The Missing Oasis (Jasp)

[Tetreka]

Summer 40, AV 512
11th Bell

Cartography Shop

Tetreka was no good at living off the land or surviving the wilds - he was smart enough to bring water, weapons, and most importantly very good maps. The shop itself was an interesting structure, with no windows to be had it used imported opalgloams scattered throughout the shop to illuminate everything. Two young men and a drykas woman sat at a table in front of a chalkboard, copying a very detailed map of the region down onto sheepskin parchment - they worked with a surprising amount of patience and careful precision for slaves. Or at least Tetreka was guessing they were slaves, he'd captured the woman half dead a ways outside the city the previous winter, and sold her for a decent amount at market.

"Hey. Girl. Have you bought your freedom yet?" The girl ignored him, but one of the men at the table spoke up.

"She's tried escaping twice now. As much as her freedom costs now she could probably buy a few slaves of her own before she'd have enough Mizas to free herself." The young man had a very self-satisfied smile, and the woman did her best to ignore the both of them.

"And what of you, boy?"

"Bought my freedom last season, but decided to stick around - The work is easy even if the pay is meager, and it keeps me out of the sun. Were you here to pick up your order?" Tetreka gave a grunt to the affirmative, and the boy called out the owner "Jesq'a, that slaver is back!"

A tall Eypharian woman came sauntering out of another room, each of her hands carefully holding the corner of a large map. She seemed to be checking it for errors before handing over, and made polite confirmation in Arumenic to keep her employees from being distracted, "Tetreka! You make me feel like I have a profession that matters you know! Everyone else just wants route maps. Get me out of the burning sands they whine, lead me to Yahebah they plead. Lines. They just want lines on paper and it makes me feel like my talents are so wasted."

Tetreka smiled warmly at her, "Your maps keep them alive, every smile they manage for the rest of their lives is because of you. That sounds like no waste to me." He understood her gripe - a very specific skillset that happened to be absolutely necessary to the proliferation of businesses and the city itself, yet for all the necessity involved it was not one to be considered important. He considered himself to be in the same boat in that respect, though, a society could probably last much longer without slaves than it could with maps. She layed the map on the storefront counter for him to inspect, and grabbing a glass bauble filled with a few opalglormas he did just that.

He spoke in common, as he tended to default to when not thinking specifically about spoken language "Dunes really got kicked around after the djed storm... or are these just dump sites from cleaning up the city?" The Eypharian owner gave him a non-decisive shoulder shrug, caring only about the geography but not the causes of it. Tetreka didn't doubt the quality of the map - he was checking for symbols he didn't recognize. He was convinced he wasn't seeing anything new, and was about to roll the thing up and pay for it when something about it caught his attention. "Didn't there used to be an oasis here, out to the northwest?"

"No, oases have plants. It was a guelta - a spot in the sands so low that groundwater seeps through. You could maybe still build a well there if you find the spot, but, it was buried this spring." She seemed mildly aggravated that he switched to common, but answered the question as was professionally appropriate.

"...didn't caravans used to stop by it when they were trying to detour around bandits?" The woman shrugged her shoulders, she had never drawn out a path utilizing it, and had decided that consequently neither would anybody else. Tetreka knew better though - he'd caught the slave girl there the previous winter.

If somebody was counting on that guelta to get them the last leg of a journey to Ahnatep, they'd be sorely disappointed - and far too weak to fight back.

He considered that thought for a moment as he put ten silver-rimmed mizas on the counter as payment, rolling up the map. "Think I could get you to draw me a new map with a line out to where it used to be?" Tetreka asked the question with a warm smile, but it was met with a cold scowl.

"I am not in the business of drawing lines to places that don't exist. Get a stripe-eyes to take you." Tetreka didn't understand why she'd said it in common at first, but there spilling sunlight into the shop as she entered was a young Chaktawe girl - He tried to smile disarmingly, but mostly just looked like he was staring at a big pile of coin.