Thumbelina needs a home (Stormy sale)

Artur was working his way through the market and was passing by the slave auctions again, so he slowed to glance at what - or who, rather - was on offer at that moment. It was a delicate, tiny thing that at first glance he thought was a pup, but at further study was clear by her proportions and the scent wafting off her was an adult. He started to stride away dismissively - such a tiny thing wasn't useful to him, and he wasn't interested in her dirt-colored form in the way that the other young males seemed to be. But he found himself hesitating, lingering to listen to the bidding. He was wasting time sitting here when he had no intention of bidding... He gave a soft growl of frustration at his own weakness, but stalked forward to sit stiffly beside the other males. He was approaching physical maturity, so it wasn't that his body wasn't interested in that scent. But he found nothing attractive about her mud-colored body or the useless delicacy of her form. But for a moment, watching the males clustered around her, he could see his delicate little youngest sibling there despite all their physical differences, and it had brought a surge of protective fury racing through his chest. He had to wrestle the anger back under his control before he could speak up. "I offer the pelts of a snow leopard, three lynx, two fox," from among the furs left to him and his siblings when his mother had died, "a whole wild ass, butchered and smoked with pelt and mane intact and tanned," which would not take much doing, "And the skull of the bear that caused my mother's death." His voice was taut on the last. He couldn't imagine any of his siblings would object to it being gone, even if they knew it was there. "It is clean and intact, ready to wear as a helm."