44 Searing 121
"Take it or leave it."
Hozxi did not pay much attention to the prattling of the man behind the fruit stand. She was far more absorbed in the fruit.
On most days, the shipments of food that came into the city center from the farmlands surrounding Kalzasi would have fare considered local and mundane: fish from the lake that was prepared uncooked in the traditional custom; figs, plums, and peaches in alternation of which growing season it happened to be; rice and wheat that was the staple of the settler diet, steamed and baked into all manor of confections, bread being the primary foodstuff of the poor and lower middle class.
Today was not a normal day.
In front of Hozxi was a small basket of waxed fruits. Not any fruits.
Glass pears.
It was not unusual to see them in the Zephrani desert. When the Sundering had changed the world, the mists that crossed the expanse of dry sand had borne much strange fruit, and one of those were the glass pear. It was shaped like a pear, budding from the side of cacti that managed to live on what little water there was in the oasis, and it was harvested in much the same way.
The magic of the glass pear is that it was completely transparent. It was like a small orb of glass, a droplet of water given form. You could squeeze it and watch the skin dimple and the light form small puddles.
And when you bit into it, you could see the flesh inside, pitch black save for the pit, which was a dull wood and about the size of a chicken's eyeball. Why the skin was transparent and the flesh not was a subject for much consternation in circles of academics, but for the tribes of the desert, it was merely a fact of life. Peeling the glass pear was a fool's errand, for once pulled from the fruit the skin was as black as the flesh. Somehow, by some god's folly or dragon's mischief, the effect was limited to the pear intact.
Glass pears were easy to lose, and as such they were often coated in beeswax to give them a slight sheen to distinguish them and see any sort of bruises before the fruit was cut. Hozxi sees this one in her hand was more or less fine. Impossible to tell for sure without a bite-
"Hey!"
This time, she looked away from the pear to the stall master. A human in his mid 40s. Tall, with his hair already failing him, tan but with pudgy fingers. A traveler. Not a farmhand.
"Where did you get these?" she asks him. Not that she needed to ask. There was only one place to harvest glass pears. The cactus did not grow outside of the Zeraphi. Some attempts to transplant it had been undertaken, and all were failures, even taking sand and stone and water wholesale from the desert to be grown under Imperium skies or in the shadow of the Astralar Mountains. That was what she had heard, anyway. She believed it.
The stall master scoffs. "It don't matter. I tolds you before, eight hundred for the bushel."
Hozxi's hands are deceptively fast, as was much of her body. One often expected a giant to be slow, stupid, clumsy and oafish, moving predictably when they intended to act in a violent manner. Very few were ready for Hozxi. The stall master was one such man, not prepared for the giant before him to quickly drop an object held in one palm and use both hands to pick them up like a child's doll.
"Do you think you can rob me because I am Moratallen?" she growls. With a slam, the stall master's chest hits the front of his stall, knocking the wind out of him. He is slid across to the left, knocking the baskets down, oranges and dates rolling away into the street as a few passerby turn their heads at the disturbance.
"Or do you think you can cheat me because I am a woman?"
Before the stall master can retort, the breath is knocked from him as Hozxi lifts him back into the air, slams his lungs into the stall again, and drags him the other way. Only at the corner of the wooden support beam does he come to a halt. He grips the pillar like the broken board of a ship, his only lifeline from being cast back into the choppy waters of a tropical storm.
Hozxi stands still for a second, her chest heaving a bit, as her breath returns to her. As if nothing happened, she kneels to pick up the fruit cast down to the ground, rubs it with the sleeve of her clothes, and places it back on the counter, piece by piece. Peacefully.
"Y-you're insane, you b-"
Hozxi clucks her tongue.
"It is rude to ignore a woman's question," she comments, wagging a finger in the air. Her eyes are daggers. The stall master swallows as a lump settles at the bottom of his throat, likely full of the words he would like to tell this foreigner. Brutality was not a trait unknown in any city, but something of the manner in which she had tossed him about, as if he is somehow beneath her, set the temperature of his blood to a near boil.
"Get the fuck out of here." He lets one arm free its grip from the stall beam to point down the square. It doesn't really matter which direction. Any direction that took the object of his fear further away.
Hozxi blinks, firms her jaw, and nods, having finished most of the cleanup of the stall. A gaggle of kids, stray humans and avialae, were also present, although their motivations for cleaning up appeared to be much less altruistic.
"And all of ye, too! Scram! Scram!" the stall master shouts, waving his hands as Hozxi makes her way back around a corner and towards the fountain that sits at the middle of the collection of traders and shoppers in this particular bazaar.
Underneath her palm the light bends as if she were holding a drop of water.
Around the corner, as she taps her foot, the children from the stall come in single file as they are chased away. Each bumps into Hozxi, and from their arms a dimple in the light falls into the giant's canvas bag. It was far more cost effective to hire those who already wanted to do what you want them to do, and in her time here, Hozxi had heard much from these children about the stall master and his disaffection for those without the means to pay his exorbitant prices.
The children had already learned the lesson of working as a part of a tribe, she thinks to herself, making a point of stopping at the fountain.
Pulling a waxy orb of still air from her bag, it's hard to resist tasting the fruits of her work so soon. The giant bites into the glass pear. Its black juices run from the corners of her mouth. It is like taking a bite out of space, only to find something sweet and tangy and with crunch.
The flavor takes her back. To wandering the desert, starving, thirsty and alone, as the freshly inscribed Rune on her back was fighting her own mind for dominance of the senses. The small Hozxi trips on a cactus and feeling the spikes through her entire body. Not just the shins, but the palms, the eyes, the forehead.
Her fall at that time had been broken by a solitary glass pear that splattered all over her robe, staining the faint orange with deep black juice.
Have you ever been so thirsty you squeeze the clothes off your back for whatever water you can get from them?
Sitting to take a rest from the Searing heat, Hozxi gives thanks that she no longer struggles as she once did for food and water. Her eyes consider the busy crowd. Despite turning heads at the disturbance between her and the stall master, people had gone back to their normal meandering. Men, women, children. A small Hytori girl is dragged behind her mother by the tips of her fingers, staring at the birds flocking overhead. Her head turns, and for a moment, Hozxi and the elf lock eyes.
Fewer stared at Hozxi these days, her presence at the bazaar being more of a fixture of normal city life since her arrival. They no longer pitied her for her strangeness and found offense at her manners.
But the children, the children had not yet learned to be callous towards strangers.
The Hytori girl offers Hozxi a smile, her blue eyes sparkling the clear Searing sky back at her, Ysa's light twinking.
Hozxi smiles back.
