Waymarkers

Created: 11/25/2006
Around 18:33




Hands hewn out of a reddish-brown fur moved gelatinous bundles, translucent keratin-reminiscent blobs, from split-open crates onto a pile. These are the hands of Hlorn Mebastis of the Trado people. Above him is a sky that billows like a sheet, writhing with the wind, turned into grayish knots that tighten or unravel as they cover up what blue remains and hide it out of sight. Hlorn is in an area of mostly open ground with clumps of bushy brambles bunched together, purple grass with tree-dross (lost leaves) mashed into the mucky mire-mud beneath their roots, and spatterings of undecorated, barren trees out of routes ways. Each route is enclosed in plastic arches that rise up from the nearly-flat ground like cathedral mosaics round off at the top from their straight bases. Where Hlorn sleeps is within a massive pit-pet, inside a room (with a tropical atmosphere) of his house this clam-like land-pet closes around Hlorn when he goes to rest –blocking out light, keeping him warm, and even cleaning his fur a little. Around that room are others suspended in the air by their locally-generated power, connected to one another by airlock-tubes, and laid over on their outermost parts with gleaming metals. Most of Hlorn’s home is done in an orange-metallic polish with pale grey ornamentation and inset teal synth-stones. His neighbors say this set-up is tacky but he won’t waste the money to have it redone. A central pillar that all the rooms have tubes leading to continuously streams steam from its’ surface as frost continues to try a formation despite failure from the first. Visible even now is a blob, the home’s fuel/power provider, the same type Hlorn now stacks, with fire causing its’ surface to bubble off and the whole of it to shrink.
Down the side of the plastic path-covering, on a footpath heated by the enclosed path’s excess, came a foreigner. She had human features save for a few exceptions. Her skin was a very fair tint of violet patterned over with scarlet freckles. Nearly an ugly caricature by our standards, her nose protruded (it’d be appropriate to think “prominently” if it were exceptional or dominant among smaller features but), her ears went out to the sides like those of a child who can wiggle his, her lips were beyond pouty (they were fat), that chin of hers’ jutted out and her slit-lidded eyes were overshadowed by a prominent brow. Her hair was combed to the left and hung down to her rib-cage in a color sufficiently lighter a brown than that of the trees so it can be distinguished when it passes by a trunk.
Not much note of her was made by Hlorn before he returned to his glob-stocking work. It didn’t seem like long to him because he’d entered a working mode without internal dialogue when he heard a voice rough to his ears (though normal to mine) ask “Sorry to bother you, but could you help me?”. Just long enough to give himself a break, Hlorn leans back a bit, lifts his head up to see who spoke, and replies “no” before returning to work.
Not wanting to waste time as she had with the first couple no-help-here-offered people, Cgnthue Plated Spire (the previously unnamed woman) returned to walking after Hlorn re-began working.

Despite the earliness of this evening it has turned dark. Hlorn had quit his work when he could no longer comfortably see (really, if he wanted to he could have had his lot lit up like day but he wanted a break from work, not needing the stockpile done in two days) and walked off (after using the bathroom and getting a snack, without boiling his hands between those actions in a bowl to clean them of germs as is his people’s custom) to the local market. Some others of Hlorn’s kind would buy all they needed directly from manufactures –never needing to leave their homes. But Hlorn enjoyed the smell of old-fashioned meats roasting with pops and sizzles, hearing chattering people, auctioneers, playing children running about, dancing arcades (where you win the rights of ownership from any machine you can outdance), feeling the effect of joy-incense, and even watching expensive advertisements try to outmaneuver each other in the air for line of sight with customers registered as interested in their products. It was a fun game to sometimes look at an advertisement-screen showing products you weren’t interested in, which another shopper was already looking at, and watch as a company selling something you usually bought fought with its’ money to take over that advertising spot until one of the companies (the stranger’s or yours) retreated from the screen. Sometimes a company wouldn’t try to expand its’ window but would just stubbornly continue paying enough to let its’ logo sit in the corner of the dominant powers ad. This was generally seen as poor conduct though and Hlorn had even heard rumors that it was being challenged before the Judge of Kualltvobastf (the sub-state he’d fought to be a part of with other migrates, against Reboaldsaffa, which refused the transfer of many people, 27 years ago) as an illegal practice.
He’d reached Duli’s Market Piazza and began to drift around, not planning to buy any particular thing. Then he saw Cgnthue asking people questions. Each person she asked was a passer-by not a helper. She must have been asking for over an hour if she hadn’t found help after leaving Hlorn. Ruptabana Diel can be seen giving her money for food. Hlorn is curious as to what she wanted to do earlier. Its’ too awkward for his tastes to simply walk over and ask her (is he going to seek to know how he could help her just so he can deny her?) so he watches. She goes into the Alltypes Brewery and Hlorn stops watching. He doesn’t want to stalk her. He walks to the nearby dancing arcade to challenge Fogey, a break-dancer in the classical style. Hlorn doesn’t actually have the moves to even hope to properly imitate Fogey but dancing will let him stall for time while he waits to see her come back out. By the time she does come back out of the Alltypes Brewery, he’s too engaged in trying to outdance Fogey to even remind himself what he cared about minutes ago.