1.12

Try new foods.

Car­nelia scratched out the item in her note­book as her nose led her straight towards the main walk­way of the mar­ket. Hap­haz­ard­ly placed on every open sur­face were buzzing fans that had been send­ing over the scents of the mar­ket. On their gath­ered breeze was the musky smell of cooked fish, smoked, dried, and salt­ed; the earthy sweet aro­ma of fresh­ly plucked pro­duce; and a heavy dose of accom­pa­ny­ing spices. Her mouth was water­ing before she even reached her first stall.

Car­neli­a’s first dis­cov­ery was that she real­ly, real­ly liked skew­ers. Pep­pers, onions, and chick­en, grilled to per­fec­tion and drip­ping with lemon and vine­gar--she tried them at five dif­fer­ent ven­dors. It was hard to say if she liked them more…

…or the strange­ly tex­tured, but still deli­cious leaf-vine wrap she’d bought from the place right across…

…or the dessert that she bought for her­self at a stall past the sec­ond inter­sec­tion, which was a bag of scrump­tious, hon­ey-infused dates…

…oh, and who could for­get the pome­gran­ate juice? She watched along­side sev­er­al oth­ers as a man with stained hands crushed blood-red juice from sev­er­al pome­gran­ates just to fill a sin­gle cup. It was deli­cious and worth the wait.

Down the line she went, stop­ping at as many stalls as caught her eye, and lov­ing it all. None of it was any­thing like the fare she was used to— Down­town’s sta­ples of algae and mush­rooms did­n’t lend them­selves to this much fla­vor and vari­ety. So she found her­self eat­ing and eat­ing, like Ms. Zenic on her cheat days, right up until she ran into… some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.

A strange store that made its home in the old mar­ket’s left­over sec­tion. Its doors were closed, and the win­dows were blacked out with paper and drapes. The build­ing was solemn in its lack of cus­tomers.

As Car­nelia regard­ed this place, the mar­ket­place played out a cacoph­o­ny behind her. Cus­tomers and ven­dors shout­ing ever-drop­ping prices as they hag­gled over goods laid out on tables and car­pets, grills pop­ping and siz­zling as stall cooks pre­pared extra meals for the upcom­ing lunch wave, and dock­work­ers and sailors call­ing out at the crowds to make way as they dragged in rum­bling dol­lies filled with recent imports. The alley mar­ket­place was so live­ly with peo­ple rum­mag­ing around for deals that the air was hazy with dust.

This store alone stood silent. Only heavy-tint­ed smoke leaked through the door seams. Car­nelia stared up at the store sign--Argus’s Read­ings, Curse-Break­ings, and Oth­er Psy­chic Ser­vices--and pon­dered whether she ought to enter.

Then she noticed anoth­er, small­er sign hang­ing from the door­knob and broke out into a smile. It read:

‘We also sell magik tools & ingre­di­ents!’

She took out her note­book and scratched out yet anoth­er two items from her list.

Buy sou­venirs for the fam.
Vis­it a for­tune teller.

What luck! Two rocks, one home.