Chapter One #2
I continued my trek down the garment aisle, stopping to admire the cuts and fabrics and stitch work.
I wished I had the artistic talent to weave fabrics this beautiful, to transform them the way these artisans did, but it was just another area where I made a mess of my attempts.
My stitches were uneven. My cuts were jagged.
Do not even get me started on my attempts at needlework.
No, it was just another talent I did not possess, another source of envy.
Once I finished with the garments, I visited the paddocks again.
I remembered petting the goats when I was a child, and I wanted to feel the coarse fur under my fingers again.
There were goats there, and there were other animals as well.
The familiar Emberleigh accent washed over me, though I did not linger long.
I never could stand the smell of manure.
I did not spend a single coin as I perused stall after stall, though there were many things that drew my attention and caused my fingers to itch with desperation to spend.
On my last day here, I would take whatever coin I had left and buy myself a treat.
It would be a reminder of the market I met my spouse at if I found one.
If not, it would be the perfect pick me up before my long journey home.
I was, once again, not thinking about the weight of my pack.
At midday, I was faced with my first real decision at market.
I needed to eat. I could either venture back to camp and eat the food I’d packed from home, or I could eat at the prepared food stalls.
I knew the food on offer there would be food I’d never had the chance to experience before.
Mother and Father insisted upon packing meals and eating in the apothecary.
They did not see the point in spending coin that could be better used for practical matters on something we already had.
I could hear Mother’s voice in my head, telling me that I did not need to waste my coin, but the smells wafting through the air made my mouth salivate.
My decision was made. I would go back to camp the next day.
I would eat my evening meal at the camp, but I could taste something other than the standard fares of home I’d brought with me.
Besides, would it not be wiser to save it in case I got lost on my journey home?
With my luck and sense of direction, it was more likely than not.
I followed my nose to the food stalls. All the signs offered food that sounded so tempting, but I could not allow myself to sample every temptation.
I joined a short queue. While I waited, I watched everyone around me.
There were so many different people there, so many different voices, so many different everything.
I felt apart from them, separate. Other elves traveled in packs and groups, and I hoped that by the end of this, I would have someone at my side, too.
Oh, how I longed for that companionship.
I ordered my food and found a place to sit that gave me a good view of the crowds. As I picked at my roasted chicken, cooked in an oven from Gearwick with a strange seasoned oil, I watched everyone mill around me. Any one of them could be my future.
My eyes caught a flash of dark hair and a muscular build.
It was one of the faces from my late-night fantasies the night before, a familiar face I’d seen before on scrolls and pictures, a face with so many tales attached to it that I knew they could not all be true.
Raylen, a famed adventurer that came from Dun Steorra. My eyes followed him through the crowd.
Could it be?
No.
If the stories were to be believed, he would have no need to be at a marriage market.
He had no issues with finding someone to be with, and if he was seeking a hand in marriage, there would be a line at his door each ready to plead their case: skilled artisans, talented magicians, inventors, rogues and adventurers and scholars.
It was merely wishful thinking, a fantasy and nothing more.
The man who looked like Raylen disappeared through the crowd, and I turned my attention back to my food.
I could not allow my imagination and flights of fantasy to run away with me.
I wanted reality. I wanted to find someone and something real, and I could not do this if I was imagining a grand adventurer who was fated to be immortalized among the stars and in legend.
I finished my food, and I went back to my explorations.
I found myself among the technological booths.
I wished I could recall the name of the boy, the name of his father’s stall, anything.
Maybe his father’s stall was still there.
My parents still had theirs, after all, and it was so hard to get a spot along the main pathways.
Only the best got them, and I doubted that once someone earned one, they gave it up easily.
Unfortunately, my memory had only retained the color and shape of his eyes and the feel of his lips, hardly anything helpful.
I began peeking into the shops anyway. I admired the technological advances showcased there, the innovation the Gearwick elves prided themselves on.
Their magic was so different than the magic we had in Emberleigh, pulled from their gears and cogs and science instead of the world around them or even the stars like the elves of Dun Steorra.
It barely looked like magic, and I wondered if it really was or if it was something else.
At the end of the path was a shop with timepieces on display and a sign offering specialty items upon request. A long queue had already formed, and there were more people milling about that stall than any of the others I’d visited. My curiosity piqued, and I nudged my way inside.
There were two elves working the shop. The first had hair the color of starlight, down their back in a tangle of curls, and a sharp chin.
Their eyes were somehow sharper than their chin, and they milled around the shop with a purpose I’d never experienced.
The other elf sat at the counter, a leather-bound book beside him, as he spoke with someone at the counter.
I overheard him telling his customer about some timepiece in a deep and rumbling voice that caught my attention.
I wanted to drink in his every word.
I inched closer, pushing through the crowd, trying to hear what he was saying about the pocket watch he had on display.
His voice was beautiful, and as I got closer, I realized that he was beautiful as well.
He had dark hair, pushed back from his face and tied off with a leather cord.
The ends of his hair fell just below the collar of his tunic.
His fingers were short and thick, workman’s fingers.
I watched as those fingers traded the timepiece for coin that he slipped inside a pouch on his waist. There was something almost familiar about that pouch. It tugged at my memory, but I could not place it.
Not until he looked up.
Brown eyes, so dark they were almost black, but shining with the stars we’d once watched from the riverbank. Full, symmetrical lips that drew my eyes immediately. In an instant, I remembered the way those lips had felt against mine in my boyhood.
It was the boy from my memory. His name shoved its way to the forefront of my mind and past my lips.
“Castien?”