“You really are a pilgrim?” The extraordinarily large man emphasized the noun and not the verb in his astonished query.
“You don’t think I am old enough?” Tritti asked.
“No, no, no, darling. You arnt, but thass not why.” The man’s puffy hands rapped the reins and the two kabs shambled up.
Tritti watched him goad the team of lizards to a proper speed. His plain attire showed much use. From the no-longer black top hat clinging improbably to his scalp in the more than occasionally brisk desert wind to the (something near the foot) the round man was dulled and diminished. His brown on top white on bottom fat arms proclaimed him a typical veteran of the road. As did his well-used but well-kept rig. Everything about this man declared him to be uninteresting. Why would a man go to so much trouble to seem uninteresting when he so clearly was?
“I’m a girl.” Tritti confessed. She’d always known that no matter how different the world might be outside her village the world would still be the same in regards to her gender. The man laughed. It was only an amused chuckle but his whole body participated. “Yes, I thought so too. Let me tell you something about where you are going.”
“The original Tacon were gypsies. Still are actually, but yull find none of them in Shanty.” He began again, “The original Tacon were gypsies. Now gypsies to you and me are bands of folk traveling form place to place fixing things. They go here and here and here and here. Then back to the first here. Or the second. It makes no difference where those kind of gypsies go. They just want to be going. You understand what Im sayn?”
“They call me Johnka. You can too.”