Edgar Degas The Rehearsal

Edgar Degas The RehearsalEdgar Degas The Bellelli FamilyEdgar Degas At the Races
a very strange fabric.
Esk was completely ignorant of all this, of course, but was quite satisfied when the staff dropped out of thin air into her hand.
It felt warm.
She looked at it for some time. She felt that she ought to do something about it; it was too big, too distinctive, too inconvenient. It attracted attention. "If I'm taking you to Ankh-Morpork," she said thoughtfully, "You've got to go in disguise." A few late flickers of magic played around the staff, and then it went dark. Eventually Esk solved the immediate problem by finding a stall in the main Zemphis marketplace that sold broomsticks, buying the largest, carrying it back to her doorway, removing the handle and ramming the staff deep into the birch twigs. It didn't seem right to treat a noble object in this way, and she silently apologised to it. It made a difference, anyway. No one looked twice at a small girl carrying a broom.
She bought a spice pasty to eat while exploring (the stallholder carelessly shortchanged her, and only realised later that he had inexplicably handed over two silver pieces; also, rats mysteriously got in and ate all his stock during the night, and his grandmother was struck by lightning).