Alexandria Markets
Of all the fare in all the places he’d been, the food J’torha was consistently most impressed by was
fish. Unavailable back home in the Fabul Desert (short of those gristly, spiky sand-dwelling things that were hardly fit to save a starving man), they were new, exotic, and even five years on never ceased to impress. There were endless varieties, some strong in flavour and some mild, some hardly big enough to chew and some the size of caravans (or even ones that lived in shells), and every locale had their own unique ways of preparing them. Lemon, saffron, butter, cayenne, rosemary, onion, even cinnamon once in that outpost in Bellas; some prepared in cream, some in tomato sauce or fried in oil, some simply roasted on planks or skewered with vegetables—the possibilities really were endless. From the first time he’d tried seafood on his first foray out of Fabul, J’torha had fallen in love, developing an awfully discerning palate and sparing no expense for the best each town had to offer.
That is, when it wasn’t
flagrantly overpriced. “I didn't fall off a chocobo carriage on my way into town, madame,” J’torha chastised loudly, leaning one arm on the stall’s canopy beam and earning an incensed look from the woman sitting behind the market stall, displeased either at the negotiation or the fact that the Seeker’s bulky, rust-coloured cloak—which may or may not have been a scrap from a textile vendor artfully wrapped to hide the raw edges—was blocking the goods from view by passerby.
“You know as well as I do that fifty gil for a lousy pipira skewer is highway robbery.” “I told you, the price of paprika went up when the borders closed!” The saleswoman repeated, crossing her arms.
“And if they’re so lousy, you can just take your business elsewhere. My prices are non-negotiable.”Ugh, great, yet another reason to despise this gods-forsaken city. Honestly, who closed their borders just for a little political tension? J’torha didn’t know a lot about these things, but he was pretty sure an invading army wouldn’t re-route themselves to official ports of entry. And now they had overpriced fish.
For a moment, the two were at a stalemate, J’torha’s mismatched eyes boring into the woman’s, searching for any sign of weakness. But the dame was no novice, and it was clear she wasn’t budging; after a long moment J’torha eventually conceded, dropping his head in defeat and heaving a dramatic sigh.
“Fine. I’ll take the perch then, thank you kindly.”The saleswoman was all smiles as J’torha handed over a much more reasonable sum of gil for his purchase, the tension of their exchange dissipating the moment a deal was struck. Such was market culture, the only fight to the death in which both parties could walk away happy; it was one thing that didn’t seem to change no matter how far one wandered. Somewhere off in the back of his head J’torha noted he must have sounded just like his sire arguing like that, but that
ridiculous notion was brushed off with an exaggerated roll of the eyes as he finally departed from the stall.
At least not all was lost. While it certainly wasn’t pipira, the perch he’d purchased was nothing to sneeze at, roasted whole on a stick with crispy skin dripping in butter and blackened with spices. The potent aroma was heady and alluring, and while it wasn’t the kick of heat J’torha had been hoping for today, it was still enticing enough to get him eating as he walked.
Of course, therein lay yet another of Alexandria’s glaring flaws. Namely that somehow, some way, there was nowhere to sit! Honestly, if tavern owners were going to get annoyed about a paying customer hunkering down for an hour or three with a pile of food but no ale, and the merchants were going to throw derisive looks and garbage at a man just for peacefully loitering on the streetside, the very
least the city could do was build a couple of benches. Eating on the move was what people did when they were fleeing for their lives, and in J’torha’s opinion, that kind of last resort is what it should have
remained.
But of course, nothing in Alexandria could be ideal, so J’torha was stuck wandering the city’s marketplace at a snail’s pace, glancing around half-interested at passing stalls as he attacked his meal. The perch never stood a chance against any hungry feline, let alone one of his size and ferocity, so it didn’t take long to reduce the poor thing to a skeleton and complete the disappointing meal with a dragonfruit pulled from his pack. There, he would have preferred his dinner about three times as large and ideally somewhere he could rest a while after - or ooh, even better, shared with a comely female companion - but at least he had something sweet to finish it off with. But what to do now?
Once more he surveyed the market, this time from the opposite end, though he still found little of interest. Food vendors? He’d had enough disappointment for one day. Bauble hawkers? Nothing caught his eye. Weapons shops? He’d never been much for aldite, and any cocky little blacksmith’s apprentice trying to get his hands on sharpening fodder would get a kick between the eyes before laying hands on his chakrams. He supposed he could start looking around for another inn, seeing as his ‘first thing in the morning’ plan had transitioned into ‘once it gets a little warmer’ and then ‘sometime after lunch’, but as a pleasant breeze washed through the market, J’torha found himself disenthused with the idea of heading indoors just yet. What to do…
He openly laughed when it finally came to him, amazed he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Dance, obviously! What else
could he do? His first few days in Alexandria had received him well enough, with deep-pocketed crowds enthused by exotic art and people, but he’d been so ragged and antsy trying to get out of the city since the borders closed that he’d gone nearly a week without ringing a single bell. Seriously, this closed-borders business had him all mixed up. He shook his head at himself as he broke off in a jog to a modest square at the end of the market; with dinnertime fast approaching, foot traffic was high, and while he wasn’t really hurting for gil, a few more tossed his way would never go unappreciated.
Filled with new vigour at the very prospect, J’torha bounded into the square, sitting himself down on the edge of a fountain at its centre. From his pack he drew a number of accoutrements; loops of jingling pyrite coins were fastened around his wrists and ankles and strings of bells tied around his waist and tail, and once all was secure he jumped up on the fountain’s edge and cast off his cloak, revealing an open blue vest and sash, each trimmed and adorned in eye-catching gold.
Taking what looked like a black stick in each hand, J’torha slid easily into a starting position, holding still a moment to draw a long breath. The hustle and bustle of the square and nearby market faded into silence; after a moment there was only him and the breeze and the sun on his skin, his heart steadying to beat his own perfect rhythm. One, two, three…
Stillness gave way to movement, arms and legs spinning fluidly as the dancer skipped feather-lightly along the edge of the fountain like a leaf skittering in the wind. A deep calm settled into him, and a sense of tranquility permeated the square. A few eyes were drawn, but not too many just yet, though something of a hush did fall around the fountain. Despite it all, a sense of giddy anticipation built up in J’torha’s chest, each graceful, fluid motion laced with barely-contained energy, a hopeful tension just waiting to be released.
Suddenly, an explosion; the ‘sticks’ in J’torha’s hands each whipped open to reveal brightly coloured, shining silk fans. The eye barely had time to catch them before his body whipped into motion, turning and kicking and flipping like a whirlwind, playing at the edge of the fountain on the precipice of falling off. But that wouldn’t happen; no, to the crowd it looked like the dancer on the ledge rode the very air, body no more than a feather in a hurricane as he whirled about, fans opening and closing in rhythm like the plumes of a magnificent bird. They could feel it now, too; the energy of the square rose to match J’torha’s own, eyes drawn of their own accord to the spectacle at the fountain and spirits raising at the heartening display. What began as a wave of bolstered self-assurance intensified to energy and excitement, passing interest in the demonstration turning to awe. There was no music - no sound aside from the flapping of fans and the jingling of coins and bells to the rhythm of J’torha’s dance - but they didn’t need it; every onlooker could
feel the beat, and even if their ears wanted for music, their hearts and minds would rise to fill in the rest.
Enchanting the masses - literally
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