Tag: tropulan

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Thinking on Madrigar

Run Dark Alley
Madrigar’s Chappi Stall
Drangee Purple with Milk

I’m glad I thought to come back to this. I wish I’d thought to do so 45 minutes ago. I’ll punt and see what I can talk about.

I’ve written this scene a couple times, and in different places. None of them ever accomplishes what I set out to reveal. I’m wanting to detail the sights, sounds, smells, and life of a flea market. Color here. Noise there. A smell from over there. Each time I’ve attempted to set such a scene I end up navigating through the eyes of some character, but that character selfishly starts storying up my description. I don’t mind at the time.

I think my most basic trouble is that I expect to discover the market as I write through the stalls and vendors like I discover a real market. I figure I can make up the details of who sells what and where as I go—maybe I can—but then I give my descriptive POV a name and a life. That character sees the same place differently then I do. If they are a scared orphan they fear the vendors will catch them stealing apples or bunches of rough sweet naggi. If they are a veteran stallman they have no fear and no curiosity instead they wonder how their sales will do today of if Krilla will finally pull down that stupid sign of hers. I don’t mind at the time.

Maybe I just need to mechanically map the place out. Give each of the stalls a product to sell and a name and a proprietor to hawk it. Then I can dolly through the place on a neutral camera. Focusing my scope as I roll past fish mongers, craftspeople, dressmakers, and jewelers.

288 words on day 545

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Drangee Purple with Milk

Day 456

Musi stood at the gate of her patio greeting the day like a regular.

“Fine morning, I feel,” she said then sipped her milk-tamed Purple tea. Madrigar looked up from his sweeping and smiled. After a considerable pause during which she finished her private thoughts and suspected he was doing the same she heard him agree with a considered hum.

She laughed to herself at his response. They’d been exchanging similar quiet conversation each morning all Spring since she’d been installed here at the west entrance to Run Dark Alley. “You always agree with me Old Man.”

“I would not agree if you were not correct miss.”

“But you always agree. Am I always correct?”

“Always.”

Musi lifted her tea to Madrigar as a question. He nodded so she raised the large porceline cup again as a second question. He shook his head and pointed to the stack of smaller clear glasses on her counter.

“This Drangee Purple may be dark but it is also mild. You could drink two this size and still take your afternoon nap.”

“I like to watch the colors swirl while I drink,” then after scratching his forehead, “I’m doing my tallies; not napping.”

She winked away his lie. “I could pour it into one of the pinters I use for the ices?”

“Still,” he gestured again at the same stack.

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Madrigar’s Chappi Stall

Day 455

This is closer to what I was hoping to get yesterday but still not what I’d meant to accomplish at the start…

Madrigar laces a canopy to the frame at the front of his stall then tightens the iridescent purple fabric by snugging up the bar that wedges it out from the back wall. His chappi stall languishes like a cat in a window. Comfortably seen and easily attended by all.

The stall’s registered designation in the Vendor Bureau at the Merchant Ministry is SB. South side; second stall. But here in Run Dark Ally, the grand dam of all Tropulan’s ally fairs, it’s known eponomously as Madrigar’s. A cook’s assitant looking for fresh caught trout would find them on ice from Dromie’s at NE. A guitarist looking for newly attenuated strings would pick them out from Spring House at SH. In Run Dark stallmen, veteran patrons, and signage all cry out names with designations. But never Madrigar at SB. Only, solely, Madrigar’s.

In other alley fairs the best spot—sometimes the SB designation—is known as the madrigar. At newly installed fairs vendors cluck like wansi hens bidding for the stall designation they think will become that ally’s madrigar. Vendors plead and beg and offer to pay Madrigar to assess a new fair, but he refuses. In a confused tone he insists he doesn’t sell information only chappi. So, he recommends a crisply carved luck medallion he obtained from an artisan in the Narrow Door district or a jagged locator stone gouged from a quarry wall only a fortnight ago. Maybe these will aid you he says.

Madrigar borrows the broom from inside the backdoor of the draper’s shop his stall cozies up to and sweeps the grime and rainwater into a nearby drain. He nods at Musi, his neigbor at SA, when they meet eyes, but neither speaks yet. Musi boils water for tea and steamed milk. Soon the stallmen and women from the west end of Run Dark—some as deep as NL or SJ—will arrive for their breakfast meeting.