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He had woken up that morning to a nervous bleat and then a crash and tinkling of china that had sent the whole house into an uproar. Only after he'd torn away his bedclothes and clattered downstairs had he realized (much to his consternation and chagrin) what had happened: he'd left Siscalus's totem on a shelf along with the lady of the house's china. And then he had forgotten about it. When the totem had apparently grown into a fawn, Siscalus had fallen off of the shelf, of course ... and had brought all of the lady's china with him.

The walk to town was not a happy one -- he had been all but ordered to go in and place an order for the china that he had broken, a list of shattered pieces and the requisite money thrust into his hands as he was shooed out the door. Riding into town with a fawn gamboling at his heels was not an option. Siscalus had either decidedly ignored Ayle's irritation or just wasn't intelligent enough yet to understand why he was angry: he barely even had thoughts to spare to wonder that the small, inanimate totem he'd nearly forgotten about had somehow produced this -- this thing.

A live, bleating, prancing deer which kept shooting him looks from under its thick dark eyelashes: a deer, a totem, which had come from the Wardtree.

-*-

He would step into the small shop -- and almost immediately upon darkening its doorway turn around and admonish something behind him: "--stay here and don't bloody move, roight?"

Siscalus simply blinked at him -- his look cooling just a touch -- and then slipped past Ayle, hooves clicking quietly on the floor of the shop. Behind him stood a young man about six feet tall, his hair bleached and skin tanned by the sun in such a way that suggested farm work: the smell of grass and hay about him was unmistakable.

"Anyone here?" His accent was broad, slightly different than the normal accent in Palisade, the vowels spoken with a twang that might have made him difficult to understand.

Ayle froze at the sound of breaking china, and winced -- and if Juhua caught that look, her question of 'how can I help you?' would be easily answered. Broken china was what had brought him all the way into town. He would have been here far earlier but for trying to get Siscalus to stay inside; he had begun to learn the vast vocabulary of reproachful, sideways looks the fawn had. He suspected he hadn't learned half of them yet.

With his own fawn sticking close to his legs, though its big ears were perked up and its nose quivering with all of the new smells in the shop -- as though it desperately wanted to explore, but wouldn't break its own dignity -- Ayle ran a hand through his hair and offered her a list. "I'm hopin' y'have this set." His eyes slid away from Juhua for a moment and then back to her. "I've got a list of pieces, too."

Siscalus, like Ayle, smelled like hay, and sun, and dirt -- nothing commonly found in Palisade. Unlike Ayle, whose eyes shifted over every glittering or delicate thing in the shop, Siscalus managed to retain some composure: perhaps just to be a counterpoint to his charge. The dark fawn batted its long eyelashes at the brown one, ears perked forward, but then took a cautious step sideways, so that its flank bumped into Ayle's thigh.

Ayle would nod at Juhua, tearing his gaze away from the rest of the shop with some difficulty. There were many fine things in the shop, pieces of china and other dishes that he recognized from the Lady's shelves in the big house. He shrugged, and pushed a hand through his thick, sun-bleached hair, "Just some of the pieces," he started -- and then, judging that Juhua would understand from the way her fawn had ruined china, "--Siscalus fell off of a shelf when he grew from his totem, and dashed half of the china to the floor." There was a tone to his voice that suggested friendly longsuffering. "I suppose you understand."