Mercedes Dupont (mercedes_dupont) wrote in toujoursliberer, @ 2008-06-22 19:58:00 |
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Mercedes enjoyed the market place. It was not only the fact he had coins in his pockets to spend, but this market itself. He had been in markets all over the globe, in Europe, in the Americas, in the Caribbean, but India had captured his imagination. Within the city’s high, ancient walls there were a hundred hundred dwellings, and almost as many little temples and sanctuaries. And today, as there was everyday, on the widest streets and on several of those that ran from it, stall after stall. He took this walk once a day, around the city, hands tucked into his pockets or held together behind his back, familiarising himself with the city, although he knew he would be re-stationed again.
The air was hot, filled with spice and noise, the braying of donkeys and the chattering of people and monkeys, the shouting of traders and far too many others for him to readily and easily identify. But he did not care to know what they were; he only wandered through the crowds, dressed smartly in the Company’s uniform of white and red. They were English colours, yes, and he was a Frenchman, but here it did not matter. Here, he was just a European, and he enjoyed the freedom that brought, the colours, the sights, and the sounds that his status as a foreigner here provided.
He paused for a moment at one stall, covered in pots of bright spice and herbs, the colours so bright that they might have been ground ores, or dyed grains of sand or salt crystals. He grinned at the woman behind the stall, swathed in fabric as bright as her produce, gold at her wrists and throat. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, and then he continued on his way, hands tucked into his pockets, continuing his stroll around the town, continuing in his circuit.