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Even for a blind girl, Aekea was easy enough to navigate. The streets were gridded, all the same size, very mechanical, like they had been made for those without sight or people to assist them. She could even cross streets with a semblance of safety - not like it was too dangerous, anyway, since most people walked as well. She could hear their footsteps, where there were any, for it was late in the evening and very few people were out.

Lukia shivered and pulled her jacket close around her. For summertime, the weather was very poor --

A loud crackling noise, like gunfire, caused her to startle; she stumbled and fell to her side, thankfully on the sidewalk (so her investigating fingers told her, finding neat cracks and a grainy texture consistent with concrete). A few moments passed where the only sound was the distant blaring of car horns, a pale reflection somewhere far off of a popular song from an old radio as she caught her breath.

Had it been firecrackers or gunshots? Best to ask; her face turned away from the place she had determined the source, she demanded, "Who did that?!" Her voice was harsh with anger and fear as she got up off the pavement, her long skirts rustling quietly with the painfully slow movement.

"Fireworks?" It had only been fireworks. Nothing to worry about; no need to panic. She ran her fingertips along the lower edge of her blindfold, as if checking to see that it was still there, then she lifted her face towards the voice's origin. Lukia had a vague memory of fireworks as a child - it hadn't been attached to a greater event, and so she didn't care to remember small details - but she remembered the flare of colors with acute precision.

With a sigh, she straightened her hair and pulled her jacket's hood over her head - "No, I have nothing against fireworks, I was just startled," she mumbled, trying to regain her normally icy composure. "You ought to warn people before you do that." Perhaps those who could see clearly did not have to worry about such things, she thought, such things like being able to tell when something will make a loud, startling noise.

She offered her hand to shake. "My name is Lukia," said she, "And you?"

Lukia was only too happy to have her hand back, startled by the chivalrous action and by the tone he was using, and she pressed her palm against her chest as he spoke. "Red and gold," she echoed, trying to imagine it: it conjured an image of two heads close together over a book, but not fireworks. A memory, not a unique image.

She laughed uncertainly and ran her fingers lightly over the sash - it took a moment to find it, but she did. "That's... soft," she said, more than a little surprised. A street performer - the texture of the calluses on his hands told her that was what he was - should probably wear more durable things, in her opinion. Since her feeling on that wasn't requested, she kept her mouth shut.

"I've been here many times," or so she thought, "and I've never heard your firecrackers. Do you travel often?"

"Nothing," said Lukia flatly, perhaps misunderstanding the question; she turned her face away, communicating with the inturned set of her shoulders what she couldn't with her eyes. "I see nothing."

But that sounded too bitter, and she turned back towards his voice. "It's simply a street, not often crowded when I walk here, and it is almost always cold." She didn't mention she spend much of her time cold, or that she didn't really mind the cold, because she was referring to a different kind of cold: no one seemed to talk here, it was a silent street in the middle of a rather impersonable city.

"It is approximately fifty miles from my residence," she added, but this time there was no emotion to it at all.

She pointedly did not accept the apology, a high blush in her cheeks revealing why: she was embarrassed. "Yes, fifty or so miles. No, I have not been long away from home. Perhaps a month or so." The dark-haired girl did not add that, without her sight, she had no idea of time's passage; she could track the turning seasons, know which equinoxes she was closest to, with staggering ease. But the changes between days, she normally lost count. Lukia did know she was closer to the autumnal equinox than to the summer solstice, so that was her judging point.

"You have stayed in Aekea for long, then?"

"No," she said, "It wasn't." Wandering was never hard for her - sometimes she would simply get so restless, so tired with the same 'sights' that she would just up and leave. By now, the people she considered family knew to expect that she should vanish and walk away from them at any time, and so it didn't even trouble that little bit.

And, if the conversation continued to follow the rules she had observed so far, it was her turn to ask a question. Yet, she couldn't think of anything to ask for, so she simply said: "Tell me something dangerous," in a tone that implied she would continue to ask until he acquiesced.

She had tilted her head to the sky, forehead furrowed for a moment; she smiled, a tiny laugh coming from somewhere deeper and more sincere than the expression on her face as she swiveled her 'gaze' back towards Farid. "Do you then make your own fireworks?"

It must be nice to be so... normal. Without her sight, she would never know anything about how he looked, anyway; normal, to her, was thinking a mistake in one's hobby was grievous enough to be dangerous. "Such... arcane knowledge. It must be rare."

"I do not cook many complicated things," she said, a certain disinterest in her own words as she ran her fingers carefully over the firework. It was slightly disconcerting, because if she had had eyes she would have still been looking up to Farid; "I'm not particularly talented in the domestic domain as I am sure you can imagine." Lukia twirled the fuse around her fingertips, smiling reminiscently at the texture of the strand.

Carefully, she offered the rocket back to him, fingertips awkwardly placed along it; "Thank you, for showing me," she said, tone just as hesitant as her grip.