Welcome to Gaia! ::

For all of the work that came with the harvest festival, even for chymists and physicians, there was tine for a 'prentice to slip out and get up to no good. The old man had prodded his diligent student to go out and have fun, subtly planting ideas of mischief in the brain beneath that red mop. Of course, they had to contend with a spirit of scientific curiosity that already lived under that roof, and wound up wholly subservient to progress, at best. Besides which, Aire had difficulty working up the drive to embarrass others, as tradition demanded. So instead, he spent some little while arranging the most stable of his experimental compounds into parchment cones, filling half of the thing with brightly-colored wafers. ...Along with an insulated end to hold them by, of course. He needed to keep his fingers if it went wrong.

These were hung from his belt, easily accessed. The lightning boy slipped out among the crowd, watching, waiting. By and large, he mostly enjoyed the festivities. Music, dance, stalls for food. In his case, a couple skewers of sweet-seasoned meat were bought for a few coppers, and a corner found to enjoy them. Rather than joining in a dance yet, he took stock of the area, refamiliarizing himself with the layout and deciding on an alley. One of them for the first, yes...

For some small while, red-maned Aire people-watched, slowly munching at his skewer. Kabobs, I think they said. Suitable targets abounded, but most weren't quite distracted enough- Oh. Oh that was perfect. If only he could creep up just outside of hammer range, of course. The boy wasn't eager to have his head caved in, or even his bent nose rebroken, at that. Settling the woven-straw hat more firmly on his head, he dipped back into the crowd, wriggling through with the agility of one grown up in them.

Red, green, yellow- no, not yellow. Not in the middle of a crowd. That one was for a rooftop. He'd got burnout right, but the second detonation could still light things aflame, and needed to be well into the air beforehand. After that it was fine. But it was decided. The red or green cone. The more glimpses he caught of the shifter woman, the more he noticed. She wasn't much older than he, bare handful of years ahead at most. Her brother wasn't the focus of her life, the way she held her head high in the open, and she probably made a semihonest living. He wasn't sure if hammerwork on skulls counted, but it might've. Never the best at sneaking, the 'prentice Chymist relied on the flow of the crowd and the noise it generated to drown out any misstep he made in his approach towards her back...

.

Picking his way along, Rajani's acquaintance kept up, managing to scamper out of the press and into the outer ebb of bodies. A little time, and some hurried bits to finish his kabob on the way, and he wound up somewhere a few yards south of her, behind a tent. From here, the young chymist selected and palmed his chosen surprise (Red), and made his way upstream, around towards her.

Here, he took care to make no noise, selecting a spot just a meter outside the warrior's reach. Once there, he brandished the dyed-parchment cone, the other hand taking hold of a pull-string he'd made so as not to bother with striketwigs and open flame. These were just reactive enough to make that dangerous and unnecessary. For courtesy's sake, Aire waited until she had her hands free, or at least everything was back in the bag before he tugged.

BANG! The toy let off a noise like to a waterskin violently popping from internal pressure, but writ larger, somehow. Small bits of singed and colored paper rained down around them. The noise sounded through stall and crowd alike, making many jump and look around. The prentice, for his part, grinned wide but did not run. He did, however, need to check his glove, smoking a little as it was. "Happy harvest, Miss Rajani."

Hers wasn't the only shriek at the noisemaker, just the loudest. Her glare after didn't sit alone, either, at least half a dozen dark looks turning on the fool foreigner boy. But the music resumed, the crowd went about its assorted business, and the festival market bustled on much the same as it had. Albeit with a wider berth and wary eyes towards Aire.

He'd taken a step back when she whirled, ready to get out of reach if necessary. ...Luckily, the white-haired warrior wasn't too angry at the trick. Perhaps she'd (reasonably) been expecting her growing reputation to protect her. It might have been wise to keep out of reach initially; she'd looked like her strong hands might fit snugly about a slim throat for a moment there. A stray thought occurred. Miss Rajani really is fetching when she wears a blush. This unusual thought quickly smothered when it refocused on the expression twisting her lips. The nonsmoking hand reached out empty, in peace. "Miss, with that I'll call us even for our introduction. Friends?"

Her concern drew green eyes back to the glove, which he'd been shaking to see if the smoke wafted away. It had, mostly, so just in case, the thick leather was peeled away from fine-boned hand. "No damage I can tell. Wasn't one of my new mixes, but you can never be sure of this stuff. Definitely glad I didn't use the yellow."

Aire nearly beamed. He'd made a friend! Making those sorts of connections had been slow going since he got here. At first because he was a curiosity, an unfamiliar outlander. Now... Well, the explosive experiments. More accurately, experiments regarding explosive materials, all conducted outside of city limits, of course. They weren't about to kick him out, of course, but friends did not come easily to someone who regularly plied something so jarring.

A cheerful shrug met Rajani's question, and the sallow chymist surrendered his hand for secondary examination.. He hadn't seen much wrong with his hand: nothing broken, nor more than lightly toasted under thick leather of the glove. That was why he wore them. "I like making things. Think about it: how useful would it be if regular people had access to reliable forces like that? No magic, perfectly safe so long as you were careful and followed the instructions, just like a forge-kiln. Besides, making and testing things that explode is fun!"

By this point, he'd become accustomed to flavors of pain in his work. His master would show him how to treat each, and avoid each, but the old man couldn't caution his overeager 'Prentice against everything. Burns came with the territory when working around heat. "Well, yeah. That's why I don't handle these barehanded. But lab an' even open testing aren't field tests. Singes are about the worst that happens outta this batch." This was, broadly speaking, true. He'd gone through layer upon layer of testing to get to this point, mostly in an open field behind cover. Volatile substances, even for fun, were to be handled with respect, or you paid in fingers.

"Find me? What about?" A quick glance around, and a lowered voice as he leaned in a little. "Did he tag you with the drug? Did whistleweed leaves not work?" If that were the case, then sure, she'd got away, but then Aire had given someone bad advice. His runaway mind had already begun to think up methods of repayment...

With the raised hand, Aire metaphorically skidded to a halt. From cheer to worry to chagrin to relief all in a few breaths. High-strung as the boy was, it was a miracle he didn't take those sedatives all the time just to keep from flying apart at the seams. Of course, he's probably gonna come back for words with me later. That was just how his luck worked out with the redhead's poor spot decisions. What threw him off a little was her reasoning.

His parents had, in the course of their careers, seldom spared a thought for the rewards of their work beyond work well-done. Rather grounded for lightning folk, but stone and wood only let you go so far before they gave out. Pushing that boundary, however, that was another story. There was always room to improve in architecture. For the small young man, 'prenticing under an herbalist and sometime physician hadn't much jaded this outlook, and he tended to look at his work as the reward itself. Being outright rewarded for it was... Strange. "I... Thank you, Miss. Um. They sell some odd things around here, so it shouldn't be too hard to find something sweet and spicy."