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Pretzyl slowed his gallop to an easy-going lope in response to his master's command. The highway atop cliffs gifted rider and horse an indescribable view of King Breretyn's kingdom: high heather plain and far off Belle Passe, falls tumbling into silver-misting half Moon Lagoon and the winding blue ribbon of river flowing past villages through valley along mountain base and beyond. Rynn's eyes scanned wheat fields and corn rows to cattle grazing on hillsides and sheep bleating in meadow. men gathering grapes to wood wagons move among vines, their bodies graceful as dancers bending low and then arms swaying away. Gardens flourish in yeards behind cottages settleing all lots. Flowering hedges and fruiting trees decorate street-sides. Brick paving the walkways shine polished to a gleam by treads of many persons' footfall happening over time.
Dogs chase dogs up and down alleys. Cats dart up trees. Birds fly overhead all commerce exchanging and trading in merchants' shops oblivious to banter and barter happening in mercantile far below. Boys play ball games in weed-trampled lots. Maidens' feet hop-scotch dance on imaginary squares in the cobblestone street. Husbands gather in huddles beneath smoke rings as wives wrapped in patchwork aprons loaded baskets with pastry and supper.
Parqai sat at his easel hunched before canvas with palette in hand paused in brush-stroking hand in midair as he contemplated a scene.
"But the very best place is the cigar maker's shack for a sugarcane stalk can be had for a halpence!" laughed Rhynn as he encouraged Pretzyl into a slow steady gait up the street. "I'll stop there first for the gifts I've planned for Poppi and Mummy, Grandpappy and Grandmummy. I'll buy you an apple from the first fruit cart for you are a fine easygoing agreeable ride!"
Pretzyl whinnied in gratitude for his master's kind inclusion once his great square teeth finished grinding the orb's flesh to its core.
"Fanacy a toke of my stogie, young man? It's my own secret recipe; tobacco grown in dark damp soil infused with blackberry and rum wroapped all aobuyt in sugar-soaked leaves when trely smoked leaves linger of sweet fruity earth on the tongue. Heaven-in-a-Bundle, I call it!"
Rhynn smiled at the cigar maker. The deep tan and crinkled leather texture of his skin gave evidenc of diligent toil under unforgiving sun's supreme energy and the fatigue of his facial muscles profoundly betrays their response to the gusto with which the man enjoys the fruit of his labor. Rhynn watched the man's onyx-brown eyes glint as glass-blower's marbles in sunlight.
"All your spicy sweet peppery mint nutmeg cedar cognac-dipped vanilla-infused stogies are Heavens-in-Blankets, good recipe-maker, sir," ansered horseman on steed. Prince Rhynn waited a count of four before putting in his order for two of this day's secret blend. The tobacco man's eyes widened in surprise at the count of two today over the usual one so he quickly bound them together in strings before the young man realized he'd doubled up his desire.
"And I'll take two stalks of that sugarcane you hide in that sack laying in the shadow there, if you don't mind, good sir! It is my birthday today so I'm splurging, is all!"
"Well, well! A birthday!. How many are you?" queried the merchant hustling two thick stalks onto thin papyrus then folding up all corners, tied them all about with cord.
"Sixteen."
"Ah, sixteen it is then, and may you see sixteen more!" chanted the crinkly-skinned man as smoldering cigar bobbled up and down between clenched teeth. Coins exchanged from royal fingers to gnarled-knuckled hand and that being that, concluded business.
Rhynn added the gifts of cigars and sugarcane to the scroll under his jacket patting the bundle of secrets hidden between cloth and warm skin.
Markets make their own music, pondered the prince as he listened to the cacophony of din and clatter playing an arrhythmic-tachycardia rhythm-beat.
It is a grand theme written on airwaves' imaginary staves that can be heard as verb and felt as noun.
Coins dropping in glass jars gentled clanking of coins dropping in tin cans. Mothers' treble clef voices calling children rang sweetly over husbands' bass rumblings arguing politics and weather. Boys' staccato shouts in street's ball-toss inspire girls' tenuto squealing in hide-and-see games round about buckets sporting blooming flower-stems. Horses whinnied and dogs barked. Cats meowed from rafters and birds circling above chirped unwittingly overall.
Winds sweeping down mountainside across meadow through valley rose in crescendo up market's street whistling past tents, carts and shacks rustling leaves taunting branches' firm hold along the way of its selfish journey only to become a diminuendo memory in its fleeing up cliff along highway over palace turrets and beyond.
Silence
Dramatic how abrupt silence following a sudden gust can sound as thunderous
Rhynn patted the bundle growing warm beneath his facket and nudging Pretzyl's belly turned into the street along the way to the brick-maker's house.
It was as if the little sirocco had not happened at all as all in the mercantile carried on as before. Tinkers and tailors, dressmakers, candlestick-makers and carpet-weavers' rugs, weaver's straw baskets in piles and needle-beaded hand-knotted colored glass strings hand from nails glittering...shimmering...gleaming
Not a thing changed in the wind at all except,1107Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYklMnWOTbO
"Oh, now it's all smudged and wet paint is on me! Worse, I've lost my muse to a silly hide-and-seek game! Come back girl, where did you go? I can't get the eyes right if I don't see them again!" wailed diminutive artist Parqai as he grappled with canvas whilst balancing palette and brush. Rhynn halted Pretzyl's lazy lope to assess damages done to this man's work. It is true that the canvas brushed against the artist's shirt for alluring pigment shone Rhynn's eye as he studied the subject blooming thereupon in colors so transparent as seemingly not to exist in paint at all. Rhynn blinked and stared harder.
This muse is a maiden dancing here...in the street there then away. Where are you, beautiful girl with eyes so arresting that Artist Parqai must capture you totally?
""Stop there, girl! Quit your twitling-about and look to me with those eyes so I might get the right pigments down before you turn away lost to your mother and mercantile clutter!" cried artist Parqai.
And a damsel did appear at the base of the artist's stool staring up at the brush in the man's hand swishing and dabbing then swirling and stroking. Rhynn stared at her face then back to the canvas where appeared the visage of this girl and a butterfly floating by her shoulder then stared back at the maiden staring up in wonderment, wide-eyed and mute at what she sees there. Rhynn turned his gaze back to the canvas and blinked, then stared again at what could not be happening here.
The butterfly's gossamer wings appear oscillating and the maiden's eyes glow hypnotizing the prince. Dismounting his steed Rhynn took a step closer to the apparition then retreated two back.
How can this be? It's only pigment and oil swirled on bare canvas here. But that girl is real, really here! And Rhynn looked again to the face of the muse standing silently by.
But not one girl stand here...there are two of them, exactly the same identical one to the other, the same! Look again! The eyes shine differently...one set flows softly as opals gleam...the other twinkles as pale star-sapphires shine.
"There are two damsels, Parqai; identical twins weaving about the flower vessels here yet you choose to paint only one."
"My canvas is small and I have only so much room. I must save space for the sky!"
"How did you pick one sister over the other? And what of the other left off the canvas is as much a part of the one chosen? Paint both faces on your canvas forgining the sky for it is a given that sky encompasses all canvases' borders, all waters and the earth."
Parqai turned his face to the twins standing still, gentle hand catching bare white arm, graceful fingertips overlapping, for they stared up at the dashing young prince poised in his saddle with dazed wonderment. A dazzle of sunlight appeared in that instant as one halo encircling identical heads.
"What are your names, pretty damsels?" asked Prince Rhynn appearing to their eyes as a white knight mounted upon royal regal steed.
"I am Qeyyapi and my sister is Aotepi."
Moon and Star...Qeyyapi's eyes glow softly-brilliant as full moon's do and Aotepi's eyes twinkle as do all stars
In that moment a mother's chiming voice rang out calling her daughters come hither. Both damsels vanished from Rhynn's sight. When the prince turned back to the canvas resting on the easel he saw what he'd seen just a moment before; two exquisitely-painted identical faces bur for one whose eyes glow as opals and in the other, star-sapphires. A rabble of delicate butterflies floats with diaphanous wings oscillating in sheer lavender-pink nimbus.
"This work pleases me greatly now, good Atist Parqai! Latch the canvas to my saddle here. Today is my birthday, after all, and I'm buying myself a present!" Rhynn pressed a heavy silver coin in the artist's warm palm.
Parqai gasped.
"That is but mere pittance as the genius showing in hour work is beyond price."
Pretzyl sensed something magnificent had just happened in the way of Rhynn's growing up and it had nothing at all to do with the new strain of apple crossed 'tween Delicious and Crisp. His master's low voice softened into speech quite extraordinary leaving behind his boy-tongue of yesterday.
Magic happens in marketplaces; incense pleasing my nose, dogs flipping at my hooves, flies bussing my ears too far from my tail. But today's magic is different and yet to be known.
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