And it's 999,999,999 gil." She added swiftly and smiled innocently up at Melody.

  "I'll take it!" she said with a smile on her face and took out all of the gil she had, which wasn't much. "But under two conditions." Melody said menacingly as she looked down at the lilac haired lalafell.

  "And what are those?" asked the pink wearing lalafell, which was also the lilac haired lalafell, there's only one lalafell here. Remember that.

  "If I can pay off the rest of it later, I only have 50 gil. And if I can also get my dream boyfriend."

  "Deal!" said the lalafell, and she took the 50 gil and gave Melody the mind reading device. 

  "Just where are you going to get 999,999,949 gil??" Sarah questioned Melody with one eyebrow raised.

  "I have absolutely no idea, but I have a cool thing now!" Melody then put the mind reader on Sarah, just to see what would happen.

  "I don't want to wear your funky circlet," she said, a bit of an annoyed tone in her voice.

 Melody replied, "It's not a funky circlet, it's a mind reader. It can read your mind," and took it off of her head. "Do you think we could use it to read Fat Cat's mind?" 

  "I suddenly like this mind reader." Sarah took it from Melody's hands and stuck it onto Fat Cat's head, and the two sat intently waiting for something to appear on the screen.

  Fat Cat stood and stared at Sarah and Melody blankly. And all that was on the screen was a low quality video of a fish spinning to Funky Town. 

  "So that's what goes through my cat's brain daily? Cool." Sarah remarked. Then she gently took the mind reader off of Fat Cat, patted her on the head, and turned to put it on Melody.

  "Hey, I liked the music..." she muttered in protest, letting Sarah put the mind reader on her while she began to zone out. Right at that moment, strange noises started coming from it. Almost like Melody was attempting to drown out some other voice in her head.

  "What kind of a madhouse is your mind...?" wondered Sarah as she observed the screen curiously.

  It seemed Melody's thoughts had leaked through to her mouth and she loudly yelled, "SHUT UP!!!" and so did the mind reader with her. She had finally snapped back to reality, and quickly took the mind reader off of her head.

  Alphinaud flinched back in shock. He quite liked Melody, and he thought she was a nice girl, although it seemed she had some problems. But don't we all have problems of some kind?

  Sarah blinked once, then twice. "That's interesting. Who's the other voice, your schizophrenia?"

"I don't know-- but it's ridiculously similar to Mary and the things she's told me," Melody sighed and very quietly muttered to herself, "Dear God... they must think I'm insane." 

  "What kind of terrible things has she told you...?" Alphinaud asked Melody, he sounded a bit confused but he spoke softly.

  "I could tell you, but I don't want to ruin my day. I stay happy by distracting myself with frivolous things. So why don't we go and do that?" Melody looked up at him, still sitting on the ground. She had sadness in her eyes, like she was desperate to escape the prison of her mind by in a way, shutting it off.

  So they wandered through the markets for quite some time, Melody leading the way even though she had no idea where the heck she was going. She managed to get Alphinaud to buy her a pretty white dress, since she had spent all of her gil on the mind reader. 

  A pretty pair of danburite earrings caught Melody's eye, and she quickly walked over to the booth where they were sold. She picked the earrings up and held one in each hand, admiring them.

  Alphinaud stood right next to Melody, and it looked as though he was admiring the earrings aswell, but the simple truth is, he was admiring her.

  Sarah and Thancred hadn't even realized they walked off, for they were too busy conversing about the best way to die together. Strange if you ask me. But as it's been stated before, I'm just the narrator.

  Melody turned around and showed the earrings to Alphinaud. With a smile on her face, she asked him, "Could you buy these for me?" and her ears happily wiggled around.

"Why, of course." Alphinaud turned to do so.

  Melody burst into laughter once the earrings were paid for, and managed to say between giggles, "If I keep this up, I'm gonna make you poor, Alphinaud!" 

  Out of nowhere Sarah was back. "If making him live in poverty is your goal, I think you'll have to try a lot harder."

  Melody thought this was very funny, and started laughing even harder. "Why in the world would I want to make him live in poverty?!" 

  "Better question: why wouldn't you want to make him live in poverty?"

  When Melody had finally stopped laughing, she put the earrings on and asked the others what they thought. "Do they look pretty on me?"

  Sarah's eyes widened as she said, "Shiny," and nothing else. Alphinaud nodded agreeingly with a big smile on his face.

  Melody smiled at them, and they continued to wander through the markets. There wasn't actually all that much there that was interesting. Most of it was merchants selling basic necessities such as food, dry goods, etc. But it was fun to look at it anyhow. Though the marketplace wasn't all that big, the group proceeded relatively slowly, and by the time they'd finished, the day was quite late. So they all headed back to Sarah's house.