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Save Point: The MarketPlace

The City Of Uruk

The marketplace in Uruk turns out to be somewhat different, in that it is built into and through several large buildings on the outer edge of the Third that used to house kilns for the claywork of the city, and then extends even further up and into several layers of the old city wall, right up to the top. Uruk, it seems, is the original example of urban over-development, in a society where most people still consider clay tablets the primary writing instrument.

The layers have been connected around what was already in place in an impromptu fashion by wooden ramps and platforms, suspended out into space by simple wooden cross-braces and hanging ropes spun of coarse fibres. They bleach in the sun at right angles and tremble slightly, polished smooth by the steps of the people.

Cleo is moderately surprised when they reach the place. The entrance is small and cobbled, between walls of fired brick, just around the corner from a minor shrine of Ishtar, where several roads intersect chaotically in the shadow of a reinforced hanging walkway, much like the market itself. It's not what she would expect of such a famous bazaar, one which does not cater to the usual tired vegetables and flyblown oxen meat of supply and demand. Here, there can supposedly be found whatever it is that you are actually looking for, which is a curious statement in and of itself. Just inside the gate, where several benches rest in the shade of a small tree, they decide to split up and go exploring, to meet here again later.

In a gently shadowy pottery shop next to the entrance, Sethkill find a beautiful firebaked terracotta cat, striped with subtle patterns like a burned on flame, and of quite imposing size for its stated price. He considers buying it as a present for Cleo, but there's no way they could carry it with them; and so he regretfully bids it goodbye with a pat on the head. It disregards his affection and continues to examine intently a purple-shaded, iridescently metalled seraphic jar nearby.

The lower parts of the market are most similar to those in other parts of the city. Light structures of wood and poorly woven canvas overhang to keep out the sun, and suspect dealers ply their trade from ever-shifting configurations of tents. Woven rugs have been tassellated over one another in the fixed shops to make better floors, and garments especially are hung about in profusion. Sethkill rather likes the effect; it reminds him loosely of home.

There is a shop that sells leather boots. Sethkill spends an enjoyable half hour kneeling down on the mats and talking with a middle aged woman of wild hair and dark demeanor, who views his curious subdivided bipartite feet as a challenge and keeps touching and stroking them, looking for something in her vast stock that could be modified to fit. She is ultimately confounded, but declares herself fascinated by his clean-clawed toes. Amidst the leather, the shop is full of interesting archaic objects that have caught her fancy, and she is more than willing to discuss them all at length, a simple tactic to trap customers in conversation and keep them in her shop, but one that Sethkill finds surprisingly informative.

After a while they start to attract a small crowd. Sethkill gives the lady one of the infinitesimal, (mostly silver) gold coins from Ypsilante mostly for her time and efforts, but more importantly because it simply feels right.

Amidst the more permanent rows, where the ambitious have connected either side with shadecloths, Sethkill discovers that he could buy candles, of every shape and form, votive and ceremonial or otherwise, both shaped like phallic snakes and coiled up like hollow tree bark to remove wax from the ears (they view him as a promising potential customer for those, not realising that his ears are of a different underlying design). Also available are small, vibrant plants growing hosted on stone, bone or barnacles from the nearest inland sea. Signs that he can almost read exhort him to assay what is yet to be with the assistance of the Chaldean Brotherhood whom, he is intrigued to note, claim to know just where the sevens do in fact run when they break out of the circle. What this means, he has no idea.

Handily available is every great work of literature ever written in cuneiform, because of course they are near to the clay pits and so there is a tablet copying facility. More angular letters he cannot readily identify speak of both history and vibrant eroticism and all those things that are known. Very old unknown things are sealed in clay envelopes from which the lettering has been scoured, and claim to be magic spells and secrets, although they are in all likelihood recipes for a better class of broth and old children's stories. Hope lives on, so take your pick.

One shop is devoted entirely to hanging windchimes made out of metal edged flaked volcanic glass. He finds himself strangely attracted to them and humoring odd fantasies about biting into the flat coloured plates and crunching them like they were some sort of hard candy. The sounds they make are oddly swaying to his ears.

The prosaic is, of course, also available. He dazzles a shopkeeper by tossing him a small twist of copper, flipping one of the fruits on sale from Uruk's famous orchards into his hands, and then disappearing it with a quick crossover of hands, only to have it fall abruptly out of empty air above his head, whereupon he snaps it out of the air with a crunch. Fruit juices drip down his muzzle and drip into the hot dust as he chews it up and swallows it whole.

This collects a few more interested followers to the group of people trying unobtrusively to follow him around the market. Sethkill qualifies as free entertainment all by himself, which makes him a valuable commodity. On a nearby corner, a disappointed sleight of hand artist compares her hands to his, baffled by his trick; since it was real, he has the unfair advantage. This delights him all the more unduly.

~*~

Terrowne and Cleo find themselves in an unusual part of the markets, in an area that can only be described as a cat mall. Cleo especially is delighted by the vast expanse of figures of cats in every shape, size and pose, and examines them from every conceivable angle, picking them up and petting their inanimate ceramic muzzles and the spaces between their ears.

She declares with great certainty that this must be the end result of proximity with some sort of Cat Temple. Many of the cats are polished and smoothed by long handling, and it seems to her to be a sensible deduction that one buys a cat, takes it to the temple, places it before the incense of the altar and speaks the appropriate prayers to the cat goddess. The ongoing accumulation of cats would mean that eventually the smallest, cheapest symbols of devotion, as well as a lesser number of the better quality cats would end up here on sale once again, so that in the long term each cat is effectively being ransomed for the cat goddesses favor. And of course some cats will escape the loop, purchased by travelers and taken away to far off places to spread the cult.

Cleo explains her theory in elaborate detail to her lover, and Terrowne laughs happily at her all-enthralling vanity. Obviously it's all about cats and how awesome they are.

The cats are displayed on window-sills and shelves of baked brick reminiscent in their deep color of her own aroused nipples, and on layered platforms built of boards and bricks within the shops. Where she would expect, in lost Azatlan, a wide shopfront glass window, there is instead a largish, highly polished panel overlaid with some sort of thin silver gilding. It reflects the outside, and the cats there, waveringly in the metal to create the illusion that there are an entire array of further cats inside. And they really are there, but remain unseen until you enter the shop. She admires the cleverness, the audacity of it.

Cleo poses herself amidst the cats and examines her own reflection shaped unclearly in the silver surface. The cats quite clearly approve and Terrowne finds himself dragged inside in order that she may further examine the full extent of the cat collection.

To his genuine amazement, the assemblage of feral felidae extends all the way back into and through the shop, then all the way out into a back yard extending around a corner to the right. Cats on trestle tables, admittedly at a slightly lower density, occupy the entire space. It seems that Cleos estimate of the situation is almost certainly correct and her imaginary cat religion suddenly seems quite probable.

At the back of the yard, a freely open gate forming a space between the walls leads out, again to the right, back into the market but some distance beyond the shaded alleyway that first led them into the cat mall. It connects with a fairly long, narrow way that also seems to be devoted to small statues and various forms of temple propitiation. There are far too many, in terms of their sheer numbers, to ever take them all in, but Cleo gets a general impression of green cabochon earrings with silver, wide bangles with intricate patterns, small cast-metal figures and baubles designed to be worn as talismans. Some start in stone and are then finished with silver to keep the weight low and allow for details that can't be carved. There is time perhaps to look at the larger figures, animalia of substantial size and detail, many of which are coupled with graceful human forms to create an even wider range of creatures, assembled from every available medium. Some of them carry alabaster salve jars, or bear polished discs between their horns.

She pauses for a second to examine a gwennol lioness.

Terrowne looks up from his own examination of the collection to see Cleo glancing intently back the way they came. "What is it?"

"I thought a caught a glimpse of someone following us. First in that mirror-board outside, then off one of those polished devotionary animals."

Terrowne knows that Cleo has an extensive, if mostly unspoken, military experience of the sort that involves expeditions through the dirty back streets of small strange towns where everyone privately wishes to kill you. He has a certain level of experience in such issues himself, although he tries to forget it except when matters force a certain degree of recollection.

"What did it look like?" he enquires, carefully considering a tray of bizarre and beautiful beasts.

"I'm not sure. It's very quick. Before I could turn to look it'd disappeared between the rows."

"I'll keep an eye out. We might as well keep examining the merchandise, it's a handy cover."

"It could be nothing," Cleo assures him. "But I'm sure I saw something."

They move onward, beyond the statues of beasts, into an area that caters to the related fields of rare animals and magical familiars. Terrowne keeps his wrist angled to spring a hidden blade. Cleos hand loiters against the curve of her ass adjacent to her sword holster.

A huge owl flaps broad white wings atop its stand, looking about with big circular night eyes in the shade of a canvas awning, searching for the source of the disturbance that has awakened it. One can only imagine what complicated series of trades has bought it to such a far-off place. It is kept in its place by slender leather jesses, but attempts brief hopping flights in the small airspace to which it has access.

Cleo is forced to step back as its wings beat just a little too close to her face, brushing a whisker and triggering a pounce reflex that she is hard-put to subside. The thin, dark, sharp-nosed little man who own the stall seems apologetic and indicates that he is willing to let her feed the owl a dead and slightly dried desert mouse, curled up into a ball. Cleo jokes in poor sumerian with non-specific hand gestures that she could do with a mouse to eat herself, and parts with an extremely low-denomination marker to gulp one down. The owner is impressed by this almost to the point of worshipfulness, but it's just Cleo easing her thwarted reflexes.

Terrowne is fascinated by an object that lives in the stall next to that with the owl. Instead of the stand the owl has, this thing rests in a tarnished copper cup on a post. It looks like a metal sphere, imaginary quicksilver in zero gravity, and likewise seems to have a curious disregard for the rules governing the normal functioning of up and down, not to mention sideways. Terrowne cannot decide definitively whether it is in fact actually levitating, moving around in a constrained volume of some sort to orbit guests like himself, or whether it is in fact some kind of subjective illusion being introduced into the mind of the viewer or into a discrete volume around itself. Certainly, when he looks hard at it, the sphere returns rapidly to its bowl, although it may never have left.

"Let's go back to the animals," suggests Cleo, presumably meaning the statue shelves. "Perhaps we can surprise our new friend. Also I want to buy the earrings with the green stones, although it may be a bit hard to find them again amongst all the animals."

They walk back swiftly the other way, and Cleo searches amongst the animals for the single set of earrings with green stones. As the search progresses, Terrowne monitors the street out of the corner of his eye and finds out just how long it can take ones girlfriend to find the perfect gift.

At last, he catches in the very edge of his visual field the brief movement of something dressed in a shapeless and perfectly grey robe, the traditional disguise for unimaginative persons ever since skulking was first invented. It leans swiftly back behind a shelf of animals the instant it seems like he might be about to catch more than a glimpse.

"Our friend is over there at a diagonal," he indicates to Cleo with a casual hand movement that his body conceals from the observer.

"We'll wait for him," replies Cleo, clearly meaning as in waiting for him to make a move.

Finally locating her desired ear ornamentation, she brings it to the trestle table where sales are made and prices haggled. Which is also, coincidentally, somewhat nearer to the unseen follower in the grey robe.

Cleo is treated to her purchase inside a little clay box with a strip of unfired soft material inside, acting as a sort of cuneiform receipt. The box is air-dried and thus recyclable, easily broken down and incorporated into the clay tablets that are ubiquitous throughout the city for writing notes on, much like the disposable food bowls that are stamped out by the thousands and given away at every fast-food takeaway throughout the city. In other places such an item of jewellery would be kept safe in a ball of wax and imprinted with a seal, but in Uruk they use clay for everything.

Cleo examines her new earrings, pressed into the soft clay, then puts the lid on the box and slips it into one of her leather carrying pouches. Then suddenly she turns and takes two swift steps out into the causeway. "Come out here, grey robes!" she snarls fiercely in azatlani at her surroundings.

The grey robe wearer does not reveal itself, but suddenly the air seems to crystallize. It is as though time is passing by more slowly, and the sounds of passers-by are strangely muffled. A cuneiform-scripted advertising banner furls slowly in an audible breeze, the propagating wave taking forever to traverse its length.

Cleo scans from right to left in a careful, instant circle that is slowed beyond words.

On the trestle table where she negotiated her purchase were four devotional statues of relatively large size, none of which she'd examined unusually closely. Now, in slowed vision, she sees that the statues have changed to represent those she knows best.

The first statue, in fine golden sandstone, shows Cleo herself in a naked pose with breasts thrust forward and tail raised, intimate folds on display. The second, carved from black basalt, depicts an unclothed male sethura that looks exactly like Sethkill, standing in a formal-symmetrical pose and holding some unseen object forward with both hands, regarding it with scholarly intent.

The third is some sort of red marble, veined with white fractal branches, and depicts a strangely androgynous dragon with wing-claws interlocked just beneath its breast, and one wing-tip folded down to cover what might be either a very large-clitted vulva, or the tip of a suitably dragonish cock just emerging from its slit. It seems to be grinning modestly.

The final statue is wrought of pale pink andesite and looks just like Lelana. But Lelana does not kneel, holding up big breasts for the viewing, whilst fangs burst strident from the sides of her midriff like protruding ribs, hungry to engulf.

This is definitely not normal. Cleo completes her scan of the circle and finds herself looking back where she examined first, only now the space is no longer empty and the follower in grey robes is there. It flicks back the paler and heavily embroidered outer lining of its draped hood, to reveal of all things the elongated muzzle of a sethuress. She growls obligingly at them, baring freshly polished fangs with a bright and irrepressible glint in her eyes that seems to say she's having fun playing chase. "Keep away," she suggests, then turns on the tip of one clawed foot and sweeps her robes about herself imperiously, dashing off with a swish of folded cloth.

The slowness seems to shatter around them, and events resume their normal pace. But in the moment of displacement, the both of them somehow lose track of the sethuress, who seems to have disappeared amongst the markets endless stalls.

No-one else seems to have noticed any irregularity. Cleo suspects the sethuress has somehow manipulated their individual perception of time, amongst other things, in a self-conserving action that probably denied her the opportunity to do anything besides perpetuate illusions.

The man at the stall notices that she seems a little disconcerted, and asks in careful and overly loud Sumerian if they are alright. He seems to be under the misapprehension that the cat lady may be feeling a little delicate. Naturally, being a stall-holder in a cat mall, he is anxious that a personal incarnation of the form be treated as best possible whilst out shopping. Of course, still being a little overwhelmed from first having seen her, he's not quite able to express this in such fluent terms. It's not every day a feline deity comes to visit her followers and actually appears.

Cleo purrs swiftly that she is just fine in such a harmoniously beautiful way that ruffled feathers are swiftly smoothed. Nonetheless, they leave the cat mall quickly, until they once again feel safely lost amidst the crowds.