mimi! my favorite digimon character! yes im strange. bye...
~~~~~~~~briar fifteen
"Zak, hurry up!" Briar called loudly. "I have to get to the market! Now!"
The boy, now nearly the same height as his mage friend, tumbled down the stairs as he fumbled with a cloak. "Why the hurry?" he grumbled, trying to plaster down his spiky blond hair. "I just woke up."
"It's noon!" Briar exclaimed. "And its also my free day from Rosethorn!"
"Yah, but then again it's also the rest day. When we're supposed to rest. But why the hurry?"
"I told you," he said, exasperated. "I must send out midwinter gifts by next month, or it won't reach their homes in time for the holiday." Zak's nodded. "And I don't know if I'll find what I want."
"You sound like my mother."
"Shut up."
Wandering through stalls, filled with metal work, pottery, fabrics, rugs, and anything anyone could possibly sell or buy, Briar shook his head. "I can't send Daja metalcraft, and I can't send Sandry fabric, and I can't send Tris...well, anything that would offend her. Which is almost everything."
They were nearing the more expensive boutiques. "Man, do you have enough for this stuff?" Zak said, squinting at the prices. "It's out of this realm."
Briar nodded smugly. "I've been working on ways of witching seeds, and growing small plants in my room during the fall. I've saved a bundle, and besides, the his Dukeness in Emelan sends me an allowance. He's taken it upon himself that all four- well, all three- of us are sponsored by his estate."
"Wow."
A man tapped his shoulder. "You know the Duke of Emelan?" he asked hastily, leaning over his counter. Silks overflowed the small cart, brocades and pre-ordered shirts also stacked inside. " 'S rare that someone from there is in Yanjing."
Briar maintained eye contact warily. "Why?"
The man smiled widely. "I've been there a few months back, in the harbor for my trade. His niece Lady Sandrilene fa Toren, Princess of Nemorn, took great interest in the cargo, and supplied us with some magicked items. Sorry to eavesdrop, but that's my trade, isn't it?"
The street-boy gaped. "What's this about Princess? Sandry ain't no princess...is she?"
The craftsman held out his hand. "Samer of the Aschulin clan, Silk Guild. And the beautiful Lady Sandrilene is a princess, since that strange infestation of chillfever killed half of the royal family in Nemorn. She was a close relative, so they pronounced her one of six princesses. Strange, these times are..."
Rosethorn had mentioned a plague...but he hadn't known Sandry was a princess. "That beats all, doesn't it? I didn't know. Thanks. She gave you stuff to trade?"
The merchant brought out a silky scarf. "Spelled for dryness. Good magic, she did. Lady Sandrilene was wandering around the harbor, dragging some poor, prissy boy the Nemornese must have been attempting to match-make with. Spent three hours staring at cloth, smart girl. Spunk. Dragged him through the streets and market the whole day. I think only his honor, and her prettiness, kept him from abandoning her when she went to visit the fishport."
Briar laughed. "That sounds like her. I'm surprised she didn't push him in the water." He wondered about suitors for Sandry. It made him feel strange, because...well, to be honest with himself, he kind of wanted to be one of them.
"She would do that?"
"Sandry's done that before. Not to a suitor, but to a bully." His eye caught a bronzish-gold brocade cloth. "I'm Briar Moss, and that's nice stuff. Does your Guild-thing personalize your cloth?"
Samer grinned. "We also make it into things, too."
Zak stared as money changed hands. "Can it be a cloth this and this long and wide-" Briar gestured with his hands- "With a crest stitched onto it?"
"Provided you give us a picture or sketch of this crest. That's kind of important, isn't it? We can have it done in a few days." Briar grinned.
"I'll drop by with the crest tomorrow, and pick it up in a week?" Samer nodded, and waved as Briar and Zak picked their way through the busy street.
"Wow," Zak said. "That was neat. Let's go do some more." Briar nodded, deep in thought. Zak laughed. "Oh, c'mon Briar. Admit it to yourself, if not to me. You like her. Love her. It's obvious already."
"What?!"
His friend ticked off points with his fingers. "First, you blush everytime I say her name. Second, you looked like murdering someone when that man Samer told you she had guys after her already. You jealous dog. Third, you don't talk to, see, or go out with any females. Thats plain weird, here. Fourth, you sit for hours when writing her letters. Fifth, when you wake up in the night, I can hear you say, 'Wish Sandry were here,' before dozing off."
"You little spy, you."
"It's true." The boy crossed his arms. "Don't deny it. Sixth, you carry that damn hanky and scarf just about everywhere. Seventh, you keep all her letters in a box all nice and pretty, and other letters go into an empty jar under your desk. Eighth-"
Briar sighed. "All right, stop already."
"Do you admit it, then?" Zak asked eagerly.
"Maybe." His friend laughed a little bit before falling into step behind him quietly.
Why was he jealous? Then he allowed himself to think about how nice she was, wonderfully understanding and caring, so unlike the girls Zak knew, who Briar avoided like a plague. Remembered how she would sit up with him when he had nightmares, no matter how old or how late it had been. Even when the other two were too deeply asleep to hear, without fail her soft footsteps would patter from across the hall.
He also allowed himself to think about himself, and that those girls also considered him "cute" with his floppy black hair and green eyes. Also tall, not too bad build for a guy his age. Would that make a difference at all, or would Sandry simply consider him a friend only, or just another guy after all? A Roach?
But he threw that bit out of his mind, because she was better than that. She was too kind, and compassionate, to think of him as street-rat. He was a fool for even thinking of it. And he was going nuts, Briar decided.
Zak kept quiet, hoping that his friend would crack and tell him the truth about his "girlfriend in Emelan," or so he put it. But he didn't, and Zak pouted the whole way before seeing a pretty girl go by and wave at him, then he perked up a bit. "You have a one-track mind, Zak," Briar told him, but the blonde boy simply grinned.
"Women love me, Briar-boy," he said, before getting punched in the arm.
"Yeah, they love for you to go away!" He received a solid cuff to his head, and laughed.
~~~~~~~~
So that day, with luck, Briar found a thick volume for Tris about the pattern of tides in the great Southern Ocean, its pages a fresh, clean white. The new leather binding felt soft in his hands, and he hoped she would find it remotely interesting. Rosethorn got packets of seeds, those that were grown in the climate of this city and not Emelan.
Perhaps the challenge could occupy her time, and keep her from murdering Crane.
Lark got several skeins of the soft expensive wool, taken from the different breed of sheep herded outside the city. Gorse got a cookbook and a pair of local utensils, a two pronged fork and a long handled spoon. Niko, the mage himself, got a biography of himself, a story so strange that Briar wondered if it were true. He hadn't known that much about Niko, and never thought he would.
And for Sandry, which was a slightly harder operation, since he had to escape Zak to find a gift to avoid any teasing, he went back past Samer's booth to the small store on the corner. After pretending to go home and leaving his friend in the rented building, Briar snuck off to the metalcraft and searched it's racks.
It was the strangest thing, he told himself, after some introspection. "Would you like any help?" the man at the counter asked. "Anything in mind?"
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know... "Can I just look around a bit?" The man nodded kindly.
He wandered through racks of necklaces, bracelets, hairpins, nosepins, earrings, rings... Nothing seemed right. Once his eye caught a pendant, a pretty daisy flower with a small topaz set in the center, but it was a bit childish for a princess. A princess with suitors piling up at her door. That green-eyed monster of envy was knawing at his throat already, and it had been only an hour since he had heard.
Briar himself was confused about that strange line between friendship and more-than-friendship, but nooo...he was cities away, restrained to letters and...Midwinter gifts. Which he had no idea what to get.
Browsing through the inventory, his finger dropped to a slim golden ring, it's slender circle graced with a curling rosebud, a small emerald cradled in its twining vines. "Scuze me?" he asked the man. "Can I take this?" Exchanging money once again, the ring was safe in his pocket in a small wooden box before he even considered that it was a strange gift to give to a "friend."
"Oh well," he muttered. "Too late anyway. Besides, its pretty, right? Just a gift."
~~~~~~~~