Fresh fish! Fresh river-trout from the Blue Rapid, bring home a big and fresh fish! Look here, this one's the size of my arm, folks, imagine the filets...!
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Market Day. The weekly melee of Astorean commerce was in full swing, reams of gold and goods flung back and forth like gouts of gladiatorial blood in the proverbial colosseum of the Folk Street Marketplace. Even this early on in the day, the street was a raucous mess of surging activity, customer indistinguishable from vendor as hawkers each shouted louder than their neighbours in ever-earsplitting bids to be heard in the din.
All sorts of strange folk turn out for Market Day, people say; it's no surprise, of course, seeing as the sudden uptick of Traveler-produced goods and services had become a revolutionary propellant for Lander industries. Now, innovations unrecognisable to those who experienced their predecessors just scant years before crowded the markets. From the sharp-scented cracks of black-powder firearms in live-fire demonstrations to the clinks, blasts and clanks of Magitech automatons lugging about produce, marks of Lander-Starcalled liaison were no more out of place than the slew of varying bodies churning about in a ceaseless human wave.
Indeed, all manner of shoppers and salespeople from Beastfolk to Faerins to Elves and beyond were now an expected and welcomed sign of diversifying economic support from the dedicated few Starcalled who remained post-DRAGON.end - although, of course, Magia of any kind remained conspicuously absent.
Between the mutually contorting, apologising and sidestepping torsos and legs of meandering, rushing and browsing shoppers, one Faerin in particular moved with ironclad purpose. Clasping her beret close to her head so that it wouldn't be lost in the rush of the crowd around her, Ludmilla Orphys weaved as best she could along the path of least resistance through the market street.
Not so ridiculously diminutive that she approached 'danger of being stepped on' territory but just so small enough to fall into the 'can't be seen in a crowd without anyone actively looking downwards' classification, Ludmilla felt stray boots and even a swinging arm or two bump and bruise her as she all but barged her way through the choked street. That dissuaded her from her purpose about as much as a tumbleweed before a stampeding beast, such was the urgency with which she moved that one might as easily assume her to be escaping mortal peril instead of what she was doing,
which was quite the opposite.
As a groundhog breaks the dirt crust of an unruly lawn does Ludmilla find herself freed of that marketing madness, expelled into the less busy side-streets of Finweald. She had been here only a handful of times, unfamiliar with the surrounds and reliant on her innocent appeals to passersby for directions - but that was not necessarily a bad thing. Such slavering anticipation only made for a more satisfying meal.
At last, Ludmilla had worked up enough of a confused lost-child-esque facade to convince a very concerned bystander to walk her right outside of the establishment she was trying to find. Leaving them with a bright, toothy grin and yet more questions about whether it was alright for someone with seemingly so little sense for direction to head into a tavern, Ludmilla's eyes flick and scan the ground floor as soon as the door is open. In the mahogany-firelit hues of the Barrel and Cauldron, that peachy petal-pink stuck out like an errant thumbtack.
In mere moments would @Rael be brusquely interrupted in the middle of whatever she happened to be poring over at that time, if her attending summons had not already noted the beelining advance that Ludmilla made towards her table. As though turning in a successful bounty, Ludmilla would slam down onto the table a crumpled but still legible old poster, its smudged hand seeking those with stories to be told. In the same breath, her bell-like chime to the nearest tavern-hand struck merrily discordant against the polite lunch hubbub.
Menu! Menu! Show me everything on the menu!