It is always sunny where the Wild Roses grow, and particularly busy today, what with the weekly slave auction. Some of the poor sods up for sale are awfully human-looking, and others are decidedly not, feral Changelings lost too long amidst the Thorns. The majority, however, are hobs in all manner of shapes and sizes.
The serpentine avenues wind between the ever-changing number of booths and carts, clogged today by potential shoppers, and pick-pockets abound. Assuredly, their weapons are peace tied with sometimes greying white ribbons or strings, but petty theft isn't attack, and the many guards' watchful eyes slide over clever-fingered fiends.
Markets aren't new for Hien, but this one is. His attention is never on one face for too long, his focus never sitting on any scent he can pick out. He keeps his head low, and his profile unnoticeable. He wears a navy blue jacket with his hood up to conceal his face. Nothing too unusual here. For bottoms he wears blue jeans that could have used a lot more ironing. For shoes he wears some bright blue sneakers, and they look like the only new thing on him.
He looks over hte faces of those clapped in or held behind iron. Each face given a second before the next. From slaves and captives he turns his gaze to marketeers and passers-by. He only ever stops for a single second at a time, looking for a weapon that might suit his particular needs.
Unnoticeable? Never. A creature with as much power as Hien has? He stands out, no matter how well he tries to blend in.
The voices of merchants follow him, hawking wares both mystic and mundane. One stall offers dreams stolen from dying children, and the stall next to it sells caps from beer bottles strung on twine. There are several weapons merchants in the Market today, though most of their wares seem rather mundane, or, for those nearer the slave market, geared toward a particular purpose. It takes Hien a long while, wandering the many twisting avenues, but eventually, two particular merchants stand out as the most likely to offer wares close to what he desires.
One is an old woman, withered, with bony, spindly limbs, a beak-like nose, and black feathers in her wild green-white hair. She does not call out for shoppers to attend her booth, one of the permanent structures here. She waits for shoppers to come to her, and come they do, a-plenty, though just as many are turned away for having little of interest to trade.
The other, seated in front of a cart at an improvised stall, is a short and pot-bellied green hob with wide lips and a frog-like air. He smiles. A lot. There are a lot of teeth in that smile, and not all of them appear to be his. Both of them offer blades, and many of the blades appear to be magical in origin.
The shouts and calls do nothing for the Beast. He doesn't look when he can hear what they offer, and their words mean little for Hien. One did catch his attention for a moment. He turns his gaze to someone, and has he does so he feels something. An inkling of something with a brief sensation that has him looking around. Something is missing.
Whatever it was that might have been taken is ignored as he draws his next breath. He looks upon the bird-like woman, head tilting briefly. His eyes go from one blade to the next, growing ever more curious as he approaches her stall. He remains as silent as the marketeer until something else draws him from his silent reverie.
He's knocked to the side as someone passes him by. The goblinesque passerby earns a snarl as Hien pulls at the hem of his jacket, the slight adjustment calming him some. Just enough that he doesn't have a moment in this crowded fare of wares. Then he sees another stall. The green-skinned hob is looked upon with curiosity, and it's him that Hien approaches to look over his offerings.
When the powerful Changeling begins to approach her stall, the spindly hob stares at him, appraising what little she can see based on his movement, his posture, the way he carries himself. Hien's decision to go to the frog-lipped merchant's less-established stall goes without comment.
By her, anyway. The green-skinned hob brightens upon seeing Hien's approach, and hops up, to stand on a crate behind his stall, perhaps three feet tall, maybe three and a half. His hands are webbed, his skin mottled. "English? Francais?" He tries several other languages, none of which humans speak, enthusiastic and wide-eyed.
Hien doesn't react to the movements of the hob. He stares at the creature as it makes itself that much talller, and mutters something under his breath for a beat. "Tieng Viet?" he responds in turn, tilting his head to the left. "English," he adds a second after. Hien asks, "What do you require for your wares?" as he leans forward to scrutinize one weapon before moving on to another.
"English! English, yes, yes, English," the froggy hob enthuses, hopping on his box and moistly clapping his hands. "Hello English!" The weapons are available for touching, but each is also bound to the table by what -appears- to be a delicate thread of golden hair. Should the item be pulled more than a foot away from the table's surface, that delicacy will be proven a lie. Those weapons aren't going anywhere.
Looking at which weapons Hien is examining, then back up toward Hien's face, the hob beams and answers, "Weapons of all sorts, souls, memories, power. Parts of beasts, humans, but they must be potent!" He raises a webbed finger, pointing it high in emphasis. "They must be strong! Strong memories! Strong association!"
Hien watches the hob, silent still during the response. He had his hands stuffed into his pockets, but can't help himself after a few more moments. His left hand is pulled out and he runs it along the first blade he sees. A few seconds later he leaves the sword for a chained weapon. His gaze is pointed back up then, pointed right at the hob. "What would you require for them? I know you need something, and I have need of your tools."
The hob bobs his head, slick skin glistening in the hollow's perpetual sunny daylight, and looks to see which of the weapons Hien seems to be interested in. "Ahhhh ahhhhh, yes yes, a pair, a pair those are, go together very well. Yes! Good choices! Yes!" He claps his slimy hands again, dropping down from his crate and flipping the lid to rummage through what sounds like ruffling papers of some sort. Thunking the lid back down, he hops up and holds out a scroll, unrolling it as he goes. The scroll shows rain, pouring down, and the page behind it shows gusting winds drawn knocking things down, people leaning into them to stay upright. "What do you offer?" Those eager eyes are sly, experienced.
The offered scroll is taken by Hien. His eyes dart left and right as they go down the page. When done he rolls it back up, and holds it out for the marketeer to take back. "That depends. I would offer you my own right arm, but that was taken from me some time ago." Hien grows silent again as he mulls over an answer. "I can bring you lives, or offer my own memories and potentially my dreams. I can also offer a favor." He lifts his own webbed finger up, and wiggles that clawed digit. "I can commit to this favor before sale, or it can after. One to be named later and at your choosing, and by your accord."
The arm is of interest at first, but seeing the token limb dims that, disappointment bobbing the froggy hob's throat. He leans forward, pot belly squooshing into the edge of the table, and places one hand on the chain weapon, the other on the sword. "This, yes?" He slaps a slimy hand onto the chain. "A month of dreams, you never see them, they come straight here, yes?" He lifts the hand to point back over his shoulder toward a number of phials there, half-hidden, glowing softly in the shadows of the cart.
For the sword, he slaps a hand on the hilt and says, "Favour, yes," with narrowing eyes. "What limits? What limits would you place on favour?"
Hien's expression hardens as the hob presses forward. "I can live without my dreams," he believes for now at least. A second later, and he brings his hand back into his pocket. "As for a favor it is as simple as I. Nothing that would or will break any pledge or vow I hold, and doesn't intentionally result in my death. I clearly won't walk off a cliff or sit in front of a pack of slavering briarwolves."
The hob's eyes light again when Hien agrees about the dreams, and, with the air of one who hears similar provisos all the time, he waves away the concerns about the favour. "Yes yes, agreed, agreed." He bustles back down from the crate and hops up to the cart, clambering over toward the phials to unhook one from the wall. It has a looped cord of some sort of silvery thread, spider silk-fine, and he holds it carefully by the cord, not the phial, as he hops down to the ground, then pads over to hop back up to the crate and hold the phial out over the table. "Take, take! Hold it, hold the phial. Must know whose dreams it will hold. One month of dreams, one favour I may ask later, limited as you have just limited it. Payment for two weapons, yes?" The other hand points at the weapons of rain and wind.
Hien pulls both of his hands from his pockets, and crosses his arms over his chest. He watches the hob curiously until he's presented with a phial. He takes with his right hand and holds it up to his eyes. He stares at it before agreeing completely. "Those terms are fair," he says. He looks past the vial to stare down the hob again, and extends his left hand to seal the deal. "We have a deal."
The hob deposits the phial in Hien's palm, though he keeps hold of the thread, and after a chilly burst and mild dislocation, dizziness, the phial's colour shifts to a deeper blue, matching Hien's skin. "Good good, yes, very good, very good," the frog-like hob approves, taking the phial back and tucking it away in the cart. The golden hair-like threads binding the weapons to the table are touched, next, and promptly unravel, coiling themselves up obediently in his webby hand. "Take, take! Yours. We will be in touch." He smiles, big and wide, mismatched teeth in a gaping froggy jaw.
Hien watches as the essence and concept of his dreams coalesce. It may not be too new a thing for the Changeling, but it mystifies him nonetheless. His mismatched gaze is pointed at the hob as he comes down from that queer high. His eyes drop down to the weapons, and follow them in the hob's hands. When he's offered them he takes them without waiting another second. The sword is taken first, and then immediately shunts it off into the aether. The chained weapon his taken next, but it isn't pushed away. He keeps that one in his hands, and starts coiling the chain around his forearm. It blinks away after he gets a feel for it against his arm. He offers the hob a smile, fangs and all. "I'm not that difficult an individual to track down. My patrol takes me near the lake, and there's always Stoneheart."
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