1001 Lhavitian Nights (Night One - Solo)

[Alses]

Timestamp: 87th Day of Summer Night was, in Alses' very definite and considered opinion, a time to be sleeping. A time for resting. Unfortunately, her body didn't always agree with this eminently sensible state of affairs, occasionally resulting in a restless and decidedly irritated Konti wandering aimlessly through the halls of the Respite, a state of affairs that, when it occurred, Tahala Chinsta was always quick to capitalise on, as a woman with a keen eye for the main chance. This time, it was that most despised of chores: cleaning. More specifically, cleaning up other people's messes, something that she had very little patience with. 'Now, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of clutter,' she thought viciously, roughly pushing a stiff-bristled broom along a dimly-lit corridor, remembering her rooms back in Zeltiva, comfortably littered with books in an elaborate, organized system and the walls plastered with reams of paper covered in meticulous notes '-but when it spills out into the corridors, enough is enough!' Various pieces of paper, ones that had been carelessly dropped or slipped under doorframes when the weight of other detritus in the student room beyond grew too great, mounded up in front of her broom, along with the general dust and dirt that was expected from any building where large numbers of people moved in and out on a daily basis. Generally after Alses had been roped into cleaning, the next day several of the untidier students would be bemoaning the loss of a vital page or two of their notes, since rather than give any paper a quick scan-over and then turn it into the reception desk, she kept them, read them, copied interesting bits out and then destroyed them, in the (so far) vain hope that it would encourage tidiness and cut down on cleaning time. 'Perhaps I should post a rota somewhere' she mused idly, turning a corner and brushing the dirt back outside, where it belonged. 'Maybe then people will start taking notice when I do the cleaning and there won't be so much of it.' Half a corridor done, the dirt pushed back outside and a small pile of scribbled-on parchments waiting for her attention, another half to go. “Why they can't invest in...in Animation, say, for this sort of thing I don't know,” she grumbled, venting her spleen at untidy people in general and the restless sleeplessness that had landed her the chore with the broom. It looked as chastened as an inanimate object could, clasped between two ice-white hands that were tightened, vice-like, around its unassuming handle. “It's not exactly a skilled job, sweeping. When I have my mastery, this sort of drudgery will not be allowed!” Some might have found the rhythmic swish of stiff bristles on polished skyglass soothing; to Alses it was a source of intense irritation. It was just so pointless, a thankless and backbreaking task that never ended, a sink of time that could far better be used elsewhere. Water rushed over the skyglass, annoyance giving further strength to Alses' scrubbing, working away at the sticky patches left from the careless spill of a drink, getting rid of any lingering traces of dust and dirt until the skyglass shone through clear and bright, right up to the doors which led out into the rest of Lhavit, a task which left her over-hot and breathing heavily, her hands beginning to crack from the harsh cleaning mixture and the novelty of physical labour. 'At least the Commons hasn't been dumped on me,' she thought, valiantly trying to see the silver lining. Cleaning up the mess left by over-enthusiastic diners who were eating, studying and talking to friends – often all three at the same time – was not a task for the faint of heart or stomach. A convulsive shudder wracked her frame, her stomach clenched at the thought and she attacked the stains with renewed vigour. Cool night breezes, oddly inviting to an Ethaefal who normally shunned the night and clung stubbornly, in defiance of Lhavitian culture, to the daylight hours, swirled in, serene and calming. Insects chirruped and whirred in the undergrowth and a gibbous moon loomed in the night sky; she cast the inviting expanse of greenery and the silver-sea glow of Lhavit beyond a longing look. 'Cleaning, Alses,' she reminded herself, breaking out the cloths everyone used to buff the skyglass to a high shine and starting to polish, mouth set in a grim line.

[Alses]

No. No. Really, it was absolutely no use cleaning. She'd done enough of that chore for an evening (or a lifetime, if she had her way), thank you very much. Through the open doors, the siren song of Lhavit at night called, the garden cool and inviting. It had come on a long way since she'd first started to tackle it, and though she still didn't know the names of the tools, she was at least becoming more proficient in her own specialised use of them. After a few false starts, she'd found that the fan of metal spokes at the end of a long wooden rod was, aside from its sterling service as a billhook, excellent at keeping the paths tidy; whimsy and some careful observation of the other gardens in Lhavit had led her to attempt sweeping scallop-shapes with the pebbles, waves of stones in pleasing, nonsensical patterns. The susurrus of pebble on pebble and the gentle way the sculpted waves blended with the greater curves was somehow soothing, a balm to the soul. Her simple designs weren't a patch on the complex regressions seen elsewhere in Lhavit, but making them was a peaceful enough activity and agreeably unlike work. Increasingly, after a hard day of mental toil in the dusty confines of the Dusk Tower's library – or under the strict and yet cryptic instruction of a member of that family – she found herself gravitating to the garden, head still swimming with swirling maelstroms of colour and light, feather-light phantom touches on her skin, sounds with no source but that of magic, her eyes aching from straining to see the webworks and regressional patterns that her instructors seemed to effortlessly visualise. There was something about the cool peace of the greenery, the mindless labour of care, that cleansed her mind of most of the thoughts that usually squirrelcaged around inside it, leaving only the litany of actions as she shovelled and raked and dug over, tied up, pruned, deadheaded and snipped until the waning light of the sun sent her indoors to the baths and her bed. Even with the gentle glow of the skyglass and the moon and stars overhead, and despite the shimmering, eerie bioluminescence of the plant life, the gardens were relatively dark – fortunately, Alses was ahead of the game there. As an aurist, everything constantly glowed in subtle colours, almost subliminal until she brought her powers into active play and focused on the Sight. Regardless of how inconvenient her sleeplessness was, the lateness of the hour did have some advantages – there was an experiment she'd been meaning to try, and kept putting off, since it involved staying awake past the dusk and was therefore not something she was over-eager to attempt. Fired by this cheering thought – killing two birds with one stone, to borrow a Zeltivan expression - she laid the broom carefully back in its discreet little cupboard and then vanished back to her rather spartan room. It wasn't a cell by any means, but there wasn't much decoration, either. Still, that did mean there was more room for paper and books, a fact that Alses took enthusiastic advantage of, weaving easily (by dint of long practice) through the piles to her desk, sparing the bed not a glance. Tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrated furiously, Alses wrote, occasionally consulting her notes and diagrams (courtesy of the Dusk Tower's library) as she inked careful curves and sinuous waves onto her forearms, temples – with the aid of the mirror – and palms, priming each glyph with djed that rolled down her quill, gently coaxing the magic into the serpentine lengths of ink until each blazed with strengthening, clarifying, stabilising magic, making the marks by her temples into focal points for the djed, each one a locus that would direct and amplify it. The task left her more drained than she'd have liked, and she'd made mistakes that had had to be laboriously corrected time and again, but the returns were generally well worth the extra effort. Last time, inking her eyes hadn't worked, but with the benefit of the Dusk Tower's library on the subject, she'd been able to work out some alternatives. One of the books had suggested the temples as an excellent location, and another, more advanced tome had asserted that the actual location didn't matter, since the majority of the djed expended was used internally, for mental synchronisation, rather than actual visualisation. 'Always assuming,' Alses thought sourly, remembering the pretty little quatrains she'd struggled with time and again '-that I've interpreted the blasted book correctly. Time to experiment, see which theory's the right one.' Given that there was always the possibility of being wrong – much though she hated to admit it, even to herself, she'd taken precautions. One of these was waiting until night-time; while Lhavit never truly slept, at night the Respite, at least, was quieter than usual, given that a lot of training and instruction was given under Leth's contemplative light, meaning that there were far fewer students around, fewer auras to confuse and muddy things, and fewer people to disturb her. She padded, ghostlike, along the drowsing corridors and slipped out onto the cool, raked pebbles that made up the paths, relishing the rounded smoothness and the gentle coolness as they shifted minutely under her bare feet. It was looking rather more like a maintained garden than a hack-and-slash butcher's job now – there was still much more to do, of course, but the dark cloak of night and the obfuscating glow of the bioluminescent foliage hid the more egregious gaps and softened the harsh edges of aggressively-pruned plants and shrubs. Some careful 'thinning' – another technique imparted by the kindnesses of Martin the Gardener at the Dusk Tower – of the rather overgrown plants elsewhere in the garden had given her quite a nice stock from which to repopulate the areas denuded of their once abundant cover of dwarf primroses run wild, and so now small keokina plants lined the flowerbeds, nodding in the night breezes and filling the gardens with their distinctive scent, heavy with the sweet promises of summer. The autumn was rolling in; the days had been getting shorter, there was the faint nip in the air that heralded the turn of the season and Alses sensed the change drawing near. It wasn't anything physical, a sense that she could quantify, rather a deep knowing in her very bones, something that resonated with her soul, still attuned to Syna and changing with the wax and wane of her influence on the world. Regardless, the keokina plants would remind her of the brightness of summer, at least until the last of their scent faded. A few dwarf primroses had been brought back – but carefully confined in pots this time rather than allowed to tumble free down the terraces. Alses walked, slowly, along the paths, fingers trailing in foliage and soil alike, drinking in the alien appearance of everything, leeched of daytime colour and brightness but silvered in recompense by the moon, familiarising herself with the area anew. The more information she already possessed about her experimental area before she began, the better. Seated on a low wall – of which the Respite's landscaping made a great deal of use – Alses breathed, deep and steady. The whole process of focusing in on the auras which danced and flickered on the edge of her sight was slowly becoming easier, less intensive, less draining – less fragile, too, her focus not bursting like a soap bubble the instant she moved. Then, too, that was always easier in her mortal seeming, her mind more anchored in the present, the here-and-now life, rather than drifting in the middle of a webwork of past recollections, past lives, past events. Focus was simply better as a Konti, even after six years. Still, there was time. There would always be time – Alses fought away the wave of sadness which accompanied that thought; her eyes prickled and she blinked rapidly, forcefully shunting her thoughts away and back to the task at hand. It wasn't particularly successful – the thought had triggered a yawning sense of eternity inside her, an endless progression of empty years that filled her head like smoke. Almost everyone she met – Martin the gardener, her acquaintances in Zeltiva, the apprentices and merchants of the Azure Market, Tahala Chinsta – eventually they would grow old, slow down and finally die, passing into the great cycle of reincarnation whilst she would go on, endlessly youthful and eternal, until the very sun guttered and went out (if that was even possible) – always provided, of course, her life didn't come to a violent end before then. How did humans manage? They were always dying, their lifespans measured in decades! For that matter, how did everybody else cope? She was aware that, all appearances aside, she hadn't dealt with the death of Tathis Arenn – just pushed all the memories, the sights and sounds and smells – Syna above, the smells – of that messy, foul event as far down inside herself as she could, keeping it all at bay with new experiences, travel, laughter, study and above all, the comforting warmth of sunlight. That was the real reason she shunned the night, all the dark terrors which waited for those unguarded moments in the overlooked corners of the psyche. A deep breath, filling her lungs to capacity, then slowly let out, trying the expunge the darker memories with the air. There was wetness on her cheeks and tickling her gills, but no rain, no fountain or waterfall nearby to account for it. 'Focus,' she urged herself fiercely, forcing herself not to dwell on matters long past, subconsciously rocking herself back and forth. 'Breathe. I shall not grieve. Sorrow is the soul-killer. Sorrow is the little death that saps all joys. I shall surmount my sorrows, let them pass over and through me, and when my grief is buried I shall drown it further in delight. When the sorrows have gone, in their place there will be nothing. Only I will remain.'

[Alses]

The litany was just that – a continual flow of words that meant she didn't have to think beyond them, a rippling flow that forced her unwelcome thoughts down, but in this instance, it wasn't working. Memories of perfect bliss and contentment in the Ukalas, the long, long fall from the divine to the mundane the shredded tatters of the music of the spheres...then the laughter of Tathis Arenn at her first successful magic and wide-eyed wonder, his deep voice full of infinite patience as she struggled to learn Common, his callused and warm hands on her shoulders, calming and steady as she took her first baby steps in Auristics...the sight of his mangled body, great chunks carved out of it with careless abandon as though some great beast had bitten and worried at him, and the smell, the metallic stench of blood mixed with faeces and urine where the haywire Voiding portals had burst through his intestines... With an inarticulate, strangled sound halfway between a snarl and a sob, she pushed herself roughly away from the wall, heedless of the damage such cavalier treatment would do to her painstakingly-glyphed palms, and stalked across the garden to the terraces which overlooked Lhavit and the rest of the Misty Peaks. She clung, fiercely, to the hope that the view of the cloud sea below would be enough to purge her head of the black thoughts which filled it, all the dark detritus of her compound soul which rose up without the light to drive them back into the shadows. This time, at least, blessed Lhavit did not disappoint. Even though she'd lived in Lhavit for years, the city of the stars could still effortlessly steal her breath with an unexpected, unasked-for glimpse of perfection, the sheer splendour of the view sprawled out before her. In other cities, in her erstwhile home of Zeltiva, for example, the harsh reds and oranges of messily-burning cressets and torches threw up such a haze of light pollution that the stars retreated from the onslaught. Then, too, Zeltiva had nestled in a valley between mountains, the perfect trap for fat clouds pregnant with rain, and so the city's lights had often reflected off the louring cumulus, further obscuring the starscape. To her sensitive eyes, the torches had always thrown the streets into harsh relief, a confusing cat's cradle of brilliant light and pitch darkness, disorienting and confusing, resulting in headaches and irritability for days afterwards. Lhavit, however, had no need of flaring, spitting torches that snarled and belched black smoke at the first touch of rain – the very substance of the city glowed softly, serenely, merging and fading seamlessly into the light from the benevolent moon and the truly spectacular starfield the city was blessed with. The moonlight caressed the cloud-banks far below and set the wispy billows all aglow with a subtle array of shifting colours, a beautiful counterpoint to the dark peaks which reared up, suddenly, through the gentle waves of cloud. “It's beautiful,” she breathed, completely unaware she was speaking aloud, and even had she been aware, she wouldn't have cared. All unbidden, the words from the Midsummer Festival drifted to the forefront of her mind: 'Though it seems a fearsome foe, the darkness of night grants a trillion suns.' When she'd first heard that, it had seemed trite and self-serving, the standard sort of fortune-telling drivel, but on reflection, there was perhaps a grain of truth to it, an echo of Syna's bright grace and energy in every twinkling pinpoint of light, and in the silvery orb of the moon, high overhead. That was...comforting, Alses allowed. Unexpectedly so, in fact. She looked up, contemplative, at the gibbous orb of the moon, glowing serene and white overhead. Perhaps a trip to the Moon Temple was in order; not now, of course, not when they would be busy with supplicants and worshippers, but at some other time when she could watch and listen, observe unobtrusively, and perhaps find more of that elusive echo in Leth's holy place. There would be no sleep tonight, not with her soul so raw. People, that was what she needed, to take her mind off things – her aversion to being seen as anything other than a Synaborn Ethaefal notwithstanding – and there was one place in Lhavit that was always busy, come rain or shine, day or night.

[Alses]

The Azure Market was, as ever, thronged with busy life, the plants all aglow with a cobalt light which reflected and intensified the blueness of the buildings all around. Sumptuous fabrics were artfully arranged on wooden mannequins, showing off the cut and shimmer of the material to best effect – Alses' own personal green-eyed monster reared up as she greedily drank in the fine silks on display; the feel of silk on her skin, feather-light and wonderfully liquid, that was something she longed to recapture. Ornate braziers hung on brassy chains strung between shop canopies, spilling thick smoke and exotic scents as spice merchants, incense-men and philterers of all shades of legality hawked their wares, and food of all sorts sizzled and sputtered in enormous iron pots and pans. Banners and canopies waved and flapped in the battling waves of hot air rising from the various shops and the tide of citizens who browsed from food-stall to philterer's lab to toolworks to clothier and thence to any one of the myriad other specialised stalls that were squeezed in between narrow blue-washed walls and sudden, crowded courtyards. Alses moved through the crowds, revelling in the unusual sensation of anonymity. Few people spared her more than a glance – there was none of the usual rippling bow wave of bows and gentle greeting, just citizens hurrying to and fro about their business, the soft chatter of people going about their daily grind beating against her ears. The heat of their collective presence warmed her skin, and she relaxed somewhat, ducking inside the entryway of the philterer's shop favoured by the Dusk Tower for such potions and compounds as were necessary; everything from attar of roses for the baths to calias-impregnated paints for glyphic enhancements in the more advanced classrooms. The shopfront was drowning in bottles of all shapes and colours. Vials and flasks and other, more esoteric vessels, of glass and stone and metal, all were mounded high on creaking wooden shelves, labelled with spidery writing and organized according to an intricate system to which she, a mere customer, was not privy. Elixirs glittered in all the colours of the rainbow from every corner, and a vast bureau of some sort covered almost all the back wall, easily two hundred pigeonholes holding all sorts of rare and fascinating ingredients for the professional philterer and her assistants to use. Amid the blaze of liquids and different coloured glasses, the heady melange of smells – this particular shop, the Starry Chalice, used a powerful lily scent to cover up the unpleasantness of their philtering reactions, as well as some of their products and ingredients – was almost overwhelming. Certainly, the apprentices, assistants and even the owner herself weren't the first thing which caught the senses on first inspection. Had she been in celestial guise, doubtless Tian – the redoubtable proprietress – would have been making her way forward already, a smile on her lips and her fingers eagerly twitching for whatever challenge the Tower was setting. Most people thought of philterers as crabbed and old, bent under the weight of years, their fingers stained with unknown chemicals and their eyes rheumy from the fumes of their work – but then, as was so often the case, 'most people' were wrong. 'At least,' Alses added, in the spirit of fairness '-when the craft is practiced properly.' Tian herself was no more than thirty, a full-figured human with masses of lustrous black hair whose generous frame showed that she partook regularly of the fruits of her work and whose booming laugh was fit for three people at once. She wore supple, sturdy gloves and aprons whenever she worked with her apparatus and ingredients and ensured her apprentices did the same, with an almost fanatical devotion – more than once Alses' ears had been subjected to Tian's impressive full-bore bellow of “GLOVES, Bartleby-” or whichever hapless apprentice it happened to be “-you fool! GLOVES!” Alses herself was in awe of the woman's uncanny ability to see everything that was going on in her shop and the laboratory behind; she seemed able to sense when one of her subordinates was even thinking about doing something foolhardy or unwise, able to correct them with a sharp word or gesture before anything got out of hand. Alses was present as a Konti, though, completely different from her glorious daytime form, and so not a one of them recognized her. After a moment, one of the apprentices – not the hapless Bartleby, the most clumsy of the current crop of apprentices who usually had at least two dressings on various chemical burns whenever she came in, but one of the more advanced ones – moved forward with a short, perfunctory bow. “Good evening and welcome to the Starry Chalice, miss. Can I help you with anything?” Well, perhaps it was time to have a bit of fun. “Yes,” she replied, drawing out the syllable. “I have a commission from my employer for a competent philterer, one that needs the utmost of care and precision in its preparation.” The apprentice beamed and bent into another bow. His hair was slicked back with some sort of pomade, she noticed, and it gleamed under the light and gave off a faint smell of cherries. “The Starry Chalice hasn't survived and thrived in the Azure Market by being anything less than scrupulous, miss. May I see your master's instructions?” Alses pursed her lips, secretly enjoying this. “Words are all very well, sir philterer, but my employer likes to be sure of matters before committing. I've been instructed to ask you to identify the components of this.” she produced, from the recesses of her backpack, a small pot containing some of the weedkiller from the gardening pavilion. She wasn't running out, exactly, but it would be a good thing to know what it was made from, and in what amounts. “If you can, the commission is yours.” Casting a glance over his shoulder at Tian, who was hunched over a complex piece of spiralling glassware, focusing furiously and occasionally tapping it as drops of a pale pink liquid fell into a bell-bottomed jar, the apprentice took Alses' little pot with some caution. “It's not poisonous, is it?” he asked. This gave her some pause. “To my knowledge, not to people,” was what she eventually settled on; this didn't seem to fill the philterer with confidence. He cracked the waxy seal with some trepidation, only taking the smallest and most tentative of sniffs. He evidently didn't find anything overtly dangerous in its odour, for he relaxed and almost immediately began to bustle around, decanting small amounts of it into various pots and flasks, carefully observing what happened – bubbles, fizzing, a puff of coloured smoke in once instance that left him looking rather surprised, or nothing at all. “...steric acid, a touch of philterer's fury...quite a powerful purge...some hydronium fluid in there too...” he mumbled to himself, hands flashing about the equipment, only to freeze suddenly as Tian's authoritative, booming tones stopped him in his tracks. “Opeth! What do you think you're doing?” Opeth, that was the name! Alses shook her head; she really was bad with names and faces – Opeth was Tian's senior apprentice, some relation – a cousin, perhaps? that the philterer was training up to take over her business. “We have a customer, ma'am,” he replied, sketching a short bow. “She has a commission from her employer, provided we can identify a liquid she brought with her. I've done the usual preliminary tests; it's a pretty common mix of caustics; steric acid, three parts, to philterer's fury, one part, to hydronium fluid, two parts – but there's a touch of something else I can't identify, if you'd have a look...” he trailed off as Tian's face darkened. “We do not just give out information for free, Opeth! Zintila preserve us from fools, that liquid's properties was probably all she wanted from us, and you've just gone and handed the recipe to her on a skyglass platter!” Opeth cringed at her electric gaze, and then coughed. “She's still here, ma'am,” he murmured, feebly; Tian rounded on Alses, a formidable woman on the warpath. Unexpectedly, she found a lump in her throat and had to swallow, hard, under the flinty gaze of the shop's proprietor, who stuck out a meaty hand peremptorily. “The letter from your employer, girl, if you will, and if it exists. This is a busy shop and I don't have time to waste.” Suppressing an irrational nervousness, Alses produced the Dusk Tower's order - after a moment of riffling through all the other missives for delivery - and handed it over, crest-first. It didn't take long for Tian's expression to change, annoyance and what would have to be classified as at least medium dudgeon draining away to be replaced by intrigue, and just a touch of curiosity. “My apologies for doubting you, courier,” she said, once she'd finished thoroughly reading the missive. Behind her, Opeth looked smugly vindicated. “But I do have one question – the Dusk Tower and I have done business together for years; why this test, all of a sudden? Did they give you a reason?” Internally, Alses winced. Time to come clean – otherwise the Tower might get an irate visit from Tian, and that would get very messy, very fast, and probably result in her being thrown out of the Tower, at the very least, if not Lhavit itself. “Ah, that was all me, actually,” she said, not looking at the philterer. “I was just having a bit of fun with your-” 'Somewhat stuffy and self-satisfied,' her mind interjected “-apprentice. I did need to know what was in that jar, though, but I am happy to pay for the knowledge.” Opeth's face, over Tian's shoulder, was a study. Was that a smile tugging at the sides of Tian's expressive mouth? “Hmph. Well, no lasting harm done, I suppose.” There was a pause as Tian considered her. “I know you're a student, but didn't you ever get taught not to play such pranks on people you've never met before?” “We have met.” It was out before Alses could stop herself; Tian's eyebrows shot up. “Have we indeed? I'm sure I would have remembered; we don't get that many Konti all the way up here.” Alses sighed. “We met...two, three weeks ago? You took me into the back room so I wouldn't distract your apprentices from their duties and you tried to make me blackberry tea, which I told you was delicious without actually drinking any of it. You asked me how I could be so sure when I hadn't had any, and then I told you I didn't need to eat or drink and used magic to taste things. I think you said that wasn't natural, then laughed and told me that next time I came by you'd have something called raspberry fool for me to try. I still haven't found out what that is, by the way.” Most of the work in the shop had stopped at this point, the apprentices not even bothering to make it look like they were busy. “Alses?” There was a note of incredulity in Tian's voice. She nodded, quickly. Perhaps it hadn't been such a good idea after all. “The same. This is what I look like when I'm not...pretty,” she finished lamely. There weren't words to describe what she was in the day, how different it was to the pale and weak night and the form it imposed on her. “Remember the ring?” she held the heavy golden sunburst signet up, flashing in the light. “How much do I owe you for the analysis?” she murmured quickly, digging for her coinpurse. “Don't worry about it,” was the brusque reply. “You've shown me there's a gap in m'training.” Her voice lowered. “And besides,” she murmured “Opeth needed remindin' he doesn't know it all yet.” Her voice suddenly rose to its previous level. “Apprentices! What is the fourth rule of commerce?” “The customer is a wily creature that will do his or her best to outwit the merchant. I must be prepared for any and all tactics in order to make a sale and a profit,” came the reply, in varying shades of drone. Tian nodded. “Evidence of that in action tonight, everyone.” Her eyes lingered on Opeth, a high blush of embarrassment prominent on his cheeks. One meaty hand grasped the little pot that Alses had brought, bringing it up to her nostrils for a surprisingly dainty sniff. “The ingredient that Opeth couldn't identify for you is essence of kuhari, Alses. Wouldn't suggest trying to make this stuff yourself, if that's what you were planning. What's it for, anyway?” There was a note of warning there; Alses waved her arms in demurral. “I just wanted to know what was in it, for reference. I was curious,” she admitted. “And it's weedkiller; I found it in the Respite's gardening shed.” “Weedkiller, eh? I daresay it's very effective. Now, be off with you, girl. I'll see to the Dusk Tower's needs, don't fret on that score. Word of friendly advice, though, before you go – don't try and pull something like that again in my shop.” END

[Colombina]

The XP Wand Is Waved! A well-written thread making common actions artful. It's nice to feel the city through a longtime resident's eyes. The thread winds around different subjects to keep the story going, so I had to reread some sections to keep up. I appreciated the nod to the dangers of magic and the interesting NPCs! Let me know if you felt I missed anything xp wise. In the future, be mindful of making specific new shops and locales. Sometimes PCs will create a shop for their one time use and a mod finds there is overlap. So run people and places by a mod quickly if you're going to make them distinct. I like when players do this because I want to adopt cleverly made NPCs like the one you have here! If you are feeling creative, maybe you could do a writeup of this NPC and her stall in the Azure market. I will happily add it to the city Alses' Loot 2 xp Philtering 2 xp Glyphing 3 xp Gardening Lore of Azure Market Layout Lore of Recipe for Weedkiller Colombina is pleased.