Happenstance:                                                                                                                                               Part One

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        The night sky was an engulfing pool of darkest black, speckled through by a sprawling patch of drifting white sands, and the brilliant ivory glow of Crescentia painted the desert landscape below into an alien wakefulness.  Small animals, with molting fur as the raining season drew each closer along every edged breath, scurried forth from their tunnels to rest on lean haunches, studying, noses twitching nervously, the parched soil.  They scattered tentatively, off to hunt for the small seeds and herbs they gained all sustenance from, and high aloft in crevices gouged deep into the sides of cliffs, nocturnal preying birds ruffled sleepy fathers and scrabbled into the sky's pool of black to hunt the smaller creatures.  Occasionally one of the birds would swoop too close to the elegantly lopsided building atop a towering plateau, rending loose a warning shriek as tail feathers shifted and the startled bird of prey soared away in swift motions, fleeing the eerie twinkling of the countless gleaming windows. 

        When she could, Sarah enjoyed watching the glorious birds wreathed in slanting cascades of moonlight as they dove and swirled in the heated Montressor air, pausing with trays in tow as she saw sandy tones calling into the night with unfettered abandon.  It was a reminder, at times, of her son, an adventurous soul always seeking some new challenge he could triumph over and bugle in excitement about when he inevitably returned home, outfitted in his regal, beautiful captain's blues with ocean eyes lit by that fire stoking him eternally.  Those were times of celebration, when the regulars and jaded spacers alike gave pause to listen to tales he often leniently embellished or changed, for the children's sake he declared, insisting stubbornly that he had never liked boring stories.

        Tonight, though, was a night without Jim, one filled with all the busy work she had been used to for the drawing close to twenty-one years spent running the Benbow Inn, and she had no time to pause and gaze with wistful eyes at birds untouchable.  "Katya, do you know if Mister King's food is ready yet?" she called to the plump server passing by her, deftly plucking a few bared plates from the abandoned table she was tending.  The woman, frizzy black hair tumbling just so from her loosening cap, shook her head, grimacing apologetically, and she hurried away, delivering a steaming tray of peeling grubs to a delighted creature of anteater-like origin. 

        With a sigh, Sarah pulled away from the table, balancing the stacked plates in her arms to keep them from clattering with painful chimes to the floor underfoot, and picked a quick way to the large kitchen in the back of the unused bar.  Swaying around the polished, slightly dusty counter, she turned to the side, using the flat of her arm and shoulder to knock the swinging door open and enter the fire-lit rectangular room.  "You might need to scrub these with more soap," she confided to one of the mildly overworked dishwashers, offering up a reassuring smile to the hardy, if tired, teenager.  "Emeshul," she started, weaving through the mess of cooks and servers working tenure of part-time jobs milling with grand purpose amongst the counters and large fireplace kilns.

        "Miss Hawkins?" the petite frog-type alien asked, a soft lisp rolling through the words.  Dumpy, short, and quick to obey, Emeshul had been a familiar presence for the scent four months of his working in the Benbow's kitchen, and though he was little more than a notable acquaintance, she was fond of him.  Granted, she was fond of anyone who could ease the tremendous workload that had always plagued the inn.  "Is something the matter, Miss Hawkins?  I do believe I made careful to give Yukio the order for table nine," he continued, clean webbed hands sprinkling flecked basil over a carefully arranged plate of varying meats.

        "She does do best with the larger dishes," Sarah agreed, dipping her hands into the near scalding water held in a deep basin near the corner, "but I need to know if Mister King's order is ready yet?"  She tilted her voice into a hopeful suggestion, shaking her hands to free her fingers of crystal droplets, and she turned to face him, raising her tone into a verging shout as the din in the kitchen exploded a notch: "He says he's been waiting for an hour, and if we don't get it to him, we might as well just let him leave now and free the table up."  Her smile was worn, but kind, and she tugged a clean apron from the rows of pegs along the back close to both the basin and the stretch of counter that Emeshul's when time came for his shift, wrapping the apron expertly around her front and nimbly tying a knot at the small of her back.

        "I have nothing to say if Mister King ordered or not," Emeshul answered after a moment's careful passing, leaning over his nearly finished dish to study the organized chaos of notes.  The slips of paper held the confusing shorthand universally used by the harried servers, and each of the cooks along the counter held such an array of scripted orders, to be used for an obvious completion of each order.  "Would you want me to get one of the servers to ask him for a new orders?"  He snagged a passing girl's sharp elbow, motioning for the dainty ocelot Feline to lift the now completed meat platter and keeping her for the course of time until the woman finishing the impromptu trio spoke.

        "No, don't bother," she sighed, smiling in a lopsided fashion, "we have less than an hour 'til closing in any case.  Let me take that."  Sarah gingerly took the startled young ocelot's burden, holding it in arms made strong by years of lifting and carrying painfully laden trays, and she hurried over the floor, the softer cloth of her dress kept in swirls around her ankles as she moved from the kitchen.  Leaving the stifling kitchen heat for the more comfortable warmth of the dining area, she pulled herself to the side as a smile child wobbled past, gurgling happily while clapping sweetly pudgy hands, and she felt a quiet smile brushing her lips at the memory of her own boy toddling aimlessly about.  She shook her head, then, grounding her own mind in the bustling present, and she put a brisk greeting smile on her lips as she quickly read the table number the plate was to be delivered to – thirteen, it read in sloppy jargon – and oriented herself toward the side booth was an exhausted creature of undetermined blood. 

        "A platter of meat cuts," she recited, carefully edging the hefty tray from her hands to the glistening table.  "Enjoy, sir."  She smiled, craning her head in polite farewell as she swept away, leaving him to devour his meal in relative solitude and aiming to the rail-thin figure that was the many times mentioned Mister King, waiting impatiently for dining assistance and perhaps someone he could exact his intimidating irritation upon.

        She echoed the unpleasant sentiment inside, where the easily fitted mask of a helpful entrepreneur did not need flow over, and having grown used to his frequent grouching and, in a case such as this, founded scowling, she wearily said, "I'm very sorry, Mister King, but it seems we've lost your order."  He made a curt, growling noise deep in his shallow, wobbling throat and she forged onward, "We won't be open much longer, so we'll reimburse you at a later date, sir." 

        It had taken more effort than usual to treat him politely, mustering forth what dwindling store of patience remained after a trying day with nary a break in customers, as several ships had apparently docked at Crescentia.  They had, of course, unloaded hungry spacers via the small ferries that shuttled from Montressor to the ivory port glistening above.  She was exhausted and could all but feel her feet throbbing in the supported slippers she donned out of habit and secretive vanity, and to be frustrated even further by this her most complaining regular was perhaps one of the things she had the least possible need for.

        "Preposterous!" he finally exploded, following a minute wherein it seemed he had attempted to puff his thin body up with his outrage.  "I have waited nearly two hours in this spot, at this very table at which I always sit," his voice became affixed in expressing his deeply set offense and reminding her of his patronage, "and I will not leave until I have my order in hand!"  His small, slitted ebony eyes met her tired, but somehow sympathetic if short, gaze, and he exhaled forcibly, fidgeting with the silver-plated fork set on the carefully stitched napkin folded beside the spot his plate was meant to be placed.  "I do apologize for being rude, Miss Hawkins," he said hesitantly, stiffly, continuing with, "but I do want to eat before I die.  Koribune weed soup and a leg of romarn chicken."

        Sarah smiled thinly, transparently frazzled and looking as though a few weeks of straight sleep could do her a nigh galaxy of good, and replied, worn, "I'll do what I can, Mister King, but please try to understand."  She thought, briefly, on adding something, anything, to the open end of her response, but allowed tact and maturity to take her back under their twin arching wings, and smiled, turning and fingering her eyes in a soothing fashion.  A slightly desperate frown came as she returned to the kitchen, having decided t'would be she who prepared the food while servers and lesser cooks drifted into the night and to cozy homes awaiting them, and she paused at the door. 

        A small mirror had been nailed into place on the side of the doorframe, glinting reflective shades, and in its superficial depths she could see herself, a handsome woman with dark hair and strong eyes, but there were wrinkles beginning to web from her eyes in the sleepless bags beneath them.  As faint as the wrinkles in her otherwise healthy and unblemished skin, a faint spray of pepper grey tousled her brown hair, just a few strands peeking from the ruffled hem of her bunched cap.  She was, she realized with a sinking tug in her heart, just a year short of forty and though it was to be expected, she had somehow not been prepared for the inevitability of aging.

        The door swung open, nearly swatting her in the face, and gave her decent reason to step back, surprised and pulled back into the clumsy intricacies of life's unending mechanics, and she offered a gentle smile to the horrified worker apparently preparing to leave the inn.  The spry teenager apologized repeatedly, frantic and anxious as he gave her a look that explained it had truly been an accident, which she had not doubted, and she shook her head in firm denial of his near breathless pleas for forgiveness.  "You didn't mean to," she defined kindly, earning a relieved gasp, "and no harm was done, anyway.  Be a little more careful in the future, okay?" 

        The boy nodded and, smiling broadly, moved slowly to the exit, keeping himself from hurrying out as he obviously wished to in a form of nonverbally wanting to know if it really was all right.  "Just go, shortie," she laughed, teasing and popping her palm lightly against the back of his head, "and hurry if you want to catch the bullyadous tram down there."  He nodded again and jogged around the edges of the room in the direction of the front double doors, vanishing into the gradually dampening air, and she caught the kitchen's swinging door with her hand, holding it open for herself.  "Boys," she sighed affectionately, shaking her head in a mock display of disdain before ducking once again into the waiting kitchen.

        Fewer people remained in the kitchen as the bustling day drew to a close with a deep heave of air, and the smaller amount of workers in the kitchen made it that much easier to sweep across the floor to an abandoned stretch of counter near where Emeshul was frenetically topping off a whipped dessert.  It was, so far as she could tell while plucking a pot from the hanging rack chained to the mildly smoke-blackened ceiling, his last order to complete before he could peel off his stained apron and gather his things like several of her employees were doing, leaving with full guests out to the night.  She smiled, feeling a stressed knot in between her shoulders start to gradually fade, and moved to the sterilizing basin, pushing her sleeves up past her elbows before she was to thrust her hands into the water. 

        "Emeshul, can you reach the jar of koribune and set it out for me?" she called, studying her fingers under the lapping diamond liquid and reluctantly pulling her hands from it.  As she could hear the professional, for the most part, amphibian rustling through one of the countless cupboards, she permitted herself a moment's anxious checking of her palms and wrists for any wrinkles or lines and was happy to find none.  "Thank-you," she smiled quickly, hastily returning to her chosen spot.

        "We have no more than twenty minutes left, Miss Hawkins," he warned, lifting amidst tender care the crystal goblet he had layered the dessert in with both practice and a mechanical perfection short of artistry and finesse.  "I don't think you'll have enough time to really make anything of value."  He moved gingerly to the solitary door, gripping the creamy goblet sternly and ducking from a stout woman rushing to the back where the workers' personal items were protectively stored.

        "I think I can handle it," Sarah said in a murmur to herself as well as no one, reaching for a heavy pitcher whose contents she could pour into the dark pot before her.  She did so, watching clinically the nearly hypnotic way in which it swirled and burbled into the pot, and tipped the pitcher back away from the pot's sturdy metal edge, placing the crafted porcelain gently in the spot she had taken it from.  A few idyllic, but busy, minutes passed as she dipped the glimmering fire-red foliage in the collected water to soften the steely fibers knitting the weeds into the wiry strength that made them difficult to cook and prepare for nigh anything.  Her hands occupied with the task of jerking and tearing the weeds into a manageable collection of shreds to be dropped as a haze in the water staining red by the natural dye woven through the plants as coloring, she breathed out and closed her eyes to the quiet ripping sounds. 

        It seemed strange that she felt peculiarly lonely, what with the work force of various peoples that was rapidly dwindling as they retreated to the broader world outside, and she felt marginally worried at the recognition that it had been years since she had felt truly content.  Jim was gone, doing his sovereign duty as a naval captain and sating that itch bled into his soul that sought for things new and wondrous.  Doppler, too, was no longer seen with the frequency of years past, finding his paws full with dealings as a first mate of sorts and the worrying father of at least four distinct children.  The thought brought a smile to her face, imagining the wearying antics they undoubtedly tormented their poor father with, and thereby amused their almost tyrannical mother, but it also served to remind her of her own loneliness.

        With a muted sigh, she bit her lower lip lightly, pulling forcefully to rip the last painfully strong ribbon of koribune in two, and cast the halves to float in twirling wafts to the tranquil surface below, sparking ripples and sinking just so into the reddened water.  This is absurd, she thought with a sad smile as she tried to cheer herself up and failed quietly, wanting to remind her own mind of the people still left to her, those who had always frequented the Benbow and it seemed always would.  Were they not her friends?  Of course, she conceded, nodding her head and sprinkling a delicate rain of spice into the waiting soup, pulling a large bowl of assorted vegetables to her side and sorting out the ones she would use.  I'll always have them, and she did her best to ignore the insistent pangs inside that belied her internal reassuring litany, plopping a string of sliced vegetables down to splash and capsize alongside the mesh of mingling koribune.

        Tipping in a collection of meat cuts that she pried from a large icebox in the back finished the cold preparation of the soup and she grasped the gritty handles firmly against her palms, lifting it off the counter and maneuvering it to a boiler sandwiched 'tween two kilns.  Sarah slid it with some effort onto the waiting grid, blowing a soft breath out with a soft murmur in it.  A sharp twist of the dial that would bring up the solar heat brought the makings of the soup as close to being done as she could do for the moment.  She brushed her hands down her apron, a look of lost hesitation creasing her features in a pretty expression echoing the weary emotions tearing around within her chest.  How was it she could be surrounded by people who cared for and respected her, and yet feel as though she had been abandoned, empty and tired?

        She held a hand to her mouth, lips thinning under the touch of her fingertips, and was frozen, gazing miserably at the wall as the last of the workers carefully untied her apron and flung it on top of the hamper of articles to be cleaned.  "Have a good evening," she whispered, tucking her hand up her face, filtering the smooth tips of her fingers through her limp bangs.  A laugh came then, at odds with her sudden emptiness, and she recovered the confidence that had preserved her for nearly fifteen years, shaking her hand from her face.

        Pity of any sort would do naught for her and she rolled her shoulders, determined to use the last nine minutes left to their fullest, bringing the obnoxious Mister King his meal and checking on the unusually scant number of individuals renting rooms in the inn as soon as the dining hall was to be closed.  As she moved to one of the iceboxes, in search of the large, dumpy sort of mindless fowl known as the romarn chicken, she wondered, briefly, on how it was she could be so composed for the sake of others and be vulnerable when she was on her own. 

        She thoughtfully tapped the soft rubber pad at the corner of the counter's farthest outreach and a thousand sounds of clicking, whirring, spiraling came as automated robots burst from their hiding spots, blinking foggy eyes and moving to the preprogrammed chores and destinations assigned each.  It was a funny glimpse into reality, seeing the small plated creations powering across the floor and through the grudging door, spilling out to the glowing dining area in single purpose to clean or scoop or wash all they could before they would retire to their obscured cubbies in the kitchen.

        Once she had flecked off the slimed, filmy skin on the admittedly large bird leg, she glanced up to see Emeshul entering hesitantly though the door, wiping his small webbed hands in the spattered shades of white of his apron.  "I'm nearly done," she called to him across the glimmering, heated expanse of the kitchen.  Her nimble, practiced fingers rolled out a layer of bread crumbs and, pinching the two ends of the leg easily with her uneven fingernails, she forced the chilled wet meat onto the gravel bread, twisting it over to create a layering on the swell of the leg.  "If you don't mind, would you please out the koribune," she inclined her chin toward the open jar, rolling her shoulder up to wipe across her cheek in absent dismissal of a small stain, "back in the cabinet?  I just need to finish this and I can start closing up."  Shaking the heavy bit of romarn chicken, sending a few reluctantly clinging crumbs to wobble on the wooden counter, she glanced down the length of the bar as her amphibious companion padded over the foot-worn floorboards and she claimed a moderately sized terracotta dish.

        Fitting the leg into the dish and settling it firmly betwixt the stern walls of the hard ruddy clay, Sarah moved to place it in a kiln, the fires in most having been extinguished by the workers now gone, and she flinched her hand back the moment before her cream-colored fingers could brush the fiery grill in it.  A small log was filched out of the wire holdings kept under the kiln, in a thin space used to store firewood, and she carefully propped the log to accent and heighten the hypnotically flickering fire heating the kiln and the food she had placed in on the grill.  There was an odd feel in the air as she gazed at the flames for a few entranced seconds, an uncomfortable atmosphere not caused by the piercing, stifling heat touching her front, and she turned, a half shuffle around in her slippers, heels scraping over the floorboards.  "Emeshul?" she asked slowly, seeing a knot in his posture that put her ill at ease.

        "Miss Hawkins," he eventually began in a voice fraught with a nervous hesitation, holding lightly the now closed jar of koribune, "I wish to inform you…that is to say, I am," he trailed off.  An expression of helpless concentration flitted over his squashed features as she checked the pot and found it burbling gaily, ready to be moved from the boiler in a hurried fashion whilst she waged futile battle with time's clawing restraints.  "Well," Emeshul began anew, shoving the jar into a desolate cabinet and swinging shut the polished wooden door, "this is somewhat difficult to say, and I really don't find myself happy with it."  He paused as second time, all but wringing his hands together, the fine sheen of wetness ever present on his smooth skin just a bit brighter, and she waited patiently as she moved the pot from the boiler to rest on a swath of used towels on the counter.

        Finally, eh straightened his normally bowed back in a stubborn manner, as though perhaps a steel rod had been threaded along and merged with his gelatinous spine, and Emeshul intoned in a voice that quaked but a little, "I will be taking leave of the Benbow Inn come the end of the 'morrow."  When she stilled, drawing her hands from the pot absently, perhaps out of conditioned response, he continued despairingly, softly, "I am first and foremost a spacer, Miss Hawkins, and of our – your – guests this eve offered me place as cook.  Said his previous was planning to stay on at Montressor."  He stopped and watched the collected aura that seemed to envelope Sarah, and she smiled sadly at his next words.  "I truly am sorry, Miss Hawkins," he spoke carefully, an upset tone in his voice, "but I can't hardly refuse.  Against my nature, ma'am."

        "Oh, it's fine," she replied almost forcibly, waving a dissuasive hand through the choking warm air she was so accustomed to.  "Really, it's perfectly all right.  I thought it was coming one day, anyway, and I'm sure you'll wow 'em something good, won't you?"  Her voice's texture adopted a friendly note of teasing and his face visibly sagged, obviously relieved and swamped through with a whole elation she had to admit he did not often seem to feel.  "Could you please just make sure the overnighters get to their rooms before you go?"  She smiled thinly, forcing a bright expression onto her tired features, and Emeshul nodded excitedly, nearly bowing with the childish happiness he fairly radiated at the prospect of returning to the etherium so many loved entirely.

        Only after he was gone did she allow her smile to fade into a quiet look that meant an ocean of depth but would take hours to even dream of deciphering, and Sarah whispered in her slippers to the kiln, drawing the warmed terracotta dish out and placing it gently on a black platter.  Stiffly, and very self-contained, she began to smoothly, automatically, ladle out large, dripping spoonfuls of the soup to slosh in a cradling bowl until it came just shy of brimming and spilling over.  It felt, deep in the soles of her feet where she could feel her pulse pounding, locking in the corner of her shoulder blades and at the base of her neck where the bundle of nerves and muscles sighed painfully once again, like every part of her wanted to simply give up.  She could tell she had grown weary over the years, tired of seeing people come to stay for days or weeks or months only to gather their scant belongings together and hitch a ride on the next ship to pull in on the docks or port at the ever-lit Crescentia glittering white in the sky.

        She wanted something different than that, Sarah realized as she hoisted the serving platter into her grip, positioning it out of half present memory along the crooks of her elbows; she wanted something stable, something she could trust and lean on when the occasion allowed, such as the Benbow, but preferably alive.  She smiled, almost laughing at herself, and wove to the door, balancing the platter – wielding it with the greatest degree of care – and slowly inching the thick wooden barrier aside with a push of her hip.  The thought occurred to her that perhaps she felt loss inside not at the constant shifting of lives and people around her, but maybe that she feared being left alone, completely and irreversibly abandoned by people she grew attached to.

        She would welcome people such as just a few more customers who would not behave in as blatantly exasperating a manner as Mister King.  He had left his table in what she could wryly assume was a huff, the silverware piled carelessly to the side, folding cloth napkin thrown into a miniature tent displayed lopsidedly close to the center on the green tablecloth.  His chair had been twisted aside, arrogantly granting her a peek at the seat he had occupied and left some time during the few ten-and-so minutes she had used as best she might in hopes of finishing the meal to his snippy liking.  She had obviously been judged as failing before she could even bring to him the dish he had complained about, and with a tired, amused sigh, she gently pushed the platter onto the table.  She slid it lightly into a position where it graced the core flatness of the table, the napkin's tailored edge pinned beneath the not exceptionally awesome weight.

        Smiling a little at nothing notable at all, she seated herself with a carol of subdued murmurs from her skirts and apron brushing against one another and striking the bendable hoops swirled around her legs to keep her skirts in a ladylike presentation of a drooping flower, and she propped her elbow on her knee.  She took a moment to straighten the fold of her attire out, smoothing her palm down the cotton folds, and she rested the sturdy contour of her chin in the curved dip where her fingers curled lazily in to tap right below the pale pink shell of her lower lip.  Somehow it was telling that, though Mister King still annoyed her and she still pretended quite effectively that he did not, he really never struck her as malicious or mean-spirited in the things he often said or did.

        Her eyes fluttered shut, briefly plummeting her world into an amalgam of smell and sound: the soup sang of simplicity, the faint spicy smell of the koribune blended with a tangy saltiness; countless shifting clicks and buzzes followed the unseen movements of the steadily working robots, clearing the last scraps of food and taking away emptied glasses and plates; and there was the quite feminine fragrance that the mostly female workforce spread by way of vastly spritzed perfume and mere presence in the currently empty dining hall.  This was what she perceived as normal, these scents and sound she recognized day by day, used to and accepting each as part of the regular stream of her persisting life, and she opened her eyes to see the daintily glazed wall opposing her seat.

        She turned to face the twirled chair across the table and leaned over, grasping swiftly the handle of the fork left behind and tugging it out of the small, clumsy pile formed by articles of silverware, and the slender brunette followed by simply flipping the rest of the utensils over to herself.  She twisted the fork in her hand, spiraling it momentarily about, and stabbed the haunch of meat with the rows of glinting prongs, delicately severing enough of the breaded, sweetly moist chicken to sufficiently fill her mouth.  Lips pursing as she scraped it from by the fork by using her teeth, Sarah closed her eyes again and smiled quietly.

-

        The winds had picked up by mid-morning, a loud roar that banged the shutters like tiny echoes of thunder that quivered shingles and shook the smallest lengths of wall with the rising force of each blow.  The two or three guests who had not left at dawn were holed up in their respective rooms, timidly wanting to wait out this taste of coming monsoons.  It would be a mere matter of weeks until the raining season exploded into presence, the clouds piling into ominous mountains of shaded blackness aloft in the sky; the swelling clouds would be twisted into a whipped darkness growling as they prepared to expound an ocean of screaming crystal rain that would flood the arid deserts and form a shallow sea of about a foot at the plateau's base.  Skies would blacken and dust would slowly cascade and melt into a fine silt that would ooze up beneath each step, no matter how light, a wet humidity forming to encircle in a welcome embrace until the crushing sinkholes and whirlpools would be born in the last three months of the storming season.

        She hurried as she half ran, half strolled down the long stairs, certain that she had discerned a breathless, frantic knocking at the barred front door, a nearly obscured sound just a hint different in rhythm and texture from the sorrowful howling that spun together the clattering, weeping wind.  Nearly tipping over, her slippered foot trodding on the doubled hem of her dark blue skirt, Sarah raised a hand to check that her modesty cap was securely drawn tight about her thick brown locks and untucked her skirt from below her foot on the honey glaze of the last step. 

        "Coming," she called loudly, clearly, and she stepped lightly off the final step, striding as quickly as she could in a rustle of skirts to the heavily barred front door.  No windows were granted view into the dining hall, amber drapes kept tied with gold tasseled rope and sunlight shining through the drapes in shafts of glowing light, and so she did not know whom it was she would open the door to see.

        The heavy wooden block set firmly in the locking slots was lifted with relative ease, for Sarah had spent many years waging war with several objects of similar weight, including a notably excitable son of five years, and she grasped the smooth oak handle, tugging strongly.  It swung open with nary a creak, quietly powerful as it moved in a semicircle loop along its unmoving brass hinges, and she took a sliding step backwards, glancing up before she peered around the door, blue eyes snapping wide open.  "Oh my Lord!" she gasped, a horrified note in her voice as a small young woman silently shuffled out of the wind tousling her black hair frenetically about, bouncing her tiny babe absently on her shapely hip.  "Rosa!"

        "I'm very sorry, Miss Sarah," the girl, a Tentaclan barely old enough to constitute as a woman, whispered, slender fingers playing in the swath of her daughter's shaggy, downy hair.  "I mean, I don't want to trouble you," and she broke off, dabbing a fingertip – scarred where her species' trademark miniature suction cups had been sliced off – to the swollen bleeding of her lower lip.  The child, too young to even be a year in age, burbled and wiggled small fingers in the air as though to welcome with a sort of youthful wondering the passage of wind before the door was thrust shut and the crazed breeze fell to naught.

        "Robert and I fought again," Rosa started a second time, taking a subdued seat that the older woman directed her to.  "I can't even remember over what.  I grabbed Mandi," here she gently bounced her ruby-skinned infant, the innocent head turning to gaze wide-eyed at Sarah, who managed to dredge up a kind smile, "and we spent the last few hours hidin' in Benbow isself."  Mandi shifted pointedly in her mother's tender grip, chubby knee brushing a spot along the pretty, bruised Tentaclan's ribs and causing her to wince, thin hand flying up to clutch lightly at the place beneath the silky cloth of a torn yellow slip.  "Could we stay here, please?" she asked, voice falling into a whisper again as her happily, nonsensically babbling daughter waved her arms out to be lifted by the maternal innkeeper.

        "You know you can stay here as long as you need to," Sarah confided in a careful, mothering voice.  She smiled, earning in reply a hesitant twitch of the other woman's busted lips, and continued, with a soft tone, "Do you want to tell me what he did to you, Rosa?"  Her thumb swept away a few humidity crinkled strands of hair from the sharp, narrow face watching her miserably, a soothing gesture she had been comforted with by her own mother and used in turn to quiet Jim when he was but a toddler.

        Mandi, tired of being ignored by the human woman she was reaching sweetly out to, reminded the older women of her continued presence, crying, "Ah, ah!"  She pursed her slitted lips, pupil-less black eyes widening with the full depth of her begging emotion, and blew a quick succession of bubbles that popped as swiftly as they appeared, the thin gills - a remnant from the centuries long ago, before large masses of Montressor land dried into desert and the climate gradually changed from normal fluctuation to dual extreme season  - on her neck flaring as warning to an approaching tantrum.  "Uhn," she whimpered, arms straining forward, "uhn."

        "Oh, you better take her, Miss Sarah," Rosa managed, voice still soft to keep from jarring her wounded lip.  "She won't stop until she gets what she wants."  She turned the tiny, hiccupping child around, settling the small weight off of her hip and onto her knee, and caressed the sharp point of her daughter's ear, bringing a surprised look to the pudgy face and a respite from the coming sobs.  A sad, inexplicable smile touched Rosa's angled features, as though she was not letting her daughter go for only a moment, and she whispered a quiet, foreign word to her child, one that sounded as a drifting wind falling silent after days of enraged blowing.

        Sarah smiled welcome to the paused, but still grasping vainly child and, resting her hand comfortably if firmly under her upraised arms, tugged her softly up from the sleekly skirted knee she had rested temporarily on.  "Hello, cutie," she grinned comically, pressing a quick smack to the round swell that was Mandi's cheek, "you're looking absolutely adorable today."  Mandi laughed, peals of baby giggles rumbling in honey sweet echo, and she waggled her fingers over the smooth skin on Sarah's face, rows of miniscule, barely visible suction cups tickling her chin and nose as fingertips passed across.  "Be careful, Mandi, I'm not sure if I'm ticklish or not."

        Mandi replied with an upturned nose and friendly raspberry, her cherry vibrant shoulders quivering under the rough cotton of her engulfing shirt, and she continued with a cacophony of disconnected noises, a noisy thread woven from a few confiding rolls of her lips and mismatched syllables.  She became, for just a moment, the focus of both gazes, and she was obviously pleased to be such, raising her voice and ducking her nose into the dipping curve of Sarah's lower neck, mumbling incomprehensible babbles into the modest collar there.  "Mah, uhn," she smiled brightly, pulling back with her short dark hair swept accidentally to form a set of rapidly flattening spikes and whorls.

        "What did Robert do?" questioned Sarah, keeping the query cautiously hemmed with a loving tone so as to avoid possibly upsetting the infant.  Her palm rubbed affectionately along Mandi's small, sharp nose, inciting a silly burble to burst free of tiny lips, and she leveled a protective, demanding gaze on Rosa, whose responding look was not so much defiant as despairing, clearly not wanting to discuss it.  "Oh, don't worry about it, Rosa," she said hastily, regretting her dismissal of her own question but knowing better than to push the subject.  "Just…tell me later, okay?  You shouldn't be suffering.

        "Anyway," she forced a bright note, jogging Mandi – who laughed and clapped her hands awkwardly, freely together – up playfully, "I'm going down to the Benbow bazaar in a few minutes.  With the storms coming, I needed to take the bullyadous and the wagon with me to stock up on at least an extra month's worth of supplies before the market's packed up and moved out of the Flatlands."  Sarah smiled down at Mandi.

        "Please bring Mandi with you," Rosa blurted anxiously, eyes flickering with the pale worry painted into her wan expression.  "It's just," she hesitated, leaning forward to tenderly graze her hand in a lingering fashion down her babe's face, "Mandi hasn't been gettin' a lot of healthy air lately, an' it'd do her a world of good."

        Sarah paused, thinking as Mandi slowly glanced, curious, between her mother and the friendly woman she was snuggling close to, and the youthful infant made a questioning sound, rocking up to judge her holder's face better.  "Sure," agreed the brunette, tapping a dulled fingernail to the dainty, flecked tip of Mandi's nose.  "It'll be fun, won't it, Mandi?"

-

        It grew into a game they together developed, she and Mandi, as the child swiveled quickly about in Sarah's arm, pointing at things that snagged her infant fancy, and the woman laughed, bouncing her lovable burden with affectionate teasing.  The bazaar had many things, as well as many people, to bring attention to themselves at the chubby, extended finger of the small Tentaclan, shining wares and piled foodstuffs effectively attracting the usual near-bursting population of shop-goers and the occasional wandering tourist.  By no means were the crowded, though wide, streets of the makeshift market a place to lead a plodding, bored bullyadous hitched to a large wagon, and so he had been left with the sturdy wagon to feast on speckled oats in the pens reserved for the many beasts of burden.  Protective canvas awnings muttered shuffling conversations where the winds, tossing building clouds ever nearer to a storming pitch, slapped the hanging fringes to a cavalcade of movement and inconsistent sound.

        "Da!" Mandi ordered, stabbing her red finger pompously at the glaring noon sun, her eyes and face turning up to better gaze at the heated source of daylight.  "Da?" she repeated, blinking her eyes rapidly as tiny white dots appeared where a human's pupils would be, the white dilating in a manner of mentioned pupils, and she lifted fisted hands to her face.  Rubbing forcefully at her wounded eyelids, her as of yet round face tilting back down toward Sarah's shoulder, she mumbled a piteous noise, wiping her fatty fists strongly over her eyes, and gave a miserable look to her current guardian.  "Da mahm," she stated mournfully as explanation.

        "That's the sun, Mandi," laughed Sarah, jiggling the still whimpering babe nestled 'twixt waist and hip, and she stroked her hair comfortingly.  "See?  The sun is very bright, so we shouldn't look too closely at it."  She bounced Mandi again, receiving a spiteful burble and sloppy kiss to her cheek in return, and she checked, swiftly, to see that the rapidly formed ivory pupils had contracted, vanishing back into the infinite pooling black of her innocent irises.  "We don't want you to go blind, now, do we?  Of course we don't, because," Mandi giggled as she was once more bounced, "what would," another bounce birthed forth a happy laugh, "your mother think of that?"  She gently tickled her fingers on the sensitive red skin between the dark, pearlescent eyes, and the child cooed in a most questioning manner, tiny hands wrapping around the larger wrist to draw the offending fingers down to her mouth.  "You have such pretty eyes, too, and please don't bite me."

        Obliviously, the one cut tooth in Mandi's small, warm mouth clamped over a finger, pinning it nearly painfully under gum and over solitary tooth, and Sarah made a scolding noise deep in her throat, carefully extracting her stinging finger along with its partners from her mouth.  Mandi warbled protest, reaching out with, "Nngh," for the unintentional teething toys.  After a moment weaving through the undulating crowd proved she was not going to regain her mortal prizes, she quickly became disinterested, murmuring nonsense to herself and craning her head about to see the iridescent dryness of summer Montressor.  "Da," she gaped joyfully, her tooth pale in her dark pink maw as she pointed eagerly at a swarthy Canine, babbling with breathless awe to herself.

        "Silly," Sarah teased, spotting a familiar face gabbing easily with a potential customer from behind a small booth table displaying an array of silky cloths and delicately sewn apparel.  "Missus Dunwoody," she called over the distance, firmly prying a curlicue of her dark hair from an insistently probing chubby hand that sulkily retreated.  "I thought you didn't like selling at the bazaar!"  Adjusting her grip around Mandi's small torso, the pair of rounded knees pressing very lightly into her abdomen, she swerved through the continuously shifting crowd to meet the well-known patron of the Benbow, and smiled at the constantly finagling expression that remained on the alien's face.  "Say hello to Missus Dunwoody, Mandi," suggested Sarah gently and Mandi, suckling on her thumb, yodeled around the appendage all but filling her tiny mouth.

        "Have a lovely day, Miss Harper," the many-tentacled alien said in a bright voice, waving two of her many arms in congenial dismissal of the youthful being of undetermined breed.  "Ah, Missus Hawkins, Janet told me the inn was closed today, don't touch that, please," she stiffly plucked a green satin bonnet out of an eagerly leaning Mandi's wriggling grasp, "and Herbert's been complaining that I ought to try selling out here before the rain starts.  This dust is murder on my allergies, though."  She sneezed daintily by way of example, touching a wafting arm to her flat nose in as ladylike a manner as she could.  Primly folding the bonnet she had saved from the dubious threat of ham-handed Mandi, her other invertebrate arms proceeded to marginally rearrange her decisively feminine display.  "Is that a cotton cap you are wearing, Missus Hawkins?" she demanded after a few seconds filled with the rambling sounds of Mandi, no small degree of horror in her shrill voice.

        "Yes," Sarah conceded gingerly, tucking aside the deviant strand Mandi had pulled free just a minute before.  Once an uncomfortably recognizable gleam alighted on Mrs. Dunwoody's face, she made a soft gasp of understanding and swiftly added in meager hopes of cutting off the foreboding sales pitch, "I really prefer my cottons ones over these – lovely bonnets you have set out," the lime green alien was suitably flattered and preened in response, "and I don't think I need any silk caps at all." 

        Mandi, annoyed at being ignored, turned in a peeved fashion and wrinkled her face as though preparing for a good cry, gaining herself a displeased glower from the very proper Mrs. Dunwoody.

        Shrugging off an ensuing puzzled look from the Tentaclan babe, the gaudily lipstick'ed gossipmonger-slash-businesswoman answered Sarah with a disbelieving sniff, "Nonsense!  What woman has no need for a good silk cap?  Forgive me for tooting my own horn, as the youths of today might put it, but I staunchly insist I have the finest women's headwear in all of Benbow, God forgive my arrogance, and you must wear one."  She whipped the green satin bonnet back out from its spot at the bottom of a newly formed stack, twisted the feminine bit of headgear open, and had effectively removed Sarah's meticulously tied cap before she could scoot a word in edgewise.  "Don't touch that," Mrs. Dunwoody snapped severely, upsetting Mandi as one of many tentacles firmly jerked the chosen bonnet about Sarah's head, gracelessly pinning her tumbling brown locks in a state of half-fallen grace.

        With a soft, choking gasp and a rising whine that sounded quite ominously in her small throat, Mandi's midnight eyes slitted prophetically in the scant seconds preceding the unstoppable onslaught of childish tears.  "Mabwa da-uhm," she burbled, chest heaving dramatically as the first fat tear slid in a dooming fashion down her cheek, and from there it was but a simple matter for her to unleash the full tempest of her sorrow.  The foremost shriek was a relative strip of harmony in clinical comparison to the wailing, soul-injured screams that sadly traipsed a lonely echo striking painfully in Sarah's flinching ear, drawing countless gawking stares from the shuffling passerby.

        "Mandi, please," Sarah tried, almost in a faltering tone of begging as the saleswoman forcibly pulled her near, stubbornly adjusting the bonnet with a critical eye.  "Missus Dunwoody," she switched tracks, trying to hold the sobbing, squirming child and simultaneously dissuade her purpose-filled friend, "please, I'm only here to buy supplies."  She would very well have continued to plea had it not been for three of Mrs. Dunwoody's slithering arms slapping on either side of her face, surprising her and jerking her head down sharply so that the Benbow native could swiftly and easily smooth the fabric over her bunched hair.  Remarkably, with the equilibrium and horizon of the world suddenly shifting, Mandi silenced herself into a blissful state of glee, at odds with the ground as she was thrust to a precarious angle threatening to pitch her free of the protective arm wound about her middle.

        Smooth leaf-colored skin darted across a wrinkle in the satin, rubbing it out and sliding to knot the embroidered threads into a lovely bow just below her chin.  "Nearly done," spoke Mrs. Dunwoody as Mandi giggled happily.  "Really, you can certainly afford a few silky things, Missus Hawkins; you have more than enough money.  Why, you're practically wealthy now, aren't you?  Doubtless, and isn't this a perfect charm.  Why do these threads keep tangling?"  Muttering and still holding Sarah's soft, but rectangular face hostage, she tugged her cheek to the left and, quite without meaning to, caused Mandi to finally slip completely out of the guarding arm that had thus far kept her safely balanced.

        Somehow, as the beings closest gaped in shock, Sarah managed to yank free of Mrs. Dunwoody's loosening grasp and catch a crazily giggling Mandi by her arms, hastily hoisting her into a much calmer embrace close to her chest.  When finally she had sufficiently recovered her breath, she delivered an indignant, swelling glare to the horrified and startled gossipmonger, petting the back of her charge's downy head as much to reassure herself as to comfort the child.  "Missus Dunwoody, that is quite enough!" she cried, every maternal thread in her body ablaze with righteous fury, sheltering ire nearly explosive in the glints of her blue eyes.  "I do not want, need, or care about silk caps, especially when my good, old, raggedy cotton ones work better!"

        An offended look crossed the sallow lime face of the woman facing her, as if she had bitten into something extremely sour, and she slapped her arms back, haughtily sniffing the dusty air she had so proclaimed as stressing her allergies.  "Missus Hawkins," she spoke icily, her nasal, vibrating tone made a bit more wobbling in texture by her irrational defense, "I think you're overreacting a little."

        The bonnet slid punctually from her hair, plummeting to land airily in the ever-present dirt underfoot as a drifting mist of swirling pale brown dust was idly blown from the ground by a premature squall wind, and Sarah could find no words apt enough to describe how she felt.  A curious mumble came from the tiny lips of Mandi, lost in that darkly whispering wind, and she lurched up, coming close to clambering over the straight curve of her current watcher's shoulder, an expression of captivated delight contorting her developing features.  Too frustrated to dare speak of the grievous insult Mrs. Dunwoody had taken sternly to heart, she cupped a hand at the base of Mandi's gently dipping spine and switched the child's position with ease, changing it about so they were both watching the stuffily upset alien.  A keening protest came forth out of the cherry mouth of Rosa's daughter as Sarah calmly stooped by the lightly dirtied bonnet, scooping it up into her free hand and shaking it out before silently handing it to Mrs. Dunwoody, who glowered coolly.

        Mandi persisted in her attempts to pluck herself free, first turning one way and then the other, trying to turn about to her earlier stance as she babbled anxiously in the universal gibberish talk of all infants and pointed wildly again.  Sarah sighed, rubbing her palm along the stretch of the child's shoulder blades relaxingly, and deciding she had little to lose if she resumed their game, twisted around to see whatever had excited the eleven-month bundle so.  In the beginning moments, as she tried to ignore the saleswoman snippily whispering at her back, she could see naught other than the expected swell of shoppers in various ethnic and ranking dress.  "Let's go do what we came here for, okay?" she sighed again, taking a single quick step and immediately freezing when Mandi perked up with excellent timing, stabbing her round finger out decisively.

        There was a flicker like that of sunlight catching on smooth metal as she prepared to continue moving, and she paused to lean aside, squinting to see over the distance to the other side of the market street, Mandi smugly rambling.  She was certain she had seen metal and that would not have been odd as several booths marketing jewelry and the ilk were erected in the bazaar's fenced region, but for some reason it had struck her briefly as being out of place.  After a watchful, paused moment, she caught the glint again, this time managing to fix her eyes on it and frowning as several loudly chattering Benbonians passed before her, cutting off what she had been sparked into looking at curiously.

        "Oh for pity's sake," she grumbled, smiling at the broadly grinning babe still happily speaking meaningful nonsense, "I must have gotten God angry, huh, Mandi?  We might as well try crossing."  Bouncing Mandi playfully on her hip, causing her musing babble to warp comically, she began cutting a narrow swath through the crowd, sidling her feet through the dirt cautiously as she ducked and swerved with murmuring apologies around balking walkers.  "Careful!" she warned cheerily as Mandi nearly lunged toward a large creature with thousands of golden orbs dangling from his sparkling head.  "Mandi-in-the-Dirt is a dish I'm not looking to make."  Mandi, in sweetest reply, leaned back toward the woman, offering a smacking kiss to press to the hollow of her cheekbone and wrapping one arm for balance at the back of her neck.

        The glimmer came again, on the edge of her vision, and, feeling a sense of guilty self-consciousness for the unusual breakdown in her maturity, she reoriented her direction of travel to slowly move closer to the source of the unnatural light.  Cuddling Mandi close, she slipped tentatively forward and finally was able to see, through the broad fringe of a kiosk offering an immense selection of fruits and bulbous vegetables; she ignored the barker bellowing for customers to bravely step forward to gaze at his wares, and she felt something like a fuzzy, misted recognition claw at her throat when first she could tell that the dully reflecting metal was part of an expansive cybernetic hand gesturing angrily through the air.  Something sounded in the back of her head, a memory bundled neatly away to keep from cluttering her mind, with but a thread of whispered remembrance left she instinctively knew not to pull.

        Mandi's drifting whispers, little pieces of precious nonsensical lyrics, kept her grounded and stemmed shut the growing sense of unease Sarah could feel wrapping slowly in her gut as she spotted several black-cloaked figures of a wide rang of heights and breeds surrounding the figure claiming the hand.  "Mandi, shh," she ordered absently, rocking her in a quieting rhythm. 

        The hand came from the deep recesses of a gray charcoal coat, sliced off at the shoulder where mechanics took over, the owner's face and body obscured by the shady men gathered about whoever it was, and she realized she had taken a quick step back as the recollection slipped out of her grasp.  She could not explain the knotting discontent that arose when she spied the clicking skeletal cybernetic hand fisting and opening, flashing aside in a curt, powerful movement of dismissal, and attributed it to one of the many easily forgotten tales often shared by the spacers visiting Benbow.

        "Yelatos, Missie Hawkins," announced the barker, a brittle Ammonite with random tufts of needles along his puce shell.  "Fifteen pounds for a half bargain, now, five purps a sixpenny bit.  Cheap today, stock up before the start'a autumn!"  His voice had changed as his gaze slid from snagging her attention to bellowing quick, auctioneer phrases so as to draw shoppers nearer, countless uneven red eyes sparkling enticingly in time with deep-voiced speech.

        Derailed thusly for a mere moment or two, she leaned just so over the piled brown yelatos, shifting Mandi slightly to grip her better at the new angle, and trickled her fingertips down the rippled curve of one.  She engaged temporarily in a simple conversation of niceties with a sun-faced woman looking through the perfectly ripe purps.  The easiness of the words did a wonderful job of carefully tucking away her unexplained anxious feelings, as though for some reason even the hinted sign of a cyborg could push her on edge – and the hand could very well have been that of a robot, though she did doubt it for a variety of reasons – and she knew there was a thing relatively important she had forgotten.  Turning to face Mandi, she smiled quickly and stood, only now realizing her hair was utterly at the mercy of the wind, long brown locks exposed by her abnormal lack of a modesty cap, and she clapped her unfilled hand to her thick hair.

        "Missus Dunwoody," she spoke under her breath, not insulting but as in discovery.  "She must still have my cap."  She twisted about, pastel blue slippers made yet another shade of yellowed brown as she moved to pick out the clothing booth on the other side of the street, and Mandi added her sixpence of thought, babbling incoherently and yet somehow wisely.

        It was as she went to find again the familiar green of Mrs. Dunwoody that she found sufficient reason to stop, having caught in the corner of her eye a flurry of activity while the shadowed spacers she had spotted disappeared into the crowd, their very movements speaking of purpose.  Pirates, she thought with a trill of terrified excitement, more the former than the latter, and she impatiently tossed from her that implausible idea; pirates simply did not come to planets like Montressor, too small to have an individual representative in the Imperial Parliament and far too poor to have riches or splendor.  Perhaps what truly caught her eye was the hand's accompanying bits of cybernetic achievement, an appendage attached to an arm that had a confusing puzzle of items in the lower half, and the piston composing the right – shin a metal peg – leg's knee.  What kind of man she wondered with surprise and a degree of distaste, imagining the ghostly waifs as in the spacer tales, would find himself in such need of replacement limbs?

        "Da-mauhm," Mandi giggled, clapping her hands and burying her face, overwhelmed by her energetic happiness, in the soft crook where neck flowed into shoulder.  She whispered a few unintelligible secret's to Sarah's unclothed collarbone and then pulled back professionally, her lips splitting into an enormous grin of sheer wonderment at what was surely life in general whilst her embracing watcher pushed a collection of dark strands out of her inky eyes.

        "Curious fellow, i'in't he?" the barker asked conversationally, allotting himself a breather and hurriedly drinking a cracked glass of water.  "Still, he's awful big, sorta guy you have nightmares about pissin' off.  Reckon he's seen fights that would make the Procyon armada 'shamed of themselves."  He nodded briskly, setting the glass down as his needles bristled in preparation of resuming his yelling job, and added one last comment in before Sarah could do much of anything, "He's looking for the Benbow Inn, actually, so mayhap you'd be of some help, Missie Hawkins?"  The Ammonite grinned, satisfied with his passing of this knowledge, and threw his voice headlong into his career of crying bargains, foods, and prices as loudly as he might and as far as he could.

        "Yelatos, fifteen pounds at half the price!" became the litany supporting her reality as she began picking out large strings of dried vegetables, telling herself there was naught unusual in that someone sought the inn.  Cyborg or no cyborg, if he was from the etherium or elsewhere, it was wholly understandable, or so she told herself in spit of knowing that anyone asking for her inn by name without having been to Montressor was – odd.  And still in the dustiest corner of her mind lurked a patient thought, waiting outside the realm of conscious thought for whenever it would be needed.

        "Mandi, don't stick that in your mouth," she scolded, effectively pushing away any other thoughts though she remained a bit uneasy.  She remembered, as she stuck her fingers into the warm, resistant mouth clamped around a small fruit she had crammed in over her tiny tongue, a night of fire and a dead buccaneer on the floor of her inn.  They were connected by words she had let vanish in the swamping river of forgetfulness, whatever they were, and she sighed, feeling the line of her shoulders drooping as tired exasperation came.  "Well, I'm overreacting now," she laughed gently, tapping her thumb on the chubby incline of Mandi's chin before she tugged the mangled fruit out with a deflating popped sound.

        A peculiar hiss, light and nearly inaudible as she heard it along the edge of her hearing, shifted into the air, releasing form a piston's breath, and as she found herself more preoccupied with digging a second floon berry out of Mandi's mouth, a disarming brogue all but laughed at her, "Are ye havin' yerself some trouble with the littlun?"  She almost turned, but Mandi had a playfully fierce expression, her one tooth jabbed deeply through the sticky skin of the dark orange berry, and as Sarah had one too many memories of an uncooked floon berry's side effects, she had more priority for prying it out.  Mandi shook her head, frowning and sucking her lips in to keep her from taking away the sweet prize, and managed to evade with some success the fingertips picking at her mouth until a large paw descended to pin her head motionless.  "T'ere ya go, pup," the voice continued, an amused quality to it, and she gratefully plucked the berry out of Mandi's shocked mouth.

        "You're going to have a bad tummy-ache," she informed the pouting babe, using the wrist of her sleeve to dab away a trickle of stick floon juice.  "Thank you," she started next, turning to face her unwitting savior as the barker's heavy voice continued to extol the virtues of his naturally grown selection.  Sarah felt her limbs stiffen, clutching Mandi a little tighter, not quite with horror or malignant fear, but with an off-guard surprise at the sight of a slitted golden eye set into a hardy bear-like face, and she blinked several times before remembering her manners.  "Sorry," she apologized, nearly sheepish while that unnatural eye slid shut in a metal curve.  "But thank you.  If Mandi had swallowed that," she let it hang forebodingly, giving a mock-glare to the sulking child.

        "T'is only what any man should do," he replied in his lilting, disarming voice, sweeping a tri-corner hat from his brow and bowing his head forward slightly in a flattering manner.  She smiled a little, as Mandi uttered a fascinated syllable of curiosity, and absently grasped a dry yelato in her hand, testing it by habit for any weak spots that might be signs of internal rotting.  "A lovely day t'be out in the open, naow, t'isn't it?" he continued openly, doffing his hat back over the black 'kerchief tied securely over his broad head.

        He was a massive man, a sort of powerful grizzly figure that had her conscious of her own small height, and the right side of his body – from arm and leg to eye and ear – was heavily accented by the presence of cybernetic wires and cylinders hooking artificial metal accessories to his skin.  She could tell, as she had spent many evenings catering to and speaking with spacers, there was a worn strength present, the kind many etherium-faring men and women developed through months and years of continuous traveling.  For a quiet moment between his words and her reply, she thought she could see a constant thread of tampered menace kept carefully in check, a thing she found oddly bewildering in place of silently threatening, but when she blinked, and spoke, it was gone and she wondered if it had ever been there at all.

        "Yes, it is pretty today," she agreed, motioning to one of the stall's workers for a large wicker basket, "but it'll be raining soon."  She took the basket with her loose hand, accepting the weave and stepping cautiously backward after easing Mandi protectively to the side, and began quickly dropping the dried vegetable strips she had chosen in it along with yelatos.  "I owe you a few pennies," she called to the man seated in a small chair back from the stall, glancing woefully at the two berries squashed unceremoniously in the dirt. 

        The cyborg man beside her made a sound like a deep laugh, his skeletal hand stretching metal fingers to snatch up a purp, and she lowered her head with a quiet laugh of her own, dropping another yelato into the waiting depths of the cheap woven basket.  "What brings you to Montressor anyway?" Sarah asked, joggling Mandi just enough to prevent another berry incident.  Her asking was a polite norm in meaningless conversation, much like his off-hand comment on the clear weather, and she gave little heed to the quickly thoughtful look that showed on his rough features.

        "Biz'ness, ma'am," he replied following a moment, "only of a most unusual sort, if ye be understandin' the drift I take."  His face had a dual quality to it, easy to broad smiles and exaggerated expression, but she could nearly imagine his not finding much difficulty in sharing anger of a kind; as for now, he was grinning in a most charming fashion, and she was pleased, having gone far too long since meeting a friendly soul.  "An' I don't want to be rude or the like, but I were wond'rin' if ye might know as to where the Benbow Inn rests?" he asked vaguely as Mandi entertained herself with a chorus of raspberry tongues and singsong babbles.

        There was no reason for her to feel anything resembling unease after he asked such an innocent question, but she still kept silent, appearing as though she was considering the query while settling the basket on the dirt, patting Mandi's back.  A soft noise, that of a small blade flicking free of a slick container accompanied by the subdued whirr of gears quickly twisting, and she glanced through a gravity-drawn tangle of her usually bound dark hair.  One of his fingers had flipped away into the shelter of his mechanical arm, exchanging positions with a carefully honed silver knife that he calmly sued to peel off the sturdy skin of the gleaming violet purp, and the cyborg eye was barely visible past his profile turned to her.  She felt, suddenly, as though he was judging her, and not her appearance but what little he could determine from who she was, as if he could almost see strengths and weaknesses writ in the innate body language none could suppress.

        "The Benbow Inn?" queried the barker, heaving a thick breath as he grabbed up another glass of water to cool his sore throat.  "Four more for sixpence," he added, pointing a thin finger at the almost entirely skinned purp before he returned to his original thought.  "You picked the right person to ask.  Missie Sarah Hawkins here," now he pointed at the slender woman balancing the red-shaded Tentaclan, "owns and runs it."  He was again satisfied, nodding his head and retreating, and he swallowed a full lung's swing of air to power his bellowing cries.

        "Aye ya do, do ya?" said the cyborg in an impressed tone, mechanical eye swinging open to reveal a curved strip of bright yellow.  He tossed the skinned fruit from his left hand to the graceful metal of his right, catching it as the blade clicked into shadows and the finger was once more exposed to light.  Holding his natural paw out to her, a lopsided grin appeared on his brown face.  "Name is John Silver," he said by way of introduction, and Sarah felt sure there was more to it than that, for he looked every inch the captain in a way quite unlike Jim or Amelia.  "Me'n my crew, we're lookin' fer a place to be stayin' for abou' a month."

        Mandi clucked her tongue experimentally, testing this new sound she could make, as Sarah shifted her from her left arm to her right elbow, hugging her gently but firmly, and the brunette clasped his hand with surprising strength for a woman her size.  "I'm Sarah Hawkins," she smiled, foot nudging the large basket before her, "as you already know.  And I've closed the inn for the rest of the week, for cleaning and stocking."  She shrugged apologetically, drawing her hand from his much bigger one, and picked free several bunches of oddly colored carrots to drop on the basket's growing pile of food items.

        "Ah, that's a pity, isn't it?" he commented sagely, biting into the soft, peeled purp decisively, and she allowed herself a small sound of agreement.  "Aye," he continued, a crafty glint in his black eye, "we been hearin' many a good word about this place o' yours.  Why, me lads an' I would've been willin' t'even work somethin' while down here on Montressor."  He took another large bite from the purp, the brown pit just barely visible, a rippled brown core stained by the fruit's juice, and feigned indifference though he spared a wink to Mandi, who was straining her fingers out for the half-eaten purp.

        Sarah paused, rubbing her thumb thoughtfully over the rough curve of one of the yelatos and letting it fall into the basket, and absently patted her palm along Mandi's small round thigh, earning a giggling squeak.  "Mister Silver," she started carefully, lifting another one of the many tubers and finding it marginally soft and thusly too soft to be use to her, "do any of the men in your crew happen to cook?  My assistant chef left this morning and I really need a new cook."

        "A cook, ya say?" his muzzle split into a wide grin as his cyborg eye glowed a bright shade of yellow.  "Th' Fates must be smilin' on us both, as I jus' so happen to be somethin' of a cook meself.  My crew won't be stayin' long, though, so if'n--"

        "Cleaning," she interjected, cutting him off effectively as she hoisted the basket with one tensing arm, sliding it over a bare rectangle on the stall's display for it to be weighed by one of the bustling workers.  "I do have a lot of work my robots won't be able to do, and I can let you all have room and board in exchange for labor."  She nodded to the worker who took the basket, rubbing her hand gently along Mandi's shoulder when the child sighed and rested her forehead quietly in Sarah's neck, and began again, turning to face the gleaming cyborg, "My inn is on one of the plateaus to the side of the town," she gestured to a pillar of eroded sandstone topped with spiraling docks and the hardly visible inn itself, "and if you can get there before sundown, that'd be wonderful."

        The bear of a man, swiftly slicing with his teeth the remainder of the purp, grinned in a way that was somehow inappropriately humorless and letting the pit fall to the dirt, said in concurrence, "An honest deal, that, an' I figgered t'at might be yer lovely inn a-nestled way up there."  He tipped the foremost corner of his hat in a most gentlemanly manner, the strange grin still on his swarthy face.  As he turned to leave, to vanish as best he could with his height and build into the swarm of beings, he pulled a shilling piece from somewhere unnoticed, tossing it lightly to the pale wood of the stall.

        "Why," Sarah found reason to ask before he could fully turn from her, the smooth, familiar lines of her palm soothingly stroking the back of Mandi's dozing head, "did you need to ask where the Benbow was if you already knew?"  It hung in the air as he – Silver, she remembered – paused, glancing back over his bulging cybernetic shoulder, metal eye shining an unreadable strip of watchful gold at her in a way that was both neutral and foreboding, and she waited patiently, wanting to know what was no doubt an obvious answer.

        "'T'is a simple t'ing, lady hawk," he replied in his accented voice, disappearing with unexpected ease into the shifting crowd.  "Who would lose hisself the chance t'see a lady as glowin' as yerself?"  And then he was gone, inexplicably unable to be spotted in the crowd except for one early glimpse of a hulking figure in engulfing black, as the peoples of Montressor and spacers from Crescentia blocked him from easy view.

        "Eight'n pounds'n five shillin's, ma'am," a small worker shyly piped up, pushing the weighed basket gently to her, and she started, digging into a pouch sewn to her dress' hemmed waist.  Counting out the proper coins with furious speed, feeling Mandi drawing ever closer to a full headlong sleep, she smiled quickly and exchanged coinage for the relatively heavy basket, grunting nearly unladylike at the added weight when she worked it in to her grasp.

        "Have a wonderful day!" Sarah informed the worker cheerfully, adjusting both Mandi and the groceries with deep care.  Sighing, she mused regretfully to herself, "Might as well finish shopping tomorrow."

-

        "What th' devil did ye blinkin' think ye were doin', Mist'r Harltan?" Silver asked in his best conversational captain voice, which consisted for the most part of yelling and his mechanical arm switching out for deadly implements.  At the moment he had a dangerous cutlass pressing sharply to one of Harltan's four necks, a whetted blade that hovered in constant threat near the gulping jugular in his thin throat, and the cyborg eye widened, spiraling into a deep fiery red that glittered with barely controlled rage.  "We ain't here fer ye t'be tellin' ev'ry daft idiot y'see what we came lookin' for," his voice was raising into a powerful, quelling roar, "an' if ye do the same again, I'll gut ya on th' spot!"  The red glow launched out into a spike, fully spread presentation of the faux eye.

        Harltan promptly broke into a cold sweat as the rest of the crew shifted uneasily, understanding silently that the painful promise was also being made to each and every one of them, huddled on the fringes of the closing bazaar as the sun set in a collapse of brilliant rainbow shades.

        "Now, I found us all a place to be stayin'," he said quietly, rich with a cold note of coming danger, "an' we'll be workin' outta the inn 'til we find the cur and string 'im up by his entrails."  His smile was like tangible ice, a dagger spun of deep and old hate in his dark, animalistic face.  "Don't you be makin' me mad, boys."

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Notes:  Oh, dear - *sighs* very long-winded, no?  I'm not too sure if it's as good as it could have been, but I'm leaving tomorrow and won't be on-line for the next few days, so why not just post the first part?  I did, obviously.  Think I wrote too much?  Do tell.  ^-^  I keep fearing this first part seems contrived...but I'll be explaining and fleshing out more in the next part, don't worry.  On a scarier note, I've been handwriting this and then typing (and editing) it, and I can't feel my left wrist anymore.  Ah well.  Who needs bone marrow anyway?  Also scary is the fact that I didn't get to write everything I wanted to in this part.  Yes, be frightened.  As a last thing, I do know what I'm doing – if there's no explanation for why Silver's on Montressor, it will be eventually revealed.

Joke:  I've been wanting to use 'lady hawk' in a TP story (in reference to Sarah, of course!) for some time now, and I finally have!  The term is taken from the wonderful 1980s movie of the same name, in which a lady and her lover are cursed that, during the day, she is a hawk and by night, he is a wolf.  I love that movie.  ^^

Thanks to everyone who reviewed: western-pegasus (^^ - glad you liked it so much!  I really do love your fic, by the way), Aahz (as fast as I could!), wolfarine (well, I finished part one, even though it feels hurried to me…), JuuChanStar (I've been meaning to read your fic, but I haven't had the time – I will as soon as I can, okay?  ^^), Weirdlet (oh, I certainly hope this was as good as the teaser), Silverfan (continued, and I'm glad you enjoyed), and S.M. (this is the first part!  I've done my best – sort of – and it's up decently soon, no?).  All of your comments are very appreciated.  ^-^

Disclaimer: Alas, I still can't claim any of the characters (other than the ones that are very obviously original), and I apologize for warping them in any way.