Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was a chore day for Varinia. She had the day off from helping Naevius and since the little prince was growing up he didn’t need as much supervision from her anymore. Her own kids were growing quickly, Reina seemed to shoot up in height overnight. It hardly seemed like any time had passed since all the kids had been born but yet it had been numerous years. Vari shook her head in disbelief. At least it meant she had more time to herself which in turn meant she tended to get the chores done faster since there weren’t little feet running everywhere or little hands taking this or that or wanting this. It was why she was slowly walking through the marketplace. Reillan was watching Variel while she thought Reina was at the palace with Nicias. Varinia had forgotten what it was like to not have children everywhere. Laughing quietly to herself, she walked through the food stalls. There were a few different ingredients she needed to pick up for the meals for the week as well as just some general goods for the house. She had been about to pick a couple loaves of bread when she heard some screaming coming from a row or two over from her. Bread forgotten, she started weaving her way through the stalls as she could. It wasn’t hard to find where the disturbance was happening, shoppers had stopped where they were and made a wide arch around one particular stall where the sales woman was in tears on one side of her stall. She pushed her way through the crowd and approached the stall. ”What’s going on?” She asked the woman as calmly and reassuringly as she could. “Th-th-there’s some...thing...in...in my silk basket o-o-o-over there!!” She pointed to a basket on the other side of the stall who’s lid had been discarded on the ground next to it. As Vari walked slowly to the basket she started hearing a soft rattling. Starting to have a clue what might have startled the woman so much, she slowly peeked her head over the basket’s opening. Her suspicions were confirmed as she saw a rather small keldari coiled in on itself, it’s little rattled tail shaking as furiously as it could. ”It’s okay, it’s just a keldari.” She said once she straightened and turned back towards the woman. ”Done any trading with any yaeli or people coming from yael?” The woman nodded. “They’re poisonous though! R-r-r-ight?” Nodding, ”They are, but they’re not usually aggressive. Plus, this one looks pretty small. Your basket of comfy silks probably made it think it was a nice nest and it curled up inside for a nap. I’m guessing you have no interest in keeping it?” The woman furiously shook her head. Nodding once more to the woman, ”Alright, give me just a few minutes and I’ll be back.” She backtracked to where she remembered seeing a jeweler. Seeing a crystal the same color the snake had been, she paid what the merchant asked and was allowed to leave the jewelry there and just take the crystal. Varinia walked quickly back to the keldari. ”It’s young so it’s probably just felt cornered and it’s likely kind of hungry if it was in here for however long it took you to transport this basket.” She carefully dropped the crystal into the basket causing the Keldari to stop it’s rattle and hesitantly move towards the crystal. Once it was distracted, Varinia grabbed the lid and put it back on the basket. ”I don’t have enough experience with Keldari to try and take it out of the basket here. I work for a beast tamer, though, and if you’ll allow me to pay you the price of the silks I’ll take the whole basket with me.” The woman shook her head furiously. ”Really I’ll pay you whatever price you ask for the basket of silks, this just isn’t a good place to try and wrangle a keldari with my limited knowledge.” The woman shook her head more. “No I meant you don’t have to pay me just get that thing out of here!” Smiling kindly, Varinia gently picked up the basket, making sure the lid stayed securely on. Regardless of what the woman said, Varinia knew from her own experience with fabric that losing this whole basket would hurt the woman’s business. So as she walked by where the woman was still hiding and left an ample pile of coin from her purse. Vari figured Naevius would likely compensate her for the safe capture of the Keldari so it was no worry to the young oban woman. ”Thank you.” She told the shopkeeper and changed course to go to the palace instead of back home.

Word count: 815