[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

Owens Stall

[amasveritas]

On time and set up, Sally's expectations of today are basically-- whatever happens happens. As it stands, and the slow trickle of a crowd begins to build, the stall she's set up for herself and her sister do not seem to be doing too badly. They fit right in with the products on display, neither the most boring in the space, nor the most elaborate, but she has two deadly weapons in the form of cute children who seem rather happy to engage and hawk the products set up on the table blanketed in a cool green cloth.

On her end, the theme seems to be organic beauty and healthcare products; corked bottles of home made shampoos and conditioners, rustic slabs of soap in the expected colours of clear ambers through to milky blues and greens, lavender and rose and jasmine visibly embedded as texture, hand creams and face creams in jars of different sizes, brightly coloured bath bombs, body scrubs, shaving creams, some candles of various sizes and scents for frivolity-- almost anything that can be made by one woman over the course of however long she has been here. They seem relatively mundane and innocuous, until the ingredients menu on display (to prevent people running into stuff they're allergic to) tosses in a few unexpected components, and outlines purposes that go beyond hygiene and guiltless organic purchases. Emotionally therapeutic things, confidence enhancers, glamour touches, and all listed so pragmatically that it doesn't come across as especially new age and dippy.

Sally is a bit like this as well, herself. She handles cash with the skill of someone who does, even with the disarming change of Baedal currency. Her hair is braided back with flower-clips, and an off-shoulder sweater is cinched around her waist with a braided belt over skinny jeans. She keeps one eye on her daughters, and has a bright smile for those that come by, ask questions, take things home.

At the other end of their shared stall, Gilly has set out a selection of dyed cloth bags tied tightly with pale gold ribbon; in front of them, she's placed a placard with the key for the color code, handwritten with flair in thick black marker. Remedies, luck charms, little bags of mischief and other miniature examples of the kind of work she's willing to do on a larger scale from the comfort of the Owens' kitchen - it's sort of like sample advertising, except none of the samples are free, not even the tiny witch figurines that she found in a second-hand store for cheap and repainted, crafting tiny cauldrons that accommodate a reasonably sized incense cone.

Those, she's not selling, but with a smile and a sale she'll point interested parties a couple stalls down to where a new friend of hers is.

[thebestwitch]

Gaaaasp! Shampoo!

It's the little things in life, the sort everyone just takes for granted, that you miss when they're suddenly absent. Toiletries are one of those things for Emma, and though she's certainly had access to them since her arrival in Baedal, she hasn't actually gone shopping for them. Oh my gosh, they have different scents. This is the best morning.

Emma picks up one of the bottles, popping out the cork to inhale its aroma. Then she promptly hugs it to her chest, closing her eyes and enjoying the rapture of the moment. "Oh, conditioner. How I've missed you." She could learn to love this city.

[amasveritas]

Sally is half bent beneath her stall to take a few more items out of the boxes she has stashed there, never letting too much empty space go untended for very long for all that she is careful to make it clear that her stuff is, indeed, selling. But the time she's straightened back up, she sees Emma, eyebrows rising and a smile flashing on automatic. "Guilty pleasure, huh?" she inquires, standing so as to readjust the items on display, making room, turning labels around.

[thebestwitch]

"I haven't had conditioner since I ran out of the little bottles I looted from hotels," Emma admits without really thinking about how that sounds without the proper context. She sets the bottle back down on the table, replacing the stopper before offering a smile of her own. "Do you have anything that smells like limes?"

[amasveritas]

That little detail gets a quick grin, a head tip. Welp. Sally stops her fussing so as to pick her hands over the tops of some tall bottles made of heavy glass, deliberately a little rustic, before she finds what she's looking for. "Citrus and chamomile shampoo with lime," she declares, reading off her own handmade label. "Also good if you're, you know, planning to meditate or do any spellwork the next day. Which--"

A shrug. "Added niche bonus?" Not everyone is witches. "It smells pretty."

[redheadpepper]

Pepper isn't here to shop so much as to just get out and about - she's been in Baedal for several days, possibly has a job lined up, and frankly, she can't just sit around at the inn and mope.

It's time to network.

She has very little money at the moment, and what she has is being meticulously saved and budgeted (even at home, Pepper has always been like that - her tastes run to the expensive, but not extravagant, and she always practices financial responsibility), but the homemade, organic beauty products catch her eye.

This is exactly the sort of thing Pepper likes - simple, natural - magical?

Well, either way.

[amasveritas]

"Hi," would be Sally, when Pepper nears. She's just finished passing a few jars filled with deliciously scented goop of some kind, counting out the Baedal money given in return with the careful practice of someone still getting the hang of the new currency. It's a good way, too, to make sure people don't just drift past - forcible greeting is a nice, subtle, polite hook to have them lingering a moment longer.

She misses having a storefront. "I think I saw you on the network not so long ago." Hello, cohort friend.

[redheadpepper]

Pepper offers the other woman a little smile, the vague sort of smile that one gives when one is introduced to a new person but kind of distracted by other things.

She's inspecting some soap, but gives the woman another look when she mentions the network. "Ah, yeah. I'm a new arrival. My name is Pepper. Pepper Potts."

[amasveritas]

"Sally Owens. Sorry about the kidnapping city."

She isn't being flippant; she actually sounds pretty sincere, if a little blunt about it. It wasn't so long ago that she was taken here, after all, and on the shortlist of 'most frazzled about it', if there is one. "Looking for anything in particular?" she asks, in that loose sort of tone that implies she's fine with letting Peppers do what Peppers do and browse, but maybe also she can help!

At that point, Antonia comes back from wherever she'd been exploring, jumping the last foot to stand next to Sally. The little girl makes a mock grab for the money her mom is counting, Sally hiding it behind her back in almost absent-minded play response.

[redheadpepper]

Pepper watches the small child with the bemusement of someone who... really doesn't have much interaction with children.

The last time she really talked to a child, was probably when she still qualified as one, to be perfectly honest.

Still, she gives Sally a faint smile. "Do you have any moisturizers that are particularly good for sensitive skin?" she asks pleasantly. "It's always been kind of tough for me to find products that don't end up with my face covered in a rash."

[thenormalsquint]

Aside from trinkets, Angela's apartment is filled to the bring with all types of scented toiletries and cosmetics and she knows fairs are notorious for having all these things on display just begging her to throw her hard earned shekels for them.

And this is why she stops a Sally's booth, poking and prodding at the tiny bottles, vials, and jars, until finding one that piques her interest. Angela doesn't hesitate to pick it up and check it out after nodding a hello to Sally. "Confidence booster," she chuckles, turning the jar of face cream around in her hands. "What happens if somebody who has enough confidence already uses this?"

[amasveritas]

Sally is on her feet, currently adjusting some price tags that have been shuffled aside over the course of other people's browsing, tipping things to check their labels before situating them accordingly. She glances up when Angela speaks, offering an automatic smile, before looking at the jar the woman has in her hands. She gives a laugh, head tipping.

"Well, then you're gonna be radiant and probably bug your friends," she says, lightly, hands up to hover as if to make sure she's done fussing, before sitting back down. "But come on, even the confident ones need a little pick me up somedays, right?"

[thenormalsquint]

"True, but when you're that radiant, who needs friends? They'll all be haters anyway," Angela jokes as she puts the cream back on the table. She has enough confidence and even on days she feels down, there's enough extra confidence in her metaphorical backpack to fuel her some more.

Absentmindedly scratching at a rough dry spot on the inside of her left elbow, Angela goes back to glancing over Sally's items. "Do you have anything for eczema, by the way? Preferably an instant cure?" It's one of her lesser known issues, along with her ragweed allergy and another more genetic condition she won't find out about for a few years more, but it's also the most visible one, creeping up on her skin in times of stress. And how Baedal is stressful.

[amasveritas]

"Oh-- one sec."

And Sally disappears behind the table, a shuffling as she drags a box out from beneath and starts carefully going through it. Finally-- "Ah ha. It's actually a little more general, but I've heard good feedback about it treating eczema." She comes back up with a small jar of cream, vaguely mint green. She twists off the lid to offer it out to smell, living up to its colour as well as the more floral scent that is denoted by the pressed pink flower on the surface. "It has an extract of horehound, nettle and tabebuia, that first one holding the, uh."

It's weird, actually, to talk frankly about magic to people who are not Gillian or her aunts. She never did much before, even when she ran a store that had its fair share of magical little touches. "The healing properties before it got mixed in there. It should clear it up pretty fast. Apply it after a warm shower -- you shouldn't need a lot of it."

[inkdamage]

Slipping away from Bellatrix (perhaps leaving her with Ilde, perhaps she's just occupied elsewhere), Severus makes a stop he avoided the first time down the isle. The mother is busy, but no doubt will notice him eventually; Severus thinks Sally has the eyes of a witch who'll see right through him, or who'll think she does.

Gillian, however.

He has no idea what Gillian sees when she looks at him, and after (getting that box) returning her hat, he's become curious.

About her magic.

(Sure.)

The top edges of his fingertips barely touch gold ribbon, eying the display. He doesn't really look at her.

"Sell something to me."

[attentionseeking]

For this, she takes her sunglasses off - smiling, even if he isn't quite looking at her.

“Well,” she says, turning them over in her hands, “the thing about that is that I don't really sell anything to anybody. Not really. See, when people come to me - when they really come to me - it's not about what they want. Wanting is easy. Wanting changes all the time. People come to me - us - for what they need, 'cos otherwise they wouldn't be around. You know?”

All of which is actually a terrifying concept, unpacked far enough; or not very far at all, in some cases. And presumably Sally is totally loving this little spiel coming out at the least trustworthy and most male person to stop by their stall so far.

“I'm not going to sell you a thing. But...” Her fingers travel speculatively over her own display (bags, not her dress) until she settles on deep purple (which the placard declares is a talisman stone that will absorb stress and, under the right circumstances, release it into someone else) and sets it out. “I think you're going to buy this one first.”

--also an alarming assessment.

[inkdamage]

He flicks his gaze up, then.

"If I wasn't so on edge all the time I'd be dead."

He could have said I'd be terrible at my job, sure, but that might lend itself to explaining what at all he does; no, that's not acceptable. Might as well have something akin to the truth up front, even if all his truths are genuinely awful.

[attentionseeking]

Undeterred, Gilly moves her hand - a single dose of a tonic for wakefulness, dangerous in large quantities due to being so effective by borrowing against the body's own energy. (In other words, sustained use without breaks is potentially fatal; magic like hers tends to rely on the practicality of its user.)

“Or is third time going to be the charm, huh?”