Open [Sartu Plaza] Visions of Beauty

[Tanell]

21st day of Summer, 515 AV
15th Bell of the Day


The sky was overcast, Syna's light only just fighting through the cloud cover. The echoes of the storm from the day before still clinging together, promising more rain to come if only the city tempted the storm enough. It was the summer solstice, the longest day and yet the clouds fought to keep them from recalling the event. It seemed of little use though, for only a bell ago the fantastic ship had weighed anchor in their port, the outpouring of people, goods, and services had struck the people of Lhavit with glee despite the warnings of the skies or the heat that grew with each bell.

The arrival of their visitors was worthy of celebrations, and not to be deterred from any excuse to have a party, the people had risen to the occasion and set the scene for a festival. Sartu Plaza quickly filled, food and drink brought out to the people set at tables and carts, available to all for only a small fee.

Musicians soon followed, bringing music to the gathering, soft melodies and quick beats, the music for dancing and joy, and in some places people did dance, the musicians even taking requests. Strings and flutes and drums all played for one purpose, to spread the euphoria of the event to all who visited.

Across the plaza a soft voice rose above the noise, a bard, spinning a song across the festival, his voice deep and loud, singing happy songs and drinking songs an tales of wonder, quickly joined in by any who desired. Soon a chorus of voices melded into the sounds of the party, adding a hypnotic mood to the listeners.

It was a festival like any other in the glittering city, or it was, until the foreigners joined the mix. With them they brought performances unlike those seen in the city, magicians working tricks both large and small for gatherings of people, men and woman walking among the crowds on stilts, laughing and talking well above the heads of even the tallest citizen. Crowds thinned around dancers, who leapt and swayed and spun to the music that floated about the square.

Some brought music of their own undulating to the sounds of cymbals and claps for others the tinkling of their own clothing adding music to their dance. Their costumes were extravagant, hats, bows, silk, and lace. Masks covered all or part of people's faces, a trend that spurred the Lhavitians to seek the same, and merchants from the ship appeared more than happy to supply the city with them.

Off away from the music, players began a scene, depicting tales and legends from all across the lands, some from recent ports, learning what the people of the city the visited had to share, others from their own homes or travels.

Not to be out done, the city's own performers emerged, coming out in force to join the festivities. Merchants from the ship and the city joined in to bring the party fully to life, the most popular buy of the day being Blue Vision.

It was a scene to be remembered, spilling out from the plaza across every available space. Smoke drifted up from the crowd, magnificent colors floating above the people lending a heady feeling to all who breathed it.

Quiet exchanges happened all across the plaza, these handled with secrecy, the people involved parting ways, finding new spots to enjoy the party from after. The market for drugs was high in the partying city, events like these bringing them out more than any other item.

[Alses]

A great ship had docked in Lhavit's Port Tranquil, and the city was celebrating, as it always did when a trade ship came into port. The din of it filled the wide city streets, the sounds of drums and gongs and flutes and drums and a thousand and one other instruments commingling with the voices of Lhavit's citizens. Shouts, the occasional scream, voices raised in soaring song, it all mixed and tumbled together, a charivari of noise that nonetheless managed to convey exuberance and joy without any deeper meaning.

Alses still wore her white-and-gold – she'd been down at the docks with the Master of the Port earlier, overseeing the docking of the Mischief and all the complex procedures governing customs and excise, making sure the city got its cut, and once that had been completed, she'd not wanted to waste more time than necessary at Elysium Hall, missing the celebrations.

Besides, it would be useful to be associated with something fun in Lhavit, for a change.

The drumming and the noises of Lhavit's citizens having a good time quickened her step, fine silks swirling around sensible boots, boots that could – and frequently had – tramped all around the city for bell upon bell, day upon day, with barely a hint of complaint. They were good boots, solidly practical footwear, and despite all the changes in her station and personal wealth, she'd stubbornly resisted replacing them with something less durable.

Behind her mask, a full-face burnished brass and bronze affair adorned with hourglasses and suns – one for each year of her life on Mizahar – her sensitive nose twitched as it caught the first uncurling skeins of pipe-smoke and just a hint of the more...esoteric pharmacopoeia that Lhavit afforded its citizenry, on the quiet, of course.

Alses dabbled, naturally, by a process of osmosis – because who didn't, here in the starry city? The trick, really, was to know what you were taking, how much you could take, and how to discreetly dispose of the excess before anyone noticed.

The sheer exuberant life on display in the Plaza hit her like an almost physical force as she rounded the last corner and bore down on the heaving mass of citizenry, a smile on her face and Syna singing in the vaults of her mind. There were already makeshift stalls, brightly coloured banners and awning snapping and racing in the breezes, great clouds of glittering, rainbowed smoke already rising in lazy billows.

Perfumes, colognes, pomades, herbal scrubs and the scent of lots of people crammed together on quite a warm day – to be delicate about it - duelled with the more pharmacological smells, competing in a grand melee with the new and unusual scents that drifted from the Mischief-men. A bewildering array of goods had evidently been unloaded from the capacious cargo holds of the great galleon – if galleon was the word; Alses wasn't well-versed in ships and their names, it had to be said – and they now filled the rickety, temporary stalls to bursting, reeking of far-off places and alien lands.

There were piles of powders, like spices, the beringed and bejewelled merchant-sailors hawking their wares with voices honed by the unforgiving sea and the need to bellow across a crowded deck. There was jewellery in glittering piles, watched by burly guards and avaricious merchants – those would sell well in Lhavit, where most of the citizens seemed to have a magpie's eye for glitter.

Masks, too, were everywhere – she'd seen boxes of them being unloaded, but hadn't quite appreciated how many there were, nor how varied they'd be. There were little scraps of velveteen meant to go across the eyes, hinting at concealment far more than they ever provided, right next to full-face metal masks rather akin to the one Alses herself sported, glittering with silvery filigree and intricate engravings, next to even more esoteric designs.

Idly interested, Alses wove her way through the crowds, soaking up the atmosphere, head never still as she strove to drink in the sights, the sounds, the smells – the indefinable zeitgeist of the moment that was, to her, her beloved city in a nutshell.

Ah – what was that? A familiar touch on the edge of her senses, a scraping pressure on her auristics. A sense of the sea, the curling crash of breakers and the powerful suction of an undertow – that wasn't exactly unexpected on a day like today, when sailors from foreign parts mingled freely with the more landbound Lhavitians, their walk, their dress, their mannerisms making them stand out even to non-aurists – and one that Alses was sure she'd met before.

She was seldom wrong, these days.

It was on her way, so why not explore? A twitch of her feet onto a slightly different path was all it took, strolling leisurely towards one of the many mask stalls that had sprung up and was doing a brisk trade with the curious.

Ah, and there was the source of that abrasive, churning aura - a palely-glowing Konti with butter-blonde hair, a jolt of the familiar hitting Alses as she drank her fill of the girl from a distance, the crowd washing respectfully around her. What had been her name, now...?

Alses had known her aura almost instantly, the flash and flare of curling sea-foam and glittering spume that was uniquely her, but names had always been her weak point, and, true to form, she'd forgotten the Konti's.

“Beautiful, aren't they?” she observed, instead, revelling in the little secret held in her heart, indicating the plethora of masks that were laid out on black cloth, sparkling constellations in the ersatz interstellar void.

[Tanell]

Tantalize

The plaza all but glowed with the bubbling energy of its occupants, dazzling displays left and right. It was enough to make Tanell's head spin. Or perhaps that was something else she caught on the breeze. It would be no surprise, and she was not upset by the thought as she would have been when she had first arrived in Lhavit. She was a far different woman now than she had been.

All the same she was pleased for the distractions offered by the crowd, it kept her from being overwhelmed by the press of thoughts around her. Most of what she caught was quickly lost in a wave of this or that excitement, with such excitement going on around the plaza, Tanell herself was far from interesting.

One booth in particular caught her eye, a table laden with masks of varying colors. The man behind the table was handsome, a simple black mask hinting at concealment where it lay across his eyes.

"Good Afternoon," She greeted him, a smile in her eyes as she examined his wares. The appeal of the masks was strong, the colors striking and beautiful, appealing to her vanity.

She was sifting through them, hands lingering on a particularly beautiful one, danging gold designs over a richly red base. Perhaps she would try it, surely the man had a mirror. She would have to be smart about it though, she did not want the man raising a price because she seemed attached.

She lifted a silver mask that covered her face all but her lips and the faintest curl of one cheek. Holding it up to her face, she located a mirror, eyeing herself there. It was too pale. It made the rest of her look darker by comparison.

She shook her head. She didn't want that one.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" A voice came softly from beside her, and Tanell turned to see who spoke, the gently familiar sound of her mind a surprise in the person who was a stranger to her.

Stranger, but not unfamiliar. The Councilor Radiant. Everyone knew of her, but knowing her was quite different.

"Indeed they are, Councilor." She replied, inclining her head in respect to the woman.

[Alses]

Cautious, impersonal, perhaps a little worried – ah, but what else was she to expect? Her Grace the Councillor Radiant was a million miles from the sharp-tongued and short-tempered Sela; no-one could possibly draw a parallel between the two. Not unless they’d seen the Change, or been told about it – and since Alses detested her walking corpse of a Konti form, the chances of either occurring were quite low.

With a slight sigh, Alses reached up and carefully shifted her own mask, enough to dislodge its cunning fittings and let her pull the burnished bronze-and-brass affair away without further impediment, her eyes running over the array of other masks presented for the perusal of all and sundry.

A casual glance at her current companion – whose name still escaped her – told her much. People said a lot more with their bodies than they ever expressed in words, herself included, and it was a useful extra barometer to have, especially as Alses herself wasn’t blessed with abundant reserves of tact.

A sly little smile curved up the corners of her lips as she divined a possible way forward. The girl – young woman, really, and probably older in chronological terms than Alses herself - had been eyeing a red-and-gold fantasy creation, hands lingering just a fraction of a second too long over it, before passing on and trying to seem disinterested.

She picked up a silver one, and Alses winced internally. Even with that unusual butter-blonde hair, silver on a Konti was just…

No.

To distract herself, she picked up the red-and-gold mask, turning it delicately over and over in her hands, watching the play of light on its ornamentation and the rich scarletine glow of its body. Alses held it, pensively, up to her face and turned to the mirror.

Sure enough, exactly as she’d thought, it didn’t suit her in the least. On someone with less spectacular colouring, it would have been bold and dramatic. On her, though, fire-opal skin gleaming in the sunlight and crown-of-horns burning with internal light, it faded into insignificance. She needed solid metal, glittering and gleaming and a solid block of impressive colour, or else something deeply modish and aggressively restrained.

And since Alses had a fascination and a fancy for the baroque in decoration and adornment, restraint was right out.

Which wasn’t to say that the current unsuitable mask didn’t have its uses. She turned her face this way and that for a few moments, critically inspecting herself in the mirror, and then did what was – if Alses said so herself – a credible impression of a disappointed sigh.

“It doesn’t really suit me,” she remarked. “You, on the other hand, Miss…” Alses turned and with a deft flick of her wrist proffered the mask to the Konti. “Try it, do,” she urged. “If for no other reason than to indulge an Ethaefal.”