Backscene: Hive of Merchants and Wizardry Who: Kyrioscath Ansradar and Ekaterina Davor Where: The Cumberland Marketplace, Nevarra When: TBD. Summary: Meeting of two Nevarrans likely to meet again later. Rating: Probably G
The market wasn't usually terribly interesting, he thought. Full of people ignoring each other as they tried to get whatever it was they needed, or inversely, paying FAR too much attention to one another and generically annoying the ones around them. This was done in a number of ways. People would see someone they hadn't seen for a while and exclaim and hug and greet and stop up traffic, or they would accuse someone of stealing - Nevarrans weren't really known for their passiveness.. Or. Something else. Kyrioscath didn't really quite get it all, but he supposed that that was more due to a personality flaw he would never admit to having, rather than the fact that all of these other people simply operated under bizarre conditions. It was more likely, at any rate.
Whatever the reason for it, they were all doing it again. Over there, a bunch chatting animatedly, though they had, at least, tried to stand off to the side, to their credit. And in that direction, people haggling over prices while someone tried to sneak something out of the stall. Kyrio would have said something, but Ixion was rather miserly with his prices anyhow, so he figured it served the man right. Besides, he didn't really feel like getting another dressing-down not more than half an hour after the previous one. He'd already nearly allowed the fire under the bellows to go out, and with the time required to get the temperatures back up to the appropriate levels, such an instance would have essentially meant that they might as well just close up shop for the afternoon. Secretly, he didn't count that as any particular negative, knowing that business was slow today and that he, personally, would rather be doing almost anything else at the moment. But alas, the motivation offered by an angry and annoyed father was rather quite enormous, and so here he was, hammering away at some farm tool, now dunking it in water, and then going over to the side to sharpen it up for the customer who was picking it up again in a couple of hours.
None of this was particularly hard, and indeed, there was almost a cathartic aspect to smithing that Kyrioscath actually enjoyed, it was really more that he didn't always feel like doing it. It was more of a hobby than it was an occupation, and that was where the problem lay. To everyone else in his family, it seemed like it was all there was. It was what you did, because it was what they had always done, and what else was there? He just didn't understand that mentality. Chalk it up to whatever you want, it was yet another thing that didn't really make any sense. Oh well. It didn't seem to matter much at the moment anyway.</cut>