[open] you bought a star in the sky tonight/ because your life is dark and it needs some light

[apotropaic]

Who: Open log. EVERYONE GET IN HERE.
What: Cockatrice Crafts --Baedal's brand new craft fair/market!
Where: Howl Barrow.
When: Sukkardi 12th of Ceidary.
Notes: This is an open post for everybody since we have so many new people joining. There'll be a sub sections in the post itself for general areas but other than that, feel free to mash you characters together like Barbies!
Warnings: None yet.

Baedal is a city that never sleeps, but everyone likes a long-lie in on a Sukkardi morning. At eleven o’clock, the Howl Barrow is climbing to a weekend buzz but it’s not quite there yet. But right off Carnelian Street, Cockatrice Markets is already has its doors open –and bubbles are floating down the street in welcome!

The Market is housed in what once would have been a small, high ceilinged factory building, but the inside and outside has now been painted all manner of colours and murals by local artistic residents. There are tables inside the airy structure, as well as in the outside alleyway, and a large mosaic chandelier dangles outside the entranceway.

It’s free entrance, fun, and like most places in Howl Barrow, friendly and inviting.

Comments

Misc.

[apotropaic]

Anything else that isn't covered!

the last stall in the market; open

[agrat]

Lea in a crowd tends to induce two reactions:

People step aside to let her through, which has to do with her expression, and the fact that she is perfectly willing to shoulder someone who thinks that because she's small and in a dress and a young woman she'll defer. It isn't something she thinks about actively; she just tends to assume right away because she's accustomed to taking it.

...in a sundress that short and that low-cut, people look. It doesn't bother her--they're meant to--but looking is as far as it ever goes. She meanders down the path of the market, seemingly idle, but she knows where she's going. She rolls a lollipop through her fingers, the big cherry-red round-headed blow-pop kind a lot of Earth-born Westerners in her era remember from their childhood, and pops it into her mouth, pressing the side against her cheek while she examines some wares as she passes by. There is a lot to consider here, for a new market.

At the end of the market, there's a shabby little stall manned by one individual, a pale-faced older gent with not much expression, watery gray eyes, and an enormous handlebar moustache. She smiles at him. It's friendly. Toward the front, his shop is full of dried flowers, bits of curious Baedal-only insects trapped under glass, and an array of gleaming, curved daggers with intricately carved handles. The entire stall has a slightly ominous aura to it: Lea doesn't believe in 'dark magic', all magic is just magic to her, but for people who do, well, they'd probably say this place exudes it.

Lea presses her hip against the side of the booth, leaning forward to examine one of the athames--she doesn't need another right now, but it's something to keep in mind. Her current one is tucked into her boot. An athame is not to fight with, though she might kill with one; it's for ritual purposes, not combat. Toward the back, she catches sight of something hidden under a dusty, velvet curtain, and arches her eyebrows at the man.

"I want that," she says. (She already knows what it is.)

"Twenty-five shekels." He has an ambiguous accent, like a lot of different things all mashed together. She chuffs out a noise kind of like a laugh at a price that ambitious.

They haggle for a minute, and finally, after she leans forward with a sharp gleam to her eyes and says something sweetly in Neo-Aramaic, he surrenders her purchase to her.

It is a live scorpion in a sizable glass jar, which is filled with ambery, salt-watery liquid (apparently Baedal scorpions of this breed are somehow amphibious, a question of physiology she will investigate later); the creature is roughly as long as Lea's forearm. She looks pleased. The thing also emanates magical power with a dull, sucking sort of throb, like a heartbeat. It is not necessarily evil-feeling, it's just an animal, but it's definitely not any kind of normal animal.

[gramarye]

Wolfgang arrived with someone else, a wealthy older (older, but not by much; Wolfgang sometimes forgets how old he is) man who got lost amidst a fabric stall full of swatches made from things like music notes and southern breezes. "I can make you that," Wolfgang had said, looking at the price tags; "Yes, but buying it is more fun" -- conspicuous consumption being out of his realm of experience, he had edged away and wandered off on his own eventually, bored.

After this, it's antiquing -- he has been promised furniture -- but he is already feeling fatigued, and it shows in the kind of battle-weary look on his face. Wolfgang likes clothes, that much is obvious just by anyone looking at him ever, but his energy is beginning to flag in the face of his friend's unending enthusiasm for buying stuff he doesn't need. What he would really like is to take a nap, but instead he forces himself to get something to eat and keep moving to stay awake.

When he sees someone he recognises he has to pause briefly to consider whether he wants to hide somewhere or if he's up to being social. He thinks so, certainly this is the most rested he ever is, ever, but there's some hesitation here because the last time he saw her --

Well, it was weird. He wonders if this is awkward or if that's just him. Either way, he smiles. "Lea, hi."

His eyes drift to the jar she's carrying and his eyebrows go way up. It is safe to say he's appropriately alarmed.

[agrat]

It isn't that Lea is immune to awkward, but it doesn't often show in her presentation. She turns to greet Wolfgang with a broad smile of her own, head tipped to the side as she looks up (way up, even in her shoes) at him. "Hi, yourself."

When she notices his attention has listed to her newfound companion, she lifts the jar a touch and eyes her scorpion friend.

"Oh, um--magic supplies," she explains. "At home the only place we could get anything like this would be back in Kurdistan, and I couldn't even get there before we closed the airports, for obvious reasons. ...he's kind of fuck ugly, isn't he? Poor thing, it almost goes all the way back around to cute."

[gramarye]

"Ah," he says, still eyeing it as if it is a giant probably venomous amphibious scorpion. Which it is. Wolfgang likes animals, and not just the cute ones either, but that is pushing it. "Ah — that's right, you'd mentioned you were Kurdish, I think. You've never been?" Her accent is awfully French — or, well, French-Canadian, honestly he can't tell the difference, but he can't tell the difference between American accents either.

[agrat]

"I think we were when I was very little...I don't really remember it, though, my parents were refugees." First of politics, and then of their own families, but that strikes her as more than she ought to divulge so readily--not due to her own discomfort or reticience on the topic, but because it is tricky subject matter. She adds, "From Eastern Turkey and Iraq," as that may complete the picture she's painting of their circumstances. "Iraq supposedly got better, after the late 80s. Turkey didn't."

Now, in her own reality, of course, she has no idea. The apocalypse has rendered most of their governments obsolete. She's wondered on multiple occasions what it must be like to be in a Kurdistan with a chance, and it's really depressing to think that maybe the fucking end of the world was their best shot at taking back their own country.

Lea glances down the market, and then back at Wolfgang. She tips her head to the side. "Want to walk around with me?"

[gramarye]

"I've never been very far east —" He pauses, inclines his head as in, yeah, for rather obvious reasons he was heading north, not further east. "— but even in western Turkey, mm... yeah. I remember it being pretty bad." He is slightly unusual in that he paid attention at all; most people will ignore it if they can. He had another conversation with someone here about Turkish nationalism, but that was different, explaining it to an outsider — not that he and Lea are the same, but it is a pleasant change of pace to speak to someone whose viewpoint isn't so focused on the West. After a while, he gets tired of trying to dance around certain delicate topics that would take hours to do any justice in trying to explain.

He nods, and if his smile is tired, it's only because he is always tired. "Sure." He's up for aimless wandering around; moving keeps him from fidgeting in ways that become increasingly painful to watch.

[agrat]

"My mother used to tell me stories." Not exactly bedtime stories, judging by her tone of voice. Lea sets off in the direction of some food stalls, though she's pretty idle about it, and the pace is anything but brisk. She carries her little friend like he weighs nothing, but given her abilities, maybe she's making him that way.

"You know a little bit of Arabic, too, then, right? --or is that not common?" Israel isn't something many Kurds actively support much, though there are some Kurdish Jews there, she knows. Still, it seems to her that with two societies in such close quarters, there must be a little language mixing on both sides.

[gramarye]

"It's not really very common for Jews to speak Arabic, no," he says, switching immediately, and the difference is clear; he's much quicker and more precise in his word choice. He's actually quite good at it, much better than English, although it's hard to tell with that given how the city helps him out there. He still gestures broadly, a habit he's gotten into since picking up ASL. "We can take it as a second language in high school but it's optional, not like English. But I had... but my friends were from Palestine and it was easier for me to learn Arabic than for them to learn Hebrew. So."

By 'easier' he does mean 'possible in a timely manner,' in that he did cheat with magic. He was five and he wanted to communicate with his friend, it was at least harmless.

HEY GUESS WHAT I'M ALIVE :C

[agrat]

She brightens, briefly, at the opportunity to switch languages--as she assumes with him that Hebrew is his first choice, like Kurdish is hers, Arabic is a lot easier. It flows faster, because what Lea needed was to talk faster, really. When she gestures, loosely, it's with her scorpion container in hand, and people around attempt to give her hand a wide berth.

"We just learned whatever we could from home. My neo-Aramaic isn't very good, but there aren't a lot of people to practice that with." Though she could probably find at least one person, somewhere in Baedal. "It's similar, isn't it? Kurdistan and Palestine. Although the government here isn't really perfect, either."

She phrases it more carefully than she's said other things, just because even in a different language--you never know who's listening.

a fabric stall; open

[buildindreemz]

They didn't exactly have much to move in with, so it didn't take long to get everything settled into the nice little 3-bedroom flat in Howl Barrow they'd chosen.

Of course, they now have an empty bedroom, and no third roommate to help them with rent, but that's an issue they'll deal with later.

For now, Ariadne is exploring the neighborhood, and of course she can't resist a craft fair. She might not have the money to buy anything right now, but that doesn't stop her from gravitating to any stall that looks like it might be selling scarves.

She didn't bring many scarves with her to Baedal. She's going to need a good supplier.