It was a Wednesday morning, and the sun was out.
In a small, tidy city near the sea, there was a market. It opened every Wednesday and Saturday.
People came to buy vegetables, bread, flowers, and cheese. They brought their bags, their children, and their dogs.
Today, someone a little unusual was also there. She wore a blue coat. Her hair was pulled back neatly. She looked calm, polite, and like someone who had never in her life carried her own shopping bag.
Her name was Maja, and she was, very quietly, a princess.
She stopped at the first flower stall. There were yellow sunflowers, white daisies, and small purple wildflowers sitting in old tin buckets.
Maja looked at them for a long time. In the palace, flowers always arrived already arranged, in tall vases, placed by someone else.
She had never bought flowers herself. She pointed at the purple wildflowers and asked for a bunch.
“Three euros,” the vendor said.
Maja hesitated. “Is that… the correct price?” she asked.
He looked at her, then at the sign, then back at her. “Yes,” he said slowly. “That is the price on the sign.”
“I only ask,” she said, “because I read that people sometimes haggle. At markets.”
“Haggle,” he repeated. “For three euros.”
“No, no. Three euros is very reasonable. Here you are.”
She gave him the money quickly and took the flowers with both hands, holding them carefully, like something precious. Because to her, they were.
She walked slowly through the rest of the market. A man was selling bread that smelled of warm butter.
A woman was selling handmade soap in the shape of small animals. Maja almost bought a soap pig, but she decided this was not the right moment. She stopped instead at a cheese stall, where a vendor held out a small piece on a toothpick.
“Try some?” he said.
She looked at it. “May I really just take it?”
“That’s what it’s there for.”
She took the cheese and ate it. Her eyes went wide. “This is extraordinary,” she said.
“It’s just cheese,” he told her.
“Yes,” she said. “But I chose it myself.” She bought a large piece. Much more than one person could eat.
She did not care. She was having a wonderful time.
At the edge of the market, there was a small café with four tables outside and a short queue at the counter.
Maja joined the queue. This was the part she had been a little nervous about. In the palace, someone always asked what she would like and then brought it.’
Here, she had to ask for herself. She had been practising in her head since Tuesday.
“What can I get you?” the barista asked.
“A coffee, please,” Maja said.
“Sure. What kind?”
A pause. “A… good kind?”
The barista kindly listed the options. Espresso, Americano, latte, flat white, cappuccino.
Maja studied the menu board for a long moment and said she would take the flat white, as she had heard of that one.
He asked if she wanted small or large. She said medium. He told her they only did small or large. She said small then, and apologised for saying medium.
“You don’t need to apologise for that,” he said.
“Right,” she said quietly to herself. “Ordinary people do not apologise for saying medium.”
She paid, took her coffee, and found the last free table outside. She put the flowers on the table. She put the cheese on her lap.
She held the coffee with both hands and looked out at the market.
A woman sat down at the next table.
She had short grey hair and paint on her fingers, and the look of someone who had been coming to this market for thirty years.
“Nice flowers,” she said.
“Thank you. I chose them myself.”
The woman smiled, a little curious. “Did you usually not?”
Maja thought about it. “Not really, no.”
“Well. They’re beautiful. Wildflowers are always more interesting than the arranged ones.”
“Yes,” Maja said softly. “I think so too.”
They sat quietly for a while. The market carried on around them.
Someone was selling old books.
A dog was stealing a bread roll. A child was asking why the sky is blue, and her father did not know the answer.
Maja drank her coffee. It was very good.
It was, in fact, the best coffee she had ever had — not because it was special coffee, but because she had ordered it herself, and she was sitting here alone, at a table in the sun, with flowers and cheese and no schedule and no one watching.
“You look happy,” the woman said.
Maja looked up, a little surprised. “Do I?”
“Yes. It’s a good look on you.”
Maja smiled — properly, for the first time all morning. “Thank you,” she said. “I think I am.”
The End, and good night