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[R4 Morning, Cable Ways] Comissions [Tiffle]
“V-E-G-E-vege...table- T-A-B-L-E. Vegetable!”
They made for a slightly odd looking party. Two members of The Bull Elephant Party and an aid dressed smartly and for business while a six year old girl, her dark hair twisted up into braids adorned with yellow glass beads in the shape of flowers clutched at the hand of the man in front. Mekeela had lost her first milk tooth and was prouder than a peacock about it, smiling her gap toothed smile at everyone they passed. Msrah would start having to bring her out to speeches and parties, already she was a damn sight better at being pleasant and probably about a hundred times more useful than her mother.
“Good work, Mekeela. Excellent. You spell better than most of Jara’s administrators,” said Msrah as the cable cart rattled towards the stop. “Watch as you step over this gap, now.” She hopped neatly onto the cart and ran towards the window, sliding it open so she could poke her head out to watch the wheels and the wires. That was her favourite part. While some days she wanted to be a confisalto dancers, others she’d decided she was to be an engineer. Neither of them, of course, would be her eventual path in life- not in Msrah’s careful planning- but there was no harm in letting the children have their wild imaginings for a short while.
He laughed as his daughter checked eagerly back to see if she still had his attention before jiggling on her knees, positively giddy with excitement when the cable cart started. “Msrah,” began the man to his left. “Now, you did ask me for a full day and sir I should say that your constituents are still-” he stilled his hand as he walked over to Mekeela and sat down on the chair beside her. Business could wait just a little while, he reckoned. The space of a single journey on the cable cars surely. Moments with his child were few and far between what with the day to day long hours at the assembly and as much time in his district as he could possibly fit in.
It was alright for some, he supposed, to ignore the constituents who had elected them- send representatives and focus all their attentions on winning votes in the assembly, but Msrah had to cultivate a relationship with the people who’d voted for him. Had to be seen to be paying attention to the lowest problem, even if it was so tedious he wanted to scream. Even if it made him miss these short moments with his child. And he did so worry about her. Alone in the house with no one but his wife to look after her.
Though she was a preccocious enough child around adults, all accounts said that she was nervous with schoolmates, rarely spoke up in class and would not play with the other children. Chione’s fault that, he’d decided. Cold, aloof, unfeeling woman that she was- to both her husband and daughter. Children wanted siblings too and he didn’t doubt that Mekeela was desperately lonely at home. But alas, his with-holding wife would not even give him another child. She’d done her duty to the bare minimum and as far as she was concerned that meant she had never to do anything again.
It would have been so good for his campaign, too, he noted with regret to have had a wife big with child next to him. But making love to her was an unpleasant ordeal all around and had not yielded any such results. “Ung” said Mekeela at an unpleasant lurch. She slipped around and slotted her thumb into her mouth which had Msrah tutting sharply.
“Don’t be dirty,” he instructed her and she obeyed, now content to show off her gappy smile to the rest of the cable cart’s inhabitants.
Comments
Iyoas sat quietly, tongue running reluctantly over his straight white teeth in a desperate attempt to wash away the lingering stench of the Gripe from his mouth with his own meager saliva. A drink would have done the trick better, thick coffee drowned in cinnamon. The smells of the place oozed into sweaty pores and sunk into thin clothing, and while the tall half-blooded printmaker had no choice but go there for his supplies (for he was too picky to go anywhere but the source itself), it was not his favorite journey. A few paper mills new him by name, and a single tannery considered him a bosom friend. He trusted but a handful of the living, and was trusted by even less, though outside of the Turtle, no one really knew him from another galdor unless they begged for a history lesson on his imbali heritage. Sometimes, the weight of his field was a welcome anonymity. Other times, it was a burning blight in his creamed coffee skin. Clutched between his lanky knees was a carefully wrapped leather cylinder, thick and heavy and full of sheets of fresh-pressed mould-made paper, crisp and white and untouched by ink. He had more coming, anticipating Poster Day and the swell of business it brought into his tiny shop like so much floodwaters from the three rivers that made his home the island of redeemed exiles it was.
Fingers listlessly fiddled with the strap he’d use to sling his burden over his freckled shoulders, but he couldn’t help but let his lagoon blue eyes be drawn to the entourage of pomp and circumstance that poured into the cable car at their most recent stop. Politicians. He could smell their heavy, oppressive odor above the lingering foulness of the Gripe; their oily scent ran deeper and burned one’s nostrils like acid if you inhaled too deeply. But their coin was a harvest best not left unreaped, and Iyoas was content to let them squabble amongst themselves so long as he turned stacks of paper into posters smeared with their well-intentioned lies as they eagerly jostled for power in the up-coming election. It wasn’t like they’d ever take up his concerns, anyway, the imbala-born galdor who no one wanted to claim.Just as they were settling and the car lurched ahead again, he found a girl’s face practically in his, tongue through the gap in her miniature smile and round eyes all-but-begging him to notice.
Returning her look with a lopsided grin, he tugged an ear in her direction before winking, the morning sun through the window glinting off the silver ring between his nostrils, “Did your jara leave a nice treat on your pillow for that tooth, pona poa’na?”
“Umm...e’a, sir..Jara and Juela-”
“-We say domea, domea, Mekeela” slotted in Msrah neatly.
“E’a sir domea, domea. Two tallies.”
“Which will not all be spent on sweets from the Windward Market. Will they?”
A peevish expression from the little girl suggested that’s exactly what she was planning to do. Msrah laughed again and tucked his arm around his girl before he turned his attention to the man in front of him, smiling his winning smile. “Epa’ma, I do hope that we are not disturbing you on your trip this fine day.”
Iyoas’ crooked grin faltered just barely at the shift in conversation, the brush of the arata’s field and weight of his well-practiced, professional smile breaking the innocence of what the printmaker had originated with Msrah’s child. The gap-toothed girl with beads in her hair obviously already knew there were differences of some kind between all the masses of bodies that moved and worked between the layers of walls in Thul’Ka--she was old enough for prejudice. She was raised to uphold it, as any good arata should. But her fumbling over language was a barrier of safety between them, as she was obviously still young enough not to notice the fine details of inflection that fell from the lips of strangers, from lips that learned their words among imbali, despite not being one himself (much to the disappointment of his own parents).
The tall half-blood let his lagoon blue gaze wash away from the politician’s daughter to her father, composing his words as carefully as he did his own Turtle-born field, fingers curling around the straps of his wrapped, rolled-up paper to keep it from tipping on the next curve,
“Yaka, one cannot expect to travel by cable car and not enjoy some form of disturbance, pleasant or otherwise. What brings an honorable pillar of our fine city’s laws and regulations out on this soon-to-be sweltering day?” Iyoas offered one more knowing wink in the direction of Mekeela before resigning himself to his fate of adult conversation, aware that it would only be a matter of time before his words betrayed the otherwise innocent assumption that he was just another arata on a cable car, going about his day, “Doting on beautiful young treasures with adventures in the Windward Market, are we? A most excellent choice, indeed, if I may say so.”
"Mekeela is coming to visit Jara's district today, aren't you ?" he prompted her with a smile. But the girl had lost interest and was back to poking out of the window. "It keeps me busy and I get precious little time to spend with her when I'm away at the assembly. We politicians must do our best to juggle family life with civic responsibility. I daresay I'm lucky with my little one, always very behaved and she seems to like visiting. I think she must be more popular with my constituents than I am."
It wasn't necessarily a hundred percent true. Sometimes she threw tantrums and foot stamped and whined about being stuck with Juela but the girl was learning that Jara's love and oatience was a finite, conditional thing. She was learning to lump it to get into good graces.
For some, Msrah knew it was a little shocking that he would take his daughter to The Gripe to play with dura and wika children but Msrah knew exactly what he was doing. Everything was a tool to him in the birth of his career, and the little girl beside him was no different.
"And yourself sir, what brings you out here today?"
The lanky bookbinder smirked, then, now more amused than afraid, less worried about his less than favorable social standings despite his current inquiring audience. Sitting up a little straighter in the hard narrow seat of the cable car, his tone was only self-deprecating enough to be polite, “Me? Well, my purposes here aren’t as grand as yours, surely, but so much of my fine work begins in the humble factories of The Gripe. You could perhaps say that I like to maintain a very close relationship with my suppliers, and thus make it a regular habit to come here in person. I’d like to consider myself one of the best and most appreciated customers of the soft spoken Khalin En’nan’s paper mill. The finely tanned hides of the well-fed Fedaku Po Keya are also very blessed by my discerning patronage.”
The half-Mugrobi smiled then, as genuinely as any oshoor could ever be trusted to do so, for he did, indeed take great pride and care in his craftsmanship,
“I’m a printmaker and bookbinder, and thus The Between Hours Press daily ends up ever more invested in your industrious neighborhood.” He added with no small amount of vocal flair, though it felt like a bit of a stretch to be so painfully complementary, considering ultimately this older arata had no equating investment in his person beyond his choices to bring his coin back into his neighborhood of jurisdiction.
”Domea. Domea for taking interest in me, generous overseer of the craftsman of The Gripe, Msrah Mi Mulugata.”
The oshoor’s smile didn’t falter, though it was only because his business face was well-practiced, hardened into a well-carved mask over the years, etched by the acid of fear and disdain that seemed to follow him darker than his shadow. His field may have shrunk just a little, tightening about his long, lean form as he shifted in the seat, but not out of fear. It was focus. He was not about to tuck his tail between his legs now like some frightened bander, no, once he was out, he would have to be all out.
There was no greater way to test the ohante of an arata than by simply telling the truth.
Iyoas exhaled, reaching up with one hand to dig into the pocket of his brightly embroidered vest that was worn over his simple linen tunic, pulling out a single card. The paper was thick like a luxurious mattress between the fingers when held, and it was, in fact, milled in The Gripe, though only the printmaker himself knew that, obviously. Beautiful Mugrobi script was pressed into the paper in black ink by hand-set metal type, reading simply:
Iyoas Tar'iku Esef Roh
Printmaker/Bookbinder
The Between Hours Press
Clearly printed below the half-Mugrobi’s typographical introduction was the address of his business, which read without pretense or apology: Ribbon Street, The Way of the Book, The Turtle, Thul’Ka.
He offered no further explanation than the words on the card he handed ceremoniously with both hands up to Msrah the politician, only his steady, slightly lopsided smile.
“My juela was an Anaxi passive.” The younger, taller man grinned then, broad and lopsided, freckles on his cheeks and the barely ginger tint to the dreadlocks hidden beneath his bright headscarf bearing truth to the foreign half of his lineage, “How she found herself on the Turtle and how my father found her as his wife is not my tale to tell. But printmaking has been in my family for four generations now, so I can assure you that I come by my talents at pressing ink into paper by both blood and by many years of practice.”
Sometimes, honesty got him business. Sometimes, it did not. He firmly believed it was just as impossible for true-blooded arata to tell the truth as it was impossible for those same arata to believe himself capable of honesty. It didn’t matter. His work always spoke more volumes than his heritage to those who were willing to look beyond the cover.
How desperate was this blessed representative of the system? How much did he need his name pasted up on walls on cheap paper in pleasing colors for the industrious, hungry population of The Gripe to flock to for hope?
Iyoas was willing to find out.
Iyoas watched the little girl leave his presence, convinced that Msrah’s motivations were less about her personal safety near the windows in the rocking vehicle as it hit a sharper decline than anticipated and convinced the choice was much more about her personal safety in his usually offensive and frightening vicinity. Even as the politician took the card from his hands, he half expected to hear the man call the cable car to stop, to request his removal like so much rotting garbage.
He’d been kicked off cable cars before.
It wouldn’t have been the first time being oshoor had forced him to travel by foot instead of enjoy more convenient modes of transportation.
Instead, playing with the truth had won him a few moments of actual interest from the strangely pretty older man. Perhaps it was out of pity, perhaps surprise, but it was enough,
“If it’s a full-color print of something for your most excellent campaign you are asking for,” Iyoas was never afraid to up-sell from the start, tone of voice even as he spread his long-fingered, ink-stained hands in an illustration of a much wider paper width, “Then I can print with a lithographic process to about four feet, possibly longer … though too large and my valuable time becomes difficult to spread over an entire surface. Poster Day is only a week away, honorable councilor.”
He paused for a moment, trying to remember his largest print. It had most likely been well over a decade ago now, with his father. The two had been able to take on larger jobs together.
“Epa’ma for bringing up difficult history in my reference, patient one, but if you can remember the Poster Day a year or so before the great Plague became such a terrible threat in Mugroba, there was a poster for Adeke Yar Lukul of the Cinnamon Hill District. It was grand and only twelve posters could fit on the side of the school of healing arts there on the Hill because they were such large posters. Ea, those posters were printed by my very own The Between Hours Press when I was but an apprentice by the side of my own jara.”
Iyoas’ memory of that year was bittersweet, though he kept his confident, eager expression from faltering in front of Msrah Mi Mulugata, especially now that the man had felt the stinging stench of oshoor as well his own neighborhood, The Gripe, in his nostrils.
The last comment elicited a laugh from the half-Mugrobi oshoor, a deep-chested laugh that rolled his shoulders and caused him to shake his strawberry blond head, “You are too kind to disgusting abominations such as myself, councilor Msrah Mi Mulugata, too kind indeed to think of the pride of my long-buried jura and my very person in the same sentence. I will remember that when my grease pencils are in my hands and I am creating art to rally your constituents to your most heartfelt and glorious plans for your time in the Assembly. Domea, domea, may my memory of your words last a long time.”
The tall printmaker was quite confident that even if the pair came to an agreement, the politician would not be spending any of his precious campaign words declaring how his beautiful posters were printed by the hands of an oshoor. It wasn’t something one mentioned to the public unless you wanted a distraction to avoid any of your rivals digging up and revealing a more embarrassing scandal instead.
Iyoas was still grinning, one ink-smudged hand reaching up to wipe a tear from the corner of his slightly almond-shaped lagoon blue eye, “As to your question, ea, ea, six foot posters are impressive and time consuming, but they are a possibility for myself since you are only asking for four and not four hundred. It is very, very close to poster day for such orders,” he added flatly, happy to negotiate within the boundaries of handsome price insofar as he could also include a rush fee for a job that would most likely become the most exhausting, crowning achievement of his political printmaking season,
“Your rivals have yet to be as ambitious as yourself, to say the least. Will you be making official arrangements through an aide, should you truly wish to procure my services, Msrah Mi Mulugata?”