A penny saved is a penny earned. Part 1

[Taylani]

Taylani eyes him for a moment, not sure whether to believe him or not. She understands he is telling her that it was simply a normal exchange between two traders, but while she had not understood his words with the other she understood the tones in the voices. However, who better to understand that sometimes performances were necessary than someone who had trained most of her life to be a stage performer?

For just a second longer does the Dancer look at him, before she drops her gaze to shrug and slipped the weathered pack down her arm again. With a deft flip of her hand she opens and settles the new-to-her kit inside, before securing the fastener once more. "They looked ok, not as well as the ones my mother used but serviceable I think. I won't know of course until I sit down and play with them." She shrugs, turning back toward the direction he had set for them when they had left the jeweler's stall. "Remember that I am new at this, I only have what I remember my mother telling me, not much more. It will be.....difficult." The last word is said with a small sigh, not one that is sorrowful or angry, just resigned but ..underneath it all a bit of enjoyment for it would be a new challenge for her.

[Fallan Windchaser]

There seemed to be a degree of suspicion in her eyes that his story was not exactly the truth, but he intended to offer no other. Of course tools were one thing, but still a crafter needed more than that, just as he needed to find some more leather.

As ever the language barrier was tiresome, and even when she became more proficient with Pavi, there would be times like this when it would be difficult to properly communicate what both needed to say.

"Fallan need leather," he waved towards the tool bag. "Tay need things too?" It was a somewhat clumsy question and perfectly illustrated his irritation with the language barrier, but still there was the thought that had occurred to him as he had wandered the market earlier. It might also serve to further distract her from the conversation.

"Fallan watch prices. See what high and low. Remember prices in Syrila? Tay notice prices?" It was a further moment of awkwardness as he wasn't at all sure that she would understand. Then too there were the new traders and if she understood him then that was something to suggest to her while they were here.

[Taylani]

Taylani shrugs her pack back onto her shoulder, settling the now slightly heavier weight easily listening and contemplating his questions. She doesn't answer either for a moment, wanting to make sure she was understanding what he was asking, but also trying to dredge her memory of her mothers supplies.

Her mother had worked in many different mediums, bone and metal of different varieties, however Taylani's own experience was such that she felt it would be safer to work with the cheaper material -bone. "Yes, it would be better if I had different bone to work with. The first few I am sure will be wastes..if I can remember how to work it at all." Despite her words, Taylani already is envisioning the first piece that she wanted to try her hand at.

The other question was on one hand not as difficult to answer, but on the other a bit more tricky because she is not sure why he wanted to know. "I have been shopping with Mama for supplies in the past, I didn't really notice exact figures on everything, but I can probably remember generalities. Why?"

[Fallan Windchaser]

He was relieved that she managed to understand what it was that he was asking and determined to improve his Common by listening more carefully to her words and then using them. She had made him realise that if he couldn't speak Common well then it was going to make it harder for him to bargain with others and in fact likely explained some of the difficulty that he had experienced before.

"Fallan travel. Family travel, trade horses. Trade small things. Buy one place where made, sell another place where rare." The effort of this was starting to give him a headache but he concentrated, straining his memory for words. "Tay new here, see things. See prices." It still didn't get around the problem that he could hardly ride into Syrilas with her, or perhaps not even without her if the Knights had become aware of the raids. but what was life without risk? In any case there were still the Wilderness homesteads and farms that supported the cities who were too busy to get into the cities to shop for luxuries.

[Taylani]

Taylani listens quietly, mulling his words carefully in her mind, her face cast down to watch the ground and her foot placing but more to simply consider her options. For better or for worse, by choice or by force she was thrown into Fallan's lot. Slave or free person she had already established that she had some control over her life while here in Endrykas. She could still be petulant and vindictive and refuse to aid him in any fashion, but that would only cause things to be more difficult for her as well. Not to mention that he had not teased and treated her unduly for a long stretch of days, causing some of Taylani's natural instincts to bite back and fight to subside.

She cut a glance over at him, trying to make it subtle as she continued to ponder, observing him quietly. Besides, she found herself wanting to help him. Strange as it might seem, he was the closest thing to comfort she had out here. So in the end she nods. "Buy low, sell high?" She asks, assuming this was the general way traders worked their professions. "Some things I can help you in. Not all, I am...was..not someone who needed to look over a wide variety of wares.."

[Fallan Windchaser]

He smiled softly and nodded in answer to her question. She constantly surprised him with her ability to piece together the fragments of sentences that he uttered. That she was not sure of prices was not unexpected though he had hoped otherwise.

Now though she might well start paying attention and that was always well for over time she would start to pick up on a few things and eventually would become expert in her own field. This would allow her to see opportunities and to grab them.

Since it appeared that she had everything he gave her a wave and headed over to a stall which sold leather and bought two pieces of hide and some thread to top up his own supplies. Now it seemed that they both had everything that they needed in that sense.

"Traders, Eyktol?" He asked the question, not sure if she had heard of the traders who were visiting. He wasn't sure what they might have, but surely it was worth a look as the men from the desert were bound to have something exotic or unusual.

[Taylani]

Moving easily beside him, her movements sure and steady, becoming more comfortable each day it seemed. This was not a good thing, for Taylani did not wish to become comfortable within Endrykas, that was too much like assimilation to suit her but she does not seem to notice that she was slowly acclimating to being around him, which might be best in the long run for Fallan.

She still did little interaction with any Drykas, listening as he buys his wares, committing to memory words that seemed logically part of the selling and buying conversation. It was going to take her a very long time to learn Pavi, but the only way she would was by jumping into it.

"Eyktol?" She asks, looking up from her walking at him, not sure what he was asking. One brow raising in question, trying to figure if he was asking her if she knew traders from Eyktol, or if she had seen traders from Eyktol. "I don't know what you mean?" Then a thought flashed on her face and she points behind to the stall he had just bought his leather and thread from, "You didn't seem to give that one a hard time?"

[Fallan Windchaser]

It seemed to him that she had not heard of the traders, which on reflection shouldn't have been surprising. Scarcely had he noted that however and he was thinking on his feet again, attempting to make nothing of it. He smiled, "Good price, not bargain." He considered the truth and decided that he needed to give a better reason than that. "Bargain sometimes. Some traders have fair price. Sometimes traders like show. Sometimes traders make insult."

He wondered where the traders from Eyktol would have set up and just what they might have brought with them. Trade with them was more common in the winter when Endrykas would be moving along that border, so it was interesting and enterprising of them to be here now as well. It would be an opportunity to buy things to sell into Syrila ahead of the Spring when that might be more common.

It was pleasant to be walking the market with her, making small conversation as though they were friends with a common cause. Already he was forgetting her impertinence earlier, easier to avoid it than to bring it up more than she was already doing.

"You know Eyktol?" he asked to continue changing the subject. "I wonder what they might have." He altered course to where he thought it most likely that they would be found.

[Taylani]

Taylani nods as he speaks, still finding his answer a bit dodgy but chalks it up to just the language issues. Moving through the stalls, following his lead now since she had obtained what she needed, Taylani weaves for the most part successfully around various people. "Heard of Eyktol." She says slowly, trying to dredge up information that she had heard, "I don't know much about it, or even where it is. All I know is that isn't it a desert?" She asks easily, for the moment enjoying the simple normalcy of their task. For the moment she could forget that she was his captive, and he thought of her as his slave.

As she moves she realizes that he knows far more about her then she does about him. She realizes that she hasn't even tried to learn much about him, as much as she tried to avoid telling him about herself. She knows that he was a trader, and that he was not always in Endrykas, "Have you ever been ...to Eyktol that is?"" Her words smooth, lifting at the end in question, her body sidestepping toward him to avoid bumping another person before straightening its course once more.

[Fallan Windchaser]

Fallan barely noticed the people around them now that he had a new focus, and he dodged people with the same absent minded concentration that allowed him to avoid tripping over tent pegs and lines.

"Desert yes. Most of it. Hot, very hot even Winter. Syrila people farm. Eyktol not so much, live cities, farm near rivers." It was of course something of a simplification as there were plenty of places in the Wildlands of Syrila which were hostile and Fallan could distinctly remember the time he mistakenly decided to journey from Syrilas to Zeltiva at the tail end of Winter. Perhaps he was unfair to Eyktol, he wondered. It was a land of extremes, a land where a man could die for the lack of knowing that a water hole lay hidden close by.

"Eyktol No. Border yes. Family herd Syrila border Summer, Eyktol border Winter." He wondered if it might make sense to add the desert breeds to the herd to trade in Winter, but it probably wouldn't be as the horses would not be used to the desert. Some of the peoples in Eyktol traded in jewellery as far as he recalled, so he wondered if they might find some here, and if so what the prices might be. Perhaps Tay would be more familiar with that.