Incredible Ideas
Trial 25 of Zida 718
A crowd gathered around something further down the market street, in the outdoors part of The Earth Market. The high degree of curiosity the spark of attunement granted Yrmellyn urged her to investigate what it was about. What was happening? What could have attracted so many people? A busker performance? An accident? Are the guards catching a thief?
Yrmellyn had a bad period of time in her life. She had rented out one of her two apartments to a man who had seemed like an ideal tenant. Ashbroken was a priest. He was kind and handsome. He worked hard and he paid the rent in time. Despite this, everything had gone south.
Yrmellyn had tried to help the nice man tidy up in his apartment - the former owner had left it in a mess - when she had found a beautiful gemstone in the debris. But, it hadn't been a gemstone. It had dissolved in her hand and stained it with an unknown substance. It had been impossible to wash the stain away and by the time it had grown to an odd rash. It looked a bit metallic but in an ugly manner, like rust and verdigris on her skin.
Yrmellyn had gone to lengths to try to get rid of it. She had treated herself with an odd all-purpose elixir crafted in Volta but this had only made the rash worse. A concoction of her own, following a bad alchemy recipe, had been an even worse idea. Now, she was out of ideas. But, the old Elixo's in the Dust Quarter had a depressing theory that there was "something magic" with the rash. Yrmellyn didn't feel that this theory was helpful in the least. Going against their advice she had continued to use the all-purpose elixir. Their warnings that it might contain a water plant they called "merweed" and their worry that she might get "merified" had seemed like superstitious rubbish. They were very old folks, the Elixos, nice and caring, but old. She had found their speculations addle-brained.
But, recently she had given in to an irresistible need to dive into the cold water of Lake Lovalus and swim around there like a happy mer. The winter bath had made her throw the all-purpose elixir away. No more bathing! She would have to find some other cure to try out. The only problem was that she didn't know where to find it. The Elixos refused to sell anything more to Yrmellyn as she was "irresponsible". Her own collection of alchemy recipes, bought in the criminal district of Rynmere, had proven to be a fraud. The huge tome about alchemy by Former Honorary Professor Anne Brandon was written in a language Yrmellyn didn't know. It irked her to no end that she wasn't able to read it and use it. It could have come in handy!
Soon she arrived at the place where something sensational seemed to be up. Yrmellyn had no qualms using her elbows to make her way through the giddy crowd. For giddy they were, inebriated by the samples of wine a peddler was handing out. The man kept his wares on a cart. It looked like one of those less stable business operations which turned up in the market. They used to last for a short time. Then they disappeared before people could come back to complain and demand reimbursement.
The peddler was yelling about his offers. Due to all the noise the excited crowd made, Yrmellyn could only hear fragments of what he said. His accent told her that he was from Volta though, that dangerous coastal city where all kinds of drugs and alchemy produce came from.
Some girls nearby were laughing so hard that they had to cling to each other to stay on their feet. They stumbled into Yrmellyn and clung to her too. All the girls had bizarre hair colours. One of them had light blue hair with strands of magenta pink. Another girl had green and orange hair and a third member of their group had white hair with ruby red stripes. At first, Yrmellyn couldn’t even guess at what they were doing. But, then she heard them encourage a fourth girl to “drink the sample”. The fourth girl had average rat-brown hair, but only until she did as the others said. She emptied the tiny paper mug she held in her hand. Her hair colour turned into a multicoloured mix of red, green, blue and yellow. She also began to laugh and feel like the others.
The change had been instant and Yrmellyn could only draw one conclusion: A drug.
Yrmellyn disentangled herself from the giddy group of girls. She stepped closer to the cart and watched the peddler. It was hard to guess the age of the man but he was not a youth. He could be anything between thirty and fifty. His furrowed face spoke about a life full of experience, maybe too full. He had that special worn look of people who have tried everything and a bit a more and are proud of it.
The drug peddlers from Volta were a varied lot. Some were very elegant and beautiful. Those were often selling cosmetics and “beautifying balms and liquors”. Others were outright shabby and it was easy to see that they were addicts using their own wares. Those were often selling simple “mind bombs” for people who wanted a “quick fix". Then there were the peddlers who were less easy to categorize. The man at the cart was one of those...mystery peddlers from Volta.
The peddler had seen her. He raised his voice and shouted at her to come closer and sample his wine, the best wine in Rharne. Yrmellyn felt sceptical about the wine as such. Rosmerta's Winery made the best wine in the city. But, she felt interested in the special properties of the wine. Judging from what she had seen it could change the colour of people's hair. Yrmellyn was wondering if it could change the appearance of more things. Could it, for example, improve the look of the mysterious rash?
Stepping closer she could hear him better and it became possible to strike up a conversation. The man immediately offered her a sample of the wine. Yrmellyn shook her head. "No thanks, I'm not looking to change my hair colour,"
"You aren't? Listen, a woman who is...over twenty, so to speak...can improve their looks a great deal with new and more spectacular hair colour! Try it, you'll like it! Your husband will love it!"
Yrmellyn raised her eyebrows. "I'm not married."
"Not married? Too bad! But, tell you what, this wine will fix it for you. One swig and you'll stumble over the love our your life, right now, right here in the crowd!"
"Will it?"
"Yeah. You could look a lot better if you would be less careless with your appearance. I mean, look at you. I'm sure that cloak is warm and all that but it's plain. Your hat...does not make the best of your appearance either. Your hairstyle is artless. So, yeah, with a more elegant cloak and hat and one of those elaborate hairstyles ...a striking new hair colour and a skilled application of cosmetics...you would look all right. If you know how to use cosmetics, that is."
As compliments went, this was by far the worst she had ever received. Yrmellyn digested it in silence while the peddler turned his attention to new customers who were easier to persuade. She watched two men gain colourful new beards. In her opinion, it didn't make them more attractive. They were young and they hadn't been ugly before so the coloured beards didn't make much of a difference. The third man, however...underwent an unexpected change. His face had looked a bit pockmarked but after he had drunk his sample of the peddler's wine his skin seemed visibly smoother and he gained a becoming light tan. He looked much younger and more ... radiant.
It intrigued her. She wasn't interested in the man, but she took an enormous interest in the improvement of his skin.
"There you see," the peddler told her, a triumphant tone in his voice. "Here! Drink your sample now! Drink up! It will give you a quick fix in no time, just like it did to the good fellow here!" He pointed at the beautified man who was now stumbling into the madding crowd of laughing people.
The peddler opened a new bottle to make more samples and the crowd was growing. He sold a few bottles despite that the price was sky-high. But, Yrmellyn knew enough about business to see that the peddler still was a lousy businessman. He didn't seem to get that most people were only looking for a bit of free entertainment but weren't prepared to pay for a lasting effect. She believed that selling many bottles at a lower price would have been better.
"Does it have any other properties than hair dying?" she asked when the peddler got a calm moment again. "I mean, that man with the pockmarks didn't get a new hair colour. His skin tanned and the marks disappeared."
"Good observation! You are smarter than you look! Gotta say! Yeah, this wine can work wonders for your appearance! What it does depends on what kind of improvement takes priority. Some, like those lovely young girls over there, only need a fun hair colour to make them stand out. A person who needs more will get more. More is more! You really should drink your sample now!"
The rudeness of the peddler would ordinarily have made her walk away. Now, a budding hope made her stay and endure his insulting marketing. This wine might be the cure she needed. If she was lucky it would take away the disgusting "rusty metal rash" which was growing on her skin and the added scaly "merifying" effect of the all-purpose elixir. This wine might be her only chance! It seemed dumb to not test it!
Still, she hesitated to do it. The rash had reacted in strange ways to other wonder remedies she had tried out. The experiments she had seen Hannah and Oliver Elixo at Hannah's healer do with skin samples from her had also been scary. Some substances had made the rash grow very fast and others had made the skin flakes boil and combust. Yrmellyn found it best to ask for more information.
"I have this rash ..." Despite the cold of Zi'da she rolled up the sleeves of her jacket and shirt and opened the cloak enough to give let the peddler see the odd. rough, rust and verdigris kind of metallic skin on her arm.
"Ouch! That's gross! " the man yelled. He took a step back. "Don't come too near! I don't want to catch that shit, whatever it is!"
There went her attempt to do this in a discrete manner. Yrmellyn hurried up and hid the arm under the cloak, rolling down the sleeves again. Luckily, the people in the crowd seemed busy with their own fun. "I was going to ask if you think the wine can take it away."
The peddler rallied. "For sure! Here's a bottle. Take it and begone!" He bent down and put a bottle of the mystery wine on the pavement in front of her and then he quickly stepped back behind the cart again. "Take it! It's for free! Off with you now! You can drink it at home! Shoo! "
Yrmellyn realized that the man wasn't going to touch her money if she tried to pay. He feared contamination. She couldn't blame him. He was right that the rash was gross and if she had been him she would have avoided it like leprosy. The best she could do now was to take the bottle and leave before he made a drama of the situation and called for the guards. She picked up the wine and left.
A little bit later she was home in her apartment and locked the door. There. Now, nobody would see anything!
She threw the cloak over the back of a chair and took off the jacket and the shirt, leaving only the sleeveless undershirt on. Then she walked over to the mirror, a quite big mirror as some of her portrait customers were very vain and wanted to make sure that every tiny detail in their attire was perfect. Her mirror image had always felt like a nice sight in the past. Now, the rash dominated it. Her arms and were covered by it and it was visible in the "decolletage" too. There was no denying that her looks were going metallic but not beautifully so. The bottle she held in her right hand did nothing to improve the picture. Pondering what she saw, she decided that she was looking like a badly tattooed jester from the Dust Quarter addicted to a suspect drug.
It couldn't get much worse than it already was. She could as well try the wine.
She pulled the cork out of the bottle and held it up. "Cheers!"
A few quick swigs and she felt a strange tingly effect spread all over her body. Feeling giddy, she laughed and now she knew why the crowd had been so merry. It felt like being tickled with feathers. But, this sensation passed and a new and stranger sensation followed. She had no words for it. Watching her mirror image in horror she saw that she was growing iridescent scales. It wasn't the fishy kind of scales she had wanted to get rid of though. These scales were green and gold coloured and shiny like polished metal ... or the skin of a strange reptile. It occurred to her that she was turning into one of those mythical beings of the legends of the old. The rash looked way more beautiful now but it was a terrible beauty and it scared her like the beneath.
She felt like she would pass out. Everything seemed to spin like in a bad dream. She chalked it up to the wine. Very slowly and carefully she put the cork back into the bottleneck. Then she put the bottle on the floor. (Later, she would put it in the storage room on the other side of the hallway outside her apartment.) Then she stumbled to her bed and fell into a deep sleep. Next morning she would wake up and find that the effect of the wine had worn off. It wasn't permanent. Personally she was happy with this.
But, she bet there were a lot of people who would feel cheated and go looking for the peddler to get their money back. And, she bet that the man would have disappeared, like peddlers of scams used to do.
Yrmellyn had a bad period of time in her life. She had rented out one of her two apartments to a man who had seemed like an ideal tenant. Ashbroken was a priest. He was kind and handsome. He worked hard and he paid the rent in time. Despite this, everything had gone south.
Yrmellyn had tried to help the nice man tidy up in his apartment - the former owner had left it in a mess - when she had found a beautiful gemstone in the debris. But, it hadn't been a gemstone. It had dissolved in her hand and stained it with an unknown substance. It had been impossible to wash the stain away and by the time it had grown to an odd rash. It looked a bit metallic but in an ugly manner, like rust and verdigris on her skin.
Yrmellyn had gone to lengths to try to get rid of it. She had treated herself with an odd all-purpose elixir crafted in Volta but this had only made the rash worse. A concoction of her own, following a bad alchemy recipe, had been an even worse idea. Now, she was out of ideas. But, the old Elixo's in the Dust Quarter had a depressing theory that there was "something magic" with the rash. Yrmellyn didn't feel that this theory was helpful in the least. Going against their advice she had continued to use the all-purpose elixir. Their warnings that it might contain a water plant they called "merweed" and their worry that she might get "merified" had seemed like superstitious rubbish. They were very old folks, the Elixos, nice and caring, but old. She had found their speculations addle-brained.
But, recently she had given in to an irresistible need to dive into the cold water of Lake Lovalus and swim around there like a happy mer. The winter bath had made her throw the all-purpose elixir away. No more bathing! She would have to find some other cure to try out. The only problem was that she didn't know where to find it. The Elixos refused to sell anything more to Yrmellyn as she was "irresponsible". Her own collection of alchemy recipes, bought in the criminal district of Rynmere, had proven to be a fraud. The huge tome about alchemy by Former Honorary Professor Anne Brandon was written in a language Yrmellyn didn't know. It irked her to no end that she wasn't able to read it and use it. It could have come in handy!
Soon she arrived at the place where something sensational seemed to be up. Yrmellyn had no qualms using her elbows to make her way through the giddy crowd. For giddy they were, inebriated by the samples of wine a peddler was handing out. The man kept his wares on a cart. It looked like one of those less stable business operations which turned up in the market. They used to last for a short time. Then they disappeared before people could come back to complain and demand reimbursement.
The peddler was yelling about his offers. Due to all the noise the excited crowd made, Yrmellyn could only hear fragments of what he said. His accent told her that he was from Volta though, that dangerous coastal city where all kinds of drugs and alchemy produce came from.
Some girls nearby were laughing so hard that they had to cling to each other to stay on their feet. They stumbled into Yrmellyn and clung to her too. All the girls had bizarre hair colours. One of them had light blue hair with strands of magenta pink. Another girl had green and orange hair and a third member of their group had white hair with ruby red stripes. At first, Yrmellyn couldn’t even guess at what they were doing. But, then she heard them encourage a fourth girl to “drink the sample”. The fourth girl had average rat-brown hair, but only until she did as the others said. She emptied the tiny paper mug she held in her hand. Her hair colour turned into a multicoloured mix of red, green, blue and yellow. She also began to laugh and feel like the others.
The change had been instant and Yrmellyn could only draw one conclusion: A drug.
Yrmellyn disentangled herself from the giddy group of girls. She stepped closer to the cart and watched the peddler. It was hard to guess the age of the man but he was not a youth. He could be anything between thirty and fifty. His furrowed face spoke about a life full of experience, maybe too full. He had that special worn look of people who have tried everything and a bit a more and are proud of it.
The drug peddlers from Volta were a varied lot. Some were very elegant and beautiful. Those were often selling cosmetics and “beautifying balms and liquors”. Others were outright shabby and it was easy to see that they were addicts using their own wares. Those were often selling simple “mind bombs” for people who wanted a “quick fix". Then there were the peddlers who were less easy to categorize. The man at the cart was one of those...mystery peddlers from Volta.
The peddler had seen her. He raised his voice and shouted at her to come closer and sample his wine, the best wine in Rharne. Yrmellyn felt sceptical about the wine as such. Rosmerta's Winery made the best wine in the city. But, she felt interested in the special properties of the wine. Judging from what she had seen it could change the colour of people's hair. Yrmellyn was wondering if it could change the appearance of more things. Could it, for example, improve the look of the mysterious rash?
Stepping closer she could hear him better and it became possible to strike up a conversation. The man immediately offered her a sample of the wine. Yrmellyn shook her head. "No thanks, I'm not looking to change my hair colour,"
"You aren't? Listen, a woman who is...over twenty, so to speak...can improve their looks a great deal with new and more spectacular hair colour! Try it, you'll like it! Your husband will love it!"
Yrmellyn raised her eyebrows. "I'm not married."
"Not married? Too bad! But, tell you what, this wine will fix it for you. One swig and you'll stumble over the love our your life, right now, right here in the crowd!"
"Will it?"
"Yeah. You could look a lot better if you would be less careless with your appearance. I mean, look at you. I'm sure that cloak is warm and all that but it's plain. Your hat...does not make the best of your appearance either. Your hairstyle is artless. So, yeah, with a more elegant cloak and hat and one of those elaborate hairstyles ...a striking new hair colour and a skilled application of cosmetics...you would look all right. If you know how to use cosmetics, that is."
As compliments went, this was by far the worst she had ever received. Yrmellyn digested it in silence while the peddler turned his attention to new customers who were easier to persuade. She watched two men gain colourful new beards. In her opinion, it didn't make them more attractive. They were young and they hadn't been ugly before so the coloured beards didn't make much of a difference. The third man, however...underwent an unexpected change. His face had looked a bit pockmarked but after he had drunk his sample of the peddler's wine his skin seemed visibly smoother and he gained a becoming light tan. He looked much younger and more ... radiant.
It intrigued her. She wasn't interested in the man, but she took an enormous interest in the improvement of his skin.
"There you see," the peddler told her, a triumphant tone in his voice. "Here! Drink your sample now! Drink up! It will give you a quick fix in no time, just like it did to the good fellow here!" He pointed at the beautified man who was now stumbling into the madding crowd of laughing people.
The peddler opened a new bottle to make more samples and the crowd was growing. He sold a few bottles despite that the price was sky-high. But, Yrmellyn knew enough about business to see that the peddler still was a lousy businessman. He didn't seem to get that most people were only looking for a bit of free entertainment but weren't prepared to pay for a lasting effect. She believed that selling many bottles at a lower price would have been better.
"Does it have any other properties than hair dying?" she asked when the peddler got a calm moment again. "I mean, that man with the pockmarks didn't get a new hair colour. His skin tanned and the marks disappeared."
"Good observation! You are smarter than you look! Gotta say! Yeah, this wine can work wonders for your appearance! What it does depends on what kind of improvement takes priority. Some, like those lovely young girls over there, only need a fun hair colour to make them stand out. A person who needs more will get more. More is more! You really should drink your sample now!"
The rudeness of the peddler would ordinarily have made her walk away. Now, a budding hope made her stay and endure his insulting marketing. This wine might be the cure she needed. If she was lucky it would take away the disgusting "rusty metal rash" which was growing on her skin and the added scaly "merifying" effect of the all-purpose elixir. This wine might be her only chance! It seemed dumb to not test it!
Still, she hesitated to do it. The rash had reacted in strange ways to other wonder remedies she had tried out. The experiments she had seen Hannah and Oliver Elixo at Hannah's healer do with skin samples from her had also been scary. Some substances had made the rash grow very fast and others had made the skin flakes boil and combust. Yrmellyn found it best to ask for more information.
"I have this rash ..." Despite the cold of Zi'da she rolled up the sleeves of her jacket and shirt and opened the cloak enough to give let the peddler see the odd. rough, rust and verdigris kind of metallic skin on her arm.
"Ouch! That's gross! " the man yelled. He took a step back. "Don't come too near! I don't want to catch that shit, whatever it is!"
There went her attempt to do this in a discrete manner. Yrmellyn hurried up and hid the arm under the cloak, rolling down the sleeves again. Luckily, the people in the crowd seemed busy with their own fun. "I was going to ask if you think the wine can take it away."
The peddler rallied. "For sure! Here's a bottle. Take it and begone!" He bent down and put a bottle of the mystery wine on the pavement in front of her and then he quickly stepped back behind the cart again. "Take it! It's for free! Off with you now! You can drink it at home! Shoo! "
Yrmellyn realized that the man wasn't going to touch her money if she tried to pay. He feared contamination. She couldn't blame him. He was right that the rash was gross and if she had been him she would have avoided it like leprosy. The best she could do now was to take the bottle and leave before he made a drama of the situation and called for the guards. She picked up the wine and left.
A little bit later she was home in her apartment and locked the door. There. Now, nobody would see anything!
She threw the cloak over the back of a chair and took off the jacket and the shirt, leaving only the sleeveless undershirt on. Then she walked over to the mirror, a quite big mirror as some of her portrait customers were very vain and wanted to make sure that every tiny detail in their attire was perfect. Her mirror image had always felt like a nice sight in the past. Now, the rash dominated it. Her arms and were covered by it and it was visible in the "decolletage" too. There was no denying that her looks were going metallic but not beautifully so. The bottle she held in her right hand did nothing to improve the picture. Pondering what she saw, she decided that she was looking like a badly tattooed jester from the Dust Quarter addicted to a suspect drug.
It couldn't get much worse than it already was. She could as well try the wine.
She pulled the cork out of the bottle and held it up. "Cheers!"
A few quick swigs and she felt a strange tingly effect spread all over her body. Feeling giddy, she laughed and now she knew why the crowd had been so merry. It felt like being tickled with feathers. But, this sensation passed and a new and stranger sensation followed. She had no words for it. Watching her mirror image in horror she saw that she was growing iridescent scales. It wasn't the fishy kind of scales she had wanted to get rid of though. These scales were green and gold coloured and shiny like polished metal ... or the skin of a strange reptile. It occurred to her that she was turning into one of those mythical beings of the legends of the old. The rash looked way more beautiful now but it was a terrible beauty and it scared her like the beneath.
She felt like she would pass out. Everything seemed to spin like in a bad dream. She chalked it up to the wine. Very slowly and carefully she put the cork back into the bottleneck. Then she put the bottle on the floor. (Later, she would put it in the storage room on the other side of the hallway outside her apartment.) Then she stumbled to her bed and fell into a deep sleep. Next morning she would wake up and find that the effect of the wine had worn off. It wasn't permanent. Personally she was happy with this.
But, she bet there were a lot of people who would feel cheated and go looking for the peddler to get their money back. And, she bet that the man would have disappeared, like peddlers of scams used to do.
