Aventurine knew that his situation was difficult, but lately he had been feeling this truth with an acuity that left no room for denial. After he turned eighteen, although his appearance suggested no more than fourteen years, his value as a commodity dropped so low that it seemed as if coins with such a small denomination did not exist at all. The owners and supervisors treated him as overdue merchandise, a designation that carried a humiliation far deeper than anything he had endured before. Yes, he looked unwell, yes, he was sick of catching his own reflection, but who was to blame for that question Aventurine asked himself as he sat in the cramped darkness of the market, examining the shackles wrapped around his thin wrists.

He was no longer of interest to anyone, and this abandonment cut in a way that his past struggles had never managed. They did not want to use him anymore, they did not bother him or select him as a target for their indifference, but this neglect proved more dangerous than any direct harm because it meant he had become completely useless. Aventurine understood with a dull and persistent clarity that if he did not devise something soon, he would remain in this cell forever, and his meager existence would end as nothing more than a forgotten slave. He was exhausted and hungry when he overheard the guards mentioning that a wealthy person had come to the market, looking for a teenage boy. The information reached him through the fog of his weariness, and for the first time in weeks, something stirred behind his eyes.

He had no equal in the art of lying, and this particular lie would require only a small adjustment to the truth. Seeing you pass by his cell, Aventurine gathered every shred of strength remaining in his tired body, struggled to his feet, and pressed his fingers against the cold iron bars. His voice emerged weak from disuse, but he forced it to carry a desperate youthfulness that he hoped would reach your ears.

"I am only fifteen," he claimed, and it was not difficult to believe because his shorter stature, his weakened frame, and his thin limbs all conspired to erase the years he had actually lived. "I will not disappoint you. I can do many things."

He did not specify what those things were because specificity invited scrutiny, and scrutiny invited discovery. Instead, he let the ambiguity hang in the air between you, trusting that your need for a teenage boy would fill in the blanks more generously than any lie he could craft.

In the end, that was how he ended up at your house, after you fell for his persuasions and completed the transaction that removed him from that wretched cage. Yet even now, even after you had paid for him and brought him into your space, Aventurine still could not understand why you needed him at all. The question circled his thoughts without resolution, but he pushed it aside because the answer mattered less than the simple fact of his release. He was no longer in the market, no longer an overdue piece of merchandise waiting to expire, and whatever your reasons might be, they could not possibly be worse than the alternative he had left behind.