(A/N: Title is possibly a triple entendre. Still don't like OpenOffice. Still can't complain about the price. Pathetic attempt at lyrics influenced by Rachid Taha's 'Safi' off the Tekitoi? album.)

good side/bad side

It was an orange afternoon in the Bazaar thanks to the haze from a rare pass of rain clouds. The top layer of dust along the streets had turned to fine mud in the short downpour and had since been walked off by the many merchants and customers who thronged the avenues. Shadash was satisfied with the dry layer beneath, for he preferred to walk barefoot and his toes were habitually adorned with gold and silver rings. Far better for the mud to be caked to foreign sandals than between his toes.

Shadowing him was one of the daytime chaperones from his teahouse; a deceptive woman from the thieves guild. She was an excellent hand at making herself undetectable amongst the crowd. Her lack of presence freed people to speak openly with the young dancer, who was something of a celebrity in the locale. She made Shadash feel caged and safe; it was another manifestation of his usual conflict between insecurity and defiance.

His owners need not have bothered sending her; the adolescent entertainer feared freedom just as much as he desired it. The streets of Calimport scared him more than tales of djinn. He had seen and experienced the evil that ran along the alleys and thoroughfares with its bloody tongue lolling. The tales of djinn in the deserts he sang and danced to were only words to him. He feared the Anauroch or Calimshan desert less than Calimport itself.

The din of the busy marketplace was nearly enough to muffle the heavy population of bells on the ornamented bangles looped loosely around Shadash's youthful ankles. The ringing was still enough of an announcement of his presence to send the closer merchants into bevies of greetings and offers. It was also a signal to the local street prostitutes to make gestures to ward off the evil eye. For it was well known that Shadash hated their kind and his bicolored glare was considered highly potent.

A few steps behind Shadash walked a tired little girl of no more than twelve years. He had borrowed the apprentice from Chidi on the basis of her looks and costume. Where Shadash's skin was predominantly the color of rich dark coffee, the girl's skin was elven pale. Where his hair was the darkest of kelp greens, hers was a merry strawberry blonde. His ample jewelry was comprised mainly of deep red stones, while hers were pretty green glass. His linen pants and flowing silk sarong were white, hemmed in red and trimmed with gold disks, red silk tassels, and gold bells; she wore sky blue from head to toe. As far as Shadash was concerned, she was little more than a living accessory.

In her arms the young apprentice carried Shadash's purchases and gifts. There were flowers, zils, paper bags of snacks (which he never shared), bags of bird seed, and strings for sitar, guitar, and oud. The girl was sure she could not hold another item and hoped Shadash would soon return to the teahouse. Her only consolation was that he was now heeding the siren call of jewels and those he would not trust her to hold.

A flurry of greetings and salutations rose among the jewel merchants to satisfy Shadash's tapered ears. Right away, the men and women began to rearrange their garnets, rubies, corals, and carnelians to catch the sun's orange rays. They were well-versed in how best to display their wares and what would catch the dancer's jaded eyes.

It was a superstition among them that Shadash's strange red eye was the product of a trade with a djinn. Local fable held that it was important to approach him from the side that held the eye of sparkling green. Therefore, Shadash's good side and his bad side were thought to be quite literal.

His eyes, shining wet jewels in their own right, swept over the glowing offerings. His heart raced with the glittering gems and he wished that he were a god, to be offered all things for the simple price of his favor. Soaring on the wheedling and dulcet tones of the merchants, the few people in his life who truly understood one of his desires, he broke into charming laughter.

Whirling on his helper in a swirl of white silk, jangling gold bells, and gem stones, Shadash thrust his hands into her fast-held parcels. When they came out again, the zils were slipped over his fingers and he was spinning away.

"Play for me!" He howled, grinning like the djinns of legend. "Olu! Get your zurna, you old liar!"

It was spontaneous but not totally unexpected for bards or entertainers of Shadash's kind to perform there on the streets. Usually it was not as spontaneous a moment as it seemed; such events were secretly planned and paid for in advance. Not so with Shadash; he did as he liked as often as he could and dancing, singing, and making music freed him like no other thing in life. It was his golden key to paradise and it drew looters and thieves by the droves.

Performers were good for business and the merchants rewarded the boy with presents and discounts. The problems would come later when he returned to the teahouse and the owners and managers learned they would not receive a cut for the performance.

Without waiting a moment for accompaniment, Shadash struck an unassuming pose. Dark head bowed, fiery gems shone from the dark mass of hair that covered his eyes. One leg was bent, ankle extended, toes pointing down, and his arms stretched out to one side. Around him, the crowd moved back to allow him room. Eager faces pressed forward to see the free performance. In the distance, people were calling to their friends to come see.

First his fingers flashed, ringing the zils in a simple rhythm. The next sign of life came the moment the sound of drums began to rise through the assembled crowd, though there was no drummer in sight. With the zils and phantom drums speaking percussive secrets, Shadash began rolling his finely toned arms like snakes through water. The motion from his arms seemed to roll down his body in a wave, setting his bare torso, stomach, and hips into consecutive movement.

His dance was graceful and provocative and while it started out with a slow sinuous character, the music tempo and his speed picked up dramatically the moment he began to move his feet. The gold and red bangles on his ankles filled out the percussion with a new layer of rhythm. To the side, the little apprentice watched and listened in awe; she knew no other dancer in the teahouse could produce three interweaving rhythms and dance amongst them at the same time.

Olu, a merchant that charged a small fee to repair Shadash's many ornaments, finally produced the strange-looking zurna. The man was no virtuoso, but he knew enough to work with the entertainer's beats and he could time his breathing beautifully. The dancer was so accomplished with music that he knew very well how to manipulate his music to make Olu's zurna sound natural, even skilled beyond his ability.

Shadash threw his body into swift convulsions, dancing fast, whirling in tight circles, taking a wide path along the circumference of rapt faces. From there he wrapped himself into ever tighter circles, spiraling into the center with frantic passion. He drove himself to a dizzying edge, bending his torso back in his spinning, so both his heavy veil of hair and filmy white sarong were flying out around him like stiff collars. His many tassels, all red and gold, on ankles, hips, and biceps, whipped around in a drunkenly exuberant march. He danced so hard that his bare feet left gouges in the thick layer of dust on the road. His heels inscribed the ground with the notes his zils, drums, and bells were throwing into the air.

All around him the people watched, their heartbeats speeding along with the percussion and his movements. Children stared in awe, forgetting to mimic his movements like they did when they saw other dancers. Many of the men and women felt every pulse of his hips as they swiveled, hip bones pummeling the air with rabid force. The more virtuous were hypnotized by his passion, the less so felt their mouths go dry with well-known desire.

The inner beat, the throbbing of a terminally wounded heart, was loud in Shadash's head. He began the dance as an expression of happiness, but as ever, when it came to listening to the most potent of all rhythms, he began to feel energy surface from within the painful and powerful shell. Something began to bubble forth, something primal, something that tickled along his veins, through his diaphragm, up his throat, tickling his nose, until he felt it flow across his skin in waves of warm and cold energy.

It was both terrifying and beautiful, like the crest of a powerful sneeze or unexpected orgasm. He began to exult in his sudden lack of control. He moved, he flowed, he poured himself into the beat of his heart and worshiped and languished at the altar of unlikely dreams. Soon sweat was flying off his limbs and soaking into his hair and sound was pouring out of his throat, shaped instinctually into words none understood.

"As for me
my heart soars free
As for me
my heart can see

"As for me
my heart won't bleed
As for me
no casualty."

Words he forgot even as they dissipated on the air amidst a last spin that took him down into a crouch that shrouded him in a small dust cloud. The cessation of his driving beat faded from the air into silence. His hair and silk sarong echoed the fading music by swirling around him to a soft stop, settling around his shoulders or legs.

When the panting, weakened dancer finally peered through the heavy drapery of dark hair, his bi-colored eyes were greeted with an extraordinary scene. Surrounding him in a near perfect circle, he found a cage of dumbstruck faces. The street around him was quiet, not even the pigeons made noise from the eaves and walls. Fearfully confused, Shadash glanced around, looking guiltily for his daytime chaperone to protect him should he have somehow broken a law. When he finally found her plain face he saw that she, too, was staring vacantly at him.

Slowly, he rose to his full unassuming height and turned to the apprentice he'd brought with him. She stared, without horror, straight forward. The dancer found himself imprisoned by a thick ring of living statues. Was it possible, a tremulous inner voice questioned, that the magic his drunken mentor taught him could evolve without the bard's instruction? Or had his work for Marya been discovered and he was about to die, as he had always feared, on the savage streets?

Hands lifting in fear and horror, Shadash covered the lower half of his face and whispered in Calishite, "Is it me?"

The words brought a reaction from a nearby figure in the crowd. His eyes darted to the movement and his red eye was the first to gather the image the young dancer hoped never to glimpse again.

"You are becoming strong." Two strong, knowing, hands came together in a sharp report.

As one, the crowd jolted from their collective trance and immediately charged forward as if nothing at all had happened. Men pounded Shadash's bare back, strong hands slapped the large blemish that was yet another of his identifying features. A blemish too expensive to remove that earned him the derisive nickname, Leafback, in his teahouse. The pale mark ran down the channel of his spine and spread out across his back along the rivulets between his ribs.

He stumbled forward under the excited enthusiasm. Normally he would smile and ward them off by dodging contact and tartly ridiculing their efforts, but his difficult gaze was captured, enslaved and whimpering, by the stare of the man of Loviatar.

Though he was sorely afraid, Shadash gathered his courage and drank greedily from the praise of the crowd pressing in on him. He took in their interest, their affection, their lust, and he forged it into a semblance of confidence. Walking forward with counterfeit grace, he bowed repeatedly to the admiring crowd and made his way toward his outer demon. He could feel every hand that had ever touched the bleached skin on his back. Especially the hands that had shattered the stillness a moment before.

He held the crowd's admiration inside desperately when he stepped up, just out of reach of the cleric. His voice did not tremble or betray weariness or fear, but the sweat covering his body clothed him in coldness. "I am too strong for you and I'm no longer available. You should leave now before I have you thrown out of this neighborhood. They listen to me here."

The man's face twisted with humor, but his eyes never left the dancer's. No one else had ever held Shadash's gaze, no one else could steal his soul, no one else even believed he had a soul to steal. "The years have been kind to you, child. You look more and more... like your mother."

All the courage he had stolen from the crowd began draining through his fingers like loosely held sand. The cold sweat that had settled on his skin began to radiate frigidness deep into his tissue. "N-not kind," he stuttered. Shadash hadn't stuttered since he was a child.

The cleric nodded, his lips still evidencing his amusement. "You refer to the years or my statement about your mother? You must mean the years; you never knew your mother as I did."

Except the off-kilter beating of his heart, Shadash could not move. He could hardly speak. "I will scream..."

"That would be nostalgic," the man replied with sincere amusement. He stepped forward, easily invading Shadash's personal space. "Nobody aided you then, young and pretty under the dirt as you were, what makes you think they will aid you now that you are older and beautiful?"

"I have s-something they want," Shadash whispered. His stolen confidence was making a route down through his body, bolting him to the ground in the exodus. "I make them happy."

"Ah, as you have made me happy? If I threw you to the ground," the man returned, one warm finger tracing the contour of the entertainer's cheek, "and offered you to the crowd, how much happier would they be? Have you forgotten how many of us love your agony? Do you think yourself too old for that? Too good? Too expensive?"

The man brought his hand up and tucked a lock of hair behind Shadash's slightly pointed ear. A chill ran thundering down the dancer's spine, destroying any confidence of his own and bringing on a wave of self-loathing so strong he could taste bile. "They like me. They give me things and listen to me. They don't hurt me."

The man snorted. "Just because my sisters and I like to torture people for information, don't think I don't have a spell that tells me when you are lying. In their eyes you are nothing more than a pretty flesh golem. They pretend to listen, their gifts are territorial pissings, and they haven't the skill or finesse to hurt you the way you should be hurt. Pretty little Shadash, your screaming will always echo in the temple. Did you know your mother never screamed? Not once. You more than made up for the lack, didn't you?"

He was intoxicated by fear, his skin was prickling and his body began to shiver. What could he say to save himself? What could he say that would not reveal more of his broken shell to the most insidious man that had ever opened his skin? "Mutes don't scream. But it doesn't matter, she was nothing. Nothing to me, not to anyone."

"They say nothing begets nothing, Shadash. Perhaps she was empty, but she was hardly nothing." A distant smile formed in his sharp eyes. Shadash watched in fear as the man brought a memory from the background into the present. "She never fought, not like you. No one has ever fought like you did. You were defiant until you lost consciousness and when you awoke, you used the recovery to spit and hiss. No, you may have your mother's exotic looks, but you have some of your father's spirit."

"Father?" Shocked by a sudden stabbing pain in his heart, flashes of shattered fantasies assaulted the entertainer from every direction. A prince of Chult on a powerful orange-maned stallion, a bard of high renown and riches, a powerful warrior from across the sea; so many childish dreams that he thought he no longer believed in, all these came immediately to mind.

"An appropriate way to address me, yes," the cleric laughed. "You are a bright boy, aren't you!"

At first Shadash could not understand the man's response. The words were disjointed and made no sense. Confusion distracted him from fear and enabled him to take faltering steps away from Loviatar's man. Blindly, he stumbled into the pretty little apprentice he'd brought with him. Looking down he saw her eyes and the mirror of his confusion. She was young, almost as young as he had been when he'd had his last night at the temple of Loviatar. A night like the other not-rare-enough nights he'd learned that death was the easy way out. Nights often dominated by the man before him.

The man's words were processed so slowly, with such painful labor, that it was almost possible to look in the dancer's eyes and see them come together. As the meaning was sorted out, the healthy flush left Shadash's face. New sweat, cold as ice, sprung out over his skin. Both eyes widened and his coveted lips stretched in the vilest of all horrors. The childish fancies that he knew were stupid, unrealistic, dreams exploded within him, pushing all the air out of his body.

Shadash's vision grew dark with the brief convulsion, but he fought the weakness sucking him toward the ground. He fought hard, stumbled further from the man. He reached out limply and tried to push the little girl at the cleric, anything to save himself, to escape the horror of the possibility he had presented.

His flight was not graceful, only panicked and desperate. When he tripped, he scrabbled on hands and feet, tore past staring people of all races and sexes, often using them as leverage to speed his flight. There was no dance or beauty, just wide dilated eyes, clawing hands, and a low moan that embodied a grief so vast it could not be given measure.

Again and again, Shadash stumbled to his knees in the road. People gave him wide berth, fearing the panicked dancer's rolling eyes and jerky movements. When he finally made it around a corner, he was shaking wildly and gasping for air. But no air could replace the fantasies, the stupid, stupid fantasies, of his orange-maned stallion and the men that had ridden on him.

As when he had sung and danced, he could feel some uncontrolled thing deep within him rising to the surface, but this time there was no pleasure in it. All he could feel was nausea and fire. It traveled from his heart, burst through his stomach, and up his throat in a hot rush.

Rather than let forth a flow of hypnotic music, Shadash convulsed and threw up. Right behind the violent expulsion came an ear-shattering screech of inhuman and terrifying proportions. The sound of shattered pieces of a broken heart scraping together like metal on metal.

Those who knew him thought he screamed in his unknown native tongue, but in truth there were no words. Shadash could only scream in incoherent horror, rage, and pain. Far behind, the cleric of Loviatar noted the mass exodus of the people in the boy's vicinity. The boy was definitely stronger, definitely possessed of bardic magic, and definitely a work to make Loviatar proud. The cleric closed his eyes and savored the beautiful sound of the boy's primal agony.

Next up: afterparty, wherein Shadash tries to deny assumed and evidenced realities. And doesn't vomit.