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It was already late in the evening but the merchant seemed unfazed by the passing of time. He sat, poised and elegant, watching the world around him. He didn’t seem bored, even as he leaned forward and laced his fingers atop the table; below it, he kept his toe tapping to some silent tune in his head. He was tall, by human standards, though while sitting down he didn’t seem particularly threatening. If you didn’t look at his face.
He had graceful features--sharp and refined. His chin and nose tapered to a point, giving him an air of sophistication, but that, combined with his slitted eyes and pointed teeth, there was something undeniably predatory about him. He watched with a hungry gaze and a mischievous, nearly sinister smile. His ears were pointed and were prominent despite being tucked behind his vibrant, multi-colored hair. The most intrusive feature that indicated there was something not human about him were the curling horns protruding from his temples and the oil-slick black scales that brushed his cheeks and forehead. He was well dressed, in a fashion obviously otherworldly, and seemed to enjoy dressing himself up in glistening gemstones.
His table was somehow both simple and overwhelming; it was draped in a dark purple tablecloth, with extravagant embroidery in different designs. Scattered neatly atop the table was an array of items that seemed to carry some magical weight to them.
He did not seem intimidated in the slightest and, upon noticing that the barrier surrounding him rippled when his visitor entered, he smiled.
He did not rise to meet them nor adjust his position in the slightest. He followed them with his fierce eyes and greeted, in a silky voice, “Welcome.”
He had graceful features--sharp and refined. His chin and nose tapered to a point, giving him an air of sophistication, but that, combined with his slitted eyes and pointed teeth, there was something undeniably predatory about him. He watched with a hungry gaze and a mischievous, nearly sinister smile. His ears were pointed and were prominent despite being tucked behind his vibrant, multi-colored hair. The most intrusive feature that indicated there was something not human about him were the curling horns protruding from his temples and the oil-slick black scales that brushed his cheeks and forehead. He was well dressed, in a fashion obviously otherworldly, and seemed to enjoy dressing himself up in glistening gemstones.
His table was somehow both simple and overwhelming; it was draped in a dark purple tablecloth, with extravagant embroidery in different designs. Scattered neatly atop the table was an array of items that seemed to carry some magical weight to them.
He did not seem intimidated in the slightest and, upon noticing that the barrier surrounding him rippled when his visitor entered, he smiled.
He did not rise to meet them nor adjust his position in the slightest. He followed them with his fierce eyes and greeted, in a silky voice, “Welcome.”
After gathering up the fruits that the mysterious dragon-man’s sign had said he wanted, Lete headed right back to where she’d seen him set up with his table. Wasting time about this simply was not an option. Not for Lete. Not tonight (well, maybe long enough to pick up the sparkly emerald star charm she spotted along the way, but that wasn’t really dawdling).
Which wasn’t to say that she never kept perishable things in her subspace pocket, because she regularly did……but she almost always shared them with somebody (most often, but not exclusively, Demeter, Guinevere, or more recently Hybris) before she had to worry about them going bad. Fruits, last she checked, definitely counted as perishables. Even if they were obviously somehow tied into all the magical stuff that happened in town and therefore probably played by their own rules, Lete had no reason to think that “their own rules” included room for fruits to be anything but perishable. Heavens forbid that she should put so much work into gathering all of these mysterious magical fruits only for them to go to waste because she got distracted and didn’t get them back to the guy who wanted to give people rewards for bringing them in.
Lete only paused long enough to take one of the fruits out of her subspace. One of the cantaloupe-sized ones—big enough to be a good conversation starter, but hopefully not so big as to look like she was showing off (or to give away all of her bargaining chips someday).
As she ducked in closer to the mysterious dragon-man and his table of Cool Stuff, Lete looked around.… Hmm, a distinct lack of the taller, bespectacled Mirror senshi. “Hey, hey,” she replied to the welcome, giving the merchant a bright, eager grin. “Looks like I just missed my big brother. I hope there’s not some kind of limit on how many Mirror senshi you’ll see in one night?”
He didn’t have an aura—any kind of powered-up aura. Which meant that maybe he wasn’t like those aggro Order jerks? But he also may not have been very much like the cool Chaos fam either. For the moment, he was an unknown and one thing Lete had learned in the past six months was: you could never predict who would react like how to Dark Mirror senshi.
The Space Cauldron_
