Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Where the Sky meets the Ocean ❯ Twist Bazaar ( Chapter 7 )

Authors Note: Thank you to the people who have read this story, and a big thank you to my reviewers. I'm sorry the chapters haven't come out in a timely manner, but life is hell. So an especially big thank you to those who have stuck with it, I promise this isn't an abandoned work and you will be rewarded! I took a slightly different turn with this chapter, it's a songfic to The Tea Party's, The Bazaar, which is a really kickass song, so due credit to them. I'm actually going to be redoing the opening scene of the last chapter, because it is bad, so if you are interested in reading what I really meant it to say it should be up soon. If anyone has any kind of request, or something more specific they would like changed about the story, I would really like to hear it right now because, I just don't know what I'm doing wrong! The reviews have been too general, much as I appreciate them, so I would appreciate any input you have that would make this more fun for the readers, cause that's who its for! Make your voice heard! -Amalthea

 

 

 

Awaken. Awaken. Awaken.

 

What seemed like a thousand, but physically turned out to be a dozen voices deep in chant repeated the word over and carefully over again. Each time it emerged from prayer worn lips a silent wish stood vigil behind it. It was a respectful plea, not flamboyant or desperate, just said with persistent moderation and a spoonful of belief. Several attempts to grasp who she was and where she had been taken were sparked and shot down, yet the voices continued. Every one that was let down by her refusal to rise was followed up by another, not losing an ounce of calm pressure. The voices filled her pulse, each one a glimmer of will that sputtered out when she turned away, but as they built up she could no longer deny it, and her sweat soaked eyelids fluttered open of their own accord.

 

The dim candlelight that poured in stung her nerve endings, but once alert they refused to close, and she gathered in all the details of her current abode against her will. All the while wanting to ram them shut and go back to the land of her past, the place of her memories where everything was so predictable and in tune. The fabric of robes well worn fluttered about her, sleeves dragging over her shaking torso as they passed herbs and hot water to and fro. Sacred faces draped in hoods, ancient tongues under their breath, eyes glazed over with fanatic love. Her eyes drifted languidly between open and closed as they worked, incantations for vitality and herbs for purity. The haze before them began to clear, and her head started to feel less squeezed in.

 

Droplets of warm water took their path from home woven clothes down into her pores, driving the sweat before it down the side of her face. Little streams burrowed between the tangled strands of hair on their way to the floor, sending tingles down the base of her neck. Every breath was beginning to become heavy and real, laden with rich incense and wafts of herb traces, pushing the life back into her quivering gut. As she consciously exhaled and willed herself complete, a solitary figure stood captivated beyond the doorway…

 

Silence swimming in a pool of dreams, beneath its depths the forgotten streams…

 

A seductive helix of smoke rose slowly from the smoldering cigarette tip. The slender fingers holding it surely decided all at once to let it fall to ruin on the stone floor, and she absentmindedly ground it in with a booted toe. Letting the commotion settle and blur into one insignificant droning, she focused in on the footsteps of her prey. The marketplace was lit with exuberant bargain seekers, as always, but it only took the ignorance of one to give her another week to live. Inconspicuous as a gypsy can be, she mingled and jingled along just enough behind the victim, walking carefully yet casually and all the while drowning out everything else. Faces passed, distractions sped by, crashes and accidents all in the chorus of a good days bazaar.

 

Above, the city of the evening star, behind its walls, the grand bazaar…

 

A pair of pale, slender fingers took advantage of one such mishap and dove deep into the chasm of her targets pocket, careful so as to not alert the man to their presence or intention. Just as simply, they shot back out again, and deposited the goods into the larger pouch at her side in a fluid and undetectable motion. Snaking her way through the throng with firm flexibility, she was inevitably driven by the mass to the booth of the colorful instrument salesman; her fellow outlaws. She smoothly passed the package on to a young man in a rust colored tunic, who smiled and stashed away quickly.

 

As she walks through its endless maze, cursing those who mistrust her ways…

 

Moving back into the swarm of bodies, determined to get a better score, most of the noise and commotion blurred back into white noise save one. A couple was gossiping behind her, about her appearance, and she couldn't help but take notice to what was being said. “Look, there's another gypsy rat! The place is crawling with them, why can't the council do anything about the leeches? I heard that on mars the employment rate is plummeting because the high priestess has disappeared, and nobody was next in line that knew how to handle the trade agreements with Venus. But they haven't all turned into ungrateful beggars!”

 

“That's because their priests have morals, and keep people strong in their faith unlike some religious officials I could mention who roam the caverns shrouded in mystery and take no action to improve the peoples ethics! Those wretched whores are a danger to our society I tell you, the whole lot of them should be dragged out onto the surface in chains and left to the great seas mercy!”

 

Please my friend no matter what she sees, tell my lover come back to me…

 

Her fists tightened at her sides, pride in her profession and honorable heritage that has just been pushed to dependency on unwholesome methods of income by an unforgiving society. There was very little demand for the traditional crafts and talents, and nothing she did ever seemed to fulfill the expectations of the common folk. Sometimes she just wanted to press herself flat against the bazaar chamber's stone floor and be smoothed into it by the thousands of coming and going feet. Other times she wanted to drink until she didn't wake up, still others she contemplated getting lost in the lowest chambers and wandering until she found a suitable crystal stalagmite to impale herself upon.

 

Every time she set out to `work' there were a million reasons to just not go back to her people, despite the overwhelming truth that they were the only source of comfort she had ever known, her clan, her blood, her suffering, her family. Even though that is all she had to wake up for, the overwhelming sense of unwillingness to rise held her down for some time before she finally choked it all down and greeted the day with her adoptive mothers old prayer.

 

Doorways spilling out their somber light, casting shadows that will raid the night…

 

It was getting nigh on closing time, and all the last minute bartering attempts were being flaunted in hoarse voices that had been tight wadding all day. Though the subterranean lamps burned continuously, the concentrations of light depended greatly on quantity. At the end of the day, the dense clusters of illuminous gems were used by people exiting large public areas to navigate back to their homesteads. Thus, the more people in one area, the brighter it was. All of the native Neptunians, however were more than accustomed to the ever present darkness, and instead of taking torches or stones all the way back to their rooms would mount them on the walls as they passed, building up pathways for others to follow. Then, upon heading out to work and interaction, the citizens would pick up stones to guide them on to the public places again, and set them down in large groups.

 

This light system was highly effective, new stones would be enchanted, old ones burn out, and they would all cycle through the colony in sync with the people's lives. Some stones, would stay in one place for their entire life spans, like stars, others would glide all throughout the caverns and beyond, shining and fading in tune with the Neptune system of continuous equinox. Since the sun never overcame the dense, deep cloud cover, there was no need to stretch out a day and wear its walkers thin, and the culture was based on nighttime religion and personal development. Titania never used the stones, nighttime for her only meant less people to be shunned by, she stalked down shadows regardless of the hour. She had no room to fill with light, and did not want one.

 

Along the alleys of her ruling fears, walk the visions that will cause her tears…

 

Secrets are easily kept in the infinite tunnel system of Neptune, people have gone down deep and gotten lost forever, some have made homes down so far that nobody would ever find them and lived as perfect hermits throughout their lives, licking nutrients off of rocks and eating algae and small shrimp that grow in subterranean pools. The people in general do not live to eat; they enjoy small quantities with concentrated nutritional value and legendary flavor. Chefs could make a great living preparing the fine fruits of Neptune's extraordinary climate and exporting them for scads of money. Titania didn't want the money; the things she saw when nobody was looking made her not want things anymore. No comfort would suit her as the dreams took away all feelings but alone, empty, and numb. Sometimes she could pretend they had no relevance, sometimes she could convince herself they didn't happen at all, she could bury them in layers of stone and time, but they would seep through to the water and into her blood. Life was but an intravenous nightmare, dripping, dripping, down the base of her spine.

 

Lying still as she wills her glance, through the eyes of a charmers trance…

 

Many times, the gift that no one else knew about, she had tried to master it. All attempts led to sharp pain and unwanted knowledge, but she could, she had the capacity to develop, and she did. Every time, another step she had taken towards shaping and defining the tool, a consequence of the dream desperate mother and hope helpless priest that had animated her. She was destined for change, for reform, many mixes of this nature roamed the halls; of course, they were charmers and clairvoyants all right. But she was the one who would stand faithful, for a people she hated with all of her being, in the face of overwhelming conspiracy, she would use the gift and what she already knew in her heart in a far off day of reckoning.

 

Please my friend no matter what she sees, tell my lover come back to me…

 

Amidst a crowd of people that twinkled and then vanished stood a woman humble, carrying a lyre in one hand and pulling a harp alongside with the other. She was heading in the general direction of the gypsy band, glancing around every so often, as though looking for someone she knew would turn up eventually but her heart still worried and sought for. The light sound of a few precious coins clinked in tune with her footsteps, she was only a hard working harpist trying to hold on to whatever shreds of dignity were left in her frayed rug of a race. Though she ate, slept, and dwelled with the entirety of the band, her methods remained honorable, helping to make the finest instruments anywhere and play them in a way that just couldn't be expressed with written notes or theories.

 

The culture was all she had left to believe in, and she would fight with shimmering resilience till the very end. Her name was Calliope, and she was the last. The last true bard, the last clairaudient among the gypsy herd, with the gift to hear notes constantly in her head, notes and phrases and voices and whatever else felt the need to dump its voice unto her silently screaming ears. She did not want to hear them all the time; she didn't want to be held responsible for everyone's history because they would not hold onto it themselves. She wanted to be free to express herself with the songs of her heart, and not the ones that were on a killer endless loop in her minds ear. But she stayed silent, until it was her turn to sing, and she did so with more feeling than anyone else could muster, but those feelings were not her own. Most of her own feelings had been invested in the long lost shell of a woman she scanned for in the draining crowds.

 

And on the walls, shadows play, twilight souls, anguished ways, lost adrift, severed seas, I await you come to me…

 

The unwelcome quickly fled, and the dominant night culture loamed in. Calliope was stowing her belongings in the wagon her hard earned coins had paid for, modest as it was, it brought her joy to see her toils take such a splendid form. Speaking of which… Rifling through her bag of smaller possessions, she took out a couple sets of castanets, putting a pair on each hand, and tossing the other set out into the dark before her. Like clockwork, a pair of hands caught them cleanly out of the air and had them ready to play before you could say `gypsy'. Some familiar stray caught the two in the beginning of their heated dance, and snatched up the lyre from the back of the cart to set up a beat, just an unimportant background character who loved to jive. They stood at odds, the colder in her icy blue trappings and the tortured in a chaotic orange stance.

 

When the dance began, they were worlds apart, but as the lyre strings were plucked just so, and the persistent cries of the castanets became one voice, their bodies became entwined. To an outside viewer, the scene would be utterly invisible in the dying rock light, and all that could be heard were the clinks and strums and heartbeats. All one could hope to witness of the spectacle were their frenzied shadows on the far wall, faint but menacing all the same in their unpredictable power.

 

The rest of the troop were in their various hiding spots, as in truth they were most times, their infamous parties were actually a very rare event to behold. Well, the truth is, that they were poor, and depressed, and lonely and wanting it all to end, the festivals were just a coping mechanisms that made their image worse, to be sure, but worse meant being left alone for the most part. All the effort some put into holding onto old revered traditions, yet not one of them knew how it had really been, where they had originally come from, though there were a few who received hints in the form of voices and visions…