The Market of Mals-Sviim

I'm pretty sure most of my posts are apologising for being bad at routines.
To be fair, I am incredibly bad at routines.
At some point, it can probably be taken as read.

Anyway, yes, the word count is intentional. So there.

At the market of Mals-Sviim, anything can be bought and sold. There are mundane goods, gold and jewels and valuables of every kind, from the gross to the exquisite. There are wonders, things seen nowhere else in the world - one might find a butterfly, that moves and breathes and lives in every way like a living insect, save only that it is made entirely of some unbreakable metal. Or a quill which, upon command, will write a story never before told, and yet true in every detail. And then, there are things which one should not be able to buy or sell at all. Memories. Faces. Strength, and cunning… Anything that any person has ever wished to possess can be found in the market.
That’s not hyperbole, either, it is a literal description. Noone is entirely sure how it works, but whenever someone wishes for a thing - however briefly - it will appear in some form in the market. Even the truly impossible can be found there, although it is never bought.
It’s too expensive, you see. Everything in the market has a price, and that price is never an easy one. In exchange for riches, a sculptor might be asked to give up his hands, or an orator his voice. In exchange for the answer to her question, a scholar might be compelled to answer honestly every question she will ever be asked, or might have to give up half the years she would have lived. The price is tailored to the individual, it is always high, and the more exotic the item, the higher that price is. Although only things which are entirely impossible are ever impossible to pay for.
Noone is sure who runs the market, any more than they know how it works. It’s not that the owners are never seen - far from it, they are everywhere, always pushing you to buy this ware or that, jostling and arguing with each other. Unfortunately, no two people ever seem to see the same owners. To one person, they might be tall, figures crafted of gleaming metal, who speak in slow, flat tones. To another, they are hunched figures entirely concealed in robes, whose voices are like the buzzing of flies. And to a third, they are people no more than two feet high, with skin every colour of the rainbow, as long as all those colours are assumed to be sickly and vaguely unpleasant.
Given the prices the market exacts for its services, one would have to be insane to visit it. Given that visiting the market is illegal in every country in the world, one would probably have to be stupid too. There is simply no good reason to go there, and everyone knows this.
Unfortunately, everyone is also very quick to forget it. The market, one must remember, sells everything. It is human nature to want things, and almost everyone has something for which they would be willing to pay any price (and several more things for which they believe that they would be willing to pay any price, until they see what the market is actually charging them - at which point, Mals-Sviim usually already has its hooks in them). And so, it is bustling at all hours of the day with people who really ought to know better - with the desperate, and the selfless, and the overwhelmingly ambitious. With everyone from wannabe kings in search of a kingdom, to parents who want to buy their children a better life.
Despite the draconian penalties for its use (for there has never been a government in history that does not wish to restrict the buying and selling of something, even if that thing is, in fact, the country itself), keeping people out of Mals-Sviim has always been a losing proposition. When someone is truly desperate for it, they will be given passage there. It’s the only thing the market ever gives away for free. And so, business continues to boom.