4th of Winter, 513 AV. 13th Bell.
Rowland stood on a street corner, carefully observing all those who walked by. Like many citizens of Alvadas, he was wearing an outlandish outfit of fancifully colored clothing, though he had gone for a rather masculine motit and so he he was dressed in various hues of silver, Navy blue, and black with gold trim, with a gold jacket on top. He wore a white powdered wig and a gold-trimmed domino mask.
He wore this outfit because his goal was to be a performer, and he wanted to stand out. But he was not yet ready to actually perform; he needed to hone his craft a bit. To do that, he decided to do a bit of observing, as he felt that you could not act or ape people if you did not know what they normally did in the first place. So his current desire was to carefully watch people so that he could remember what to do if acting angry, or sad, or happy.
And so he looked at a sad man in drab clothing. He saw that the fellow had his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, his head was low and his eyes were staring at the ground. He walked slowly and let out a few morose sighs. His outfit was monochrome shades of gray. It did not look like he had washed or shaved himself in a few days.
Rowland attempted to imitate the man. He stuck his hands into his own pockets, he bent his head low and he shuffled along slowly. He walked right into a Svefra woman.
"Oh, you poor dear!" she said, giving him a comforting squeeze on the forearm. "Did you break your leg?"
"Oh... ah, no. I'm depressed. Well, not actually depressed.... I.. uh, was trying to practice acting like I was being depressed..."
Without saying another word, she backed away slowly.
Sighing to himself-- and now actually feeling a bit depressed-- Rowland decided he needed more practice in watching people and in imitating them.
He watched a pair of young lovers as they held hands and practically skipped through the crowd. As far as he could tell, they were quite affectionate: they kept hugging each other and touching each other, and they paused quite often to nibble at each other's ears or neck, nuzzle cheeks or kiss on the lips. Rowland guessed that they were on the way to the place where one of them lived.
Rowland pondered imitating one of them when he caught an elderly female Womiyu glaring at him speculatively, and he decided to quickly stroll through the crowd and towards some other street. At random he went east, and found himself a few blocks later standing on the periphery of a crowd watching a Vantha woman perform.
At last-- here was someone he could openly observe without causing any undue suspicion. After all, this was another performer; this was someone craving the eyes of the crowd on her.
Rowland slowly and politely jostled his way towards the front of the circle so that he could get a better look. And then he was very glad that he did. Unbidden, the words came out of his mouth: "Fantastic! How marvelously wonderful! How exquisite! Ionu himself-- or herself--would be proud!"