Dare Crimson Stain and Silver Courtesy

[Song]

A slightest whisper of a drizzle cooled the summer streets, but the market day saw the city bustling late into the night. Dust settled slightly down, and the mixture of odors from meats, herbs, contraptions and sweating people mingled on the square.

A local herbsman saw company today.
A young man, dressed in plain beige-grey foreign manner garments, had paid him to take a seat at his stall, and set an array of small, short and wide white clay pots at the edge.
Fermented herbs in some, dark red paper circles of cheek and lip stain in another, eyelid inks in fiery carmine and blue sheen on black.

The herbsman Ullad did the peddling for the wares. The young man's beauty drew in curious gazes, and those that stopped would more often than not buy. A string of smoke from sweet and heady incense twined between the moving bodies.

The young man seemed content to mostly watch, and smile to those that caught his gaze with a light and innocent charm of spring's first birdsong.
But he was not a merchant, more interested in studying some of the unadorned jars and mixing ink in a small bowl atop one of the herb baskets.

The brush tilted in his fingers with precision, its tip black, and the containers for ointments and decorations bloomed with flowers, sprouted tree branches and bamboo forests, with a scattering of birds flying in the plain clay skies.

As he was finishing one such piece, a tiger lily on a lip stain pot lid, he caught someone lingering. Eyebrows rose slightly, a friendly smile came easily to his lips.
"How can I help you?"

 

[Lila Lacrimosa]

The market reeked of desperation; everyone in it was dilatory as they went from one stall to the next. Merchants hawked their wares as the sun continued to rise high in the sky; the exaggeration of their claims only grew grander as the heat took over. Lila was glad for the dry heat instead of the humidity that often struck without warning. She wore her hair in a braid situated high on the crown of her head. It was too hot to hide her twilight tresses beneath a black cloak, and she had just bathed. She held no intentions of getting herself filthy again so soon.

Especially not when she had a mission of a more delicate nature. One that she was loath to think about, even if only she knew what it was for. It was the preparation of it all that was embarrassingly beneath her and the image she had carefully curated of herself. Someone bumped into Lila, a plump woman dragging two little children after her, a basket full of leafy greens as she scolded the two boys about their behavior. Lila would have said something, but she knew better than to correct a scowling mother. That was a sort of wrath she wanted to steer clear of.

She continued on her way, only stopping when she realized a group of young women giggling by a stall. They were all various sizes with different looks; the only thing connecting them was the way they wore their hair, heavily braided and wrapped around their heads, and that their lips were all the same color. Shiny and red, like ripe strawberries.

Lila strode up, stepping past the merchant to look at the jars and the man painting on them. Arts and crafts, how lovely.

"You're not from here." Her tone was accusatory, as if telling the man he had just stolen from her coin purse. Lips pressed into a thin line, her blue-violet eyes looked over at all the colorful containers, hiding who knew what. Lila didn't like it; the jars reminded her of stuffy socials where women competed silently with each other over whose dress was the best. Lila hadn't been allowed to go to one in years; her hair and eyes would claim all the attention in the worst of ways.

 

[Song]

Nothing changed on the young man's face, not the smile, and not the posture. He eyed the girl, face pleasant, offering an idle good morning as she approached. He could feel the tension before she even stopped, and no surprise came as the words dropped from her lips, dry like divination bones spelling out the distaste. One would almost be surprised at the odd number of incidentally hostile conversations. It was most certainly not on any demerit they'd know of.

"No," he offered back in agreement. "Well noticed, young lady."
He smiled at the girls, and pulled a hand fan from behind his belt, opening it with an elegant hand flourish. to move the air about himself, his light eyes lingering on the face of the girl.

Despite the simple clothing, his eyeliner hand was pristine, a thin red line between his brows a darker shade and perfectly in the middle. The stain on his lips made them more vibrant against the skin that did not drink the late season sun, but it was fainter than the overly applied crimson on his lovely clients, the hue of crushed rhodolite rather than polished oxblood coral.

"My humble stall corner would hardly be able to enhance this unique beauty," he uttered mildly, and offered but a mock of a bow with his head. "Surely, the young lady with eyes like sunlight in the midst of Water season must be here for the herbsman," the fan briefly closed to point out the stall owner, occupying the majority of it with fragrant bundles of his leafy and flowery wares, "not for this poor scholar and his paints?"

 

[Lila Lacrimosa]

His compliment lacked the glow of pride she usually felt when a professor praised her astuteness. Lila thought that it might have been backhanded, the sort of customer service response meant to coddle while secretly effacing their intellect. She bit back the retort, remembering her mother's words about catching more flies with honey rather than vinegar. Violet eyes narrowed, looking over his face. She hated that she admired his skill, how colors seemed to bleed from his lips to the rest of his features, like watercolor on a smooth canvas.

"Eyes like sunlight?" Lila scoffed, unable to grasp what sunlight looked like in Water season. Did he mean the dark clouds overhead that blocked the sun? If so, he was accurate. She had always been described as something devoid of the warmth of the sun, undeserving of Ko.

"You're wrong if you think I'd come here for medicine. I am looking for makeup—something that makes a woman look young and like a trendsetter. It will need to be pretty enough so she keeps it on her vanity because it stands out." She glanced at the giggling women, then back at the man. "Nothing that color. I'm surprised it even sold."