Post by Shinku on Jul 26, 2020 9:52:18 GMT -5
Kohengi relaxed a little. Judgeing by the conversation between her guide and the vendor, she wasn't making a fool out of herself. It was one of the things she was very afraid off. Probably the one thing she feared the most. But how did you keep yourself from looking stupid when you don't know the rules to the place? Studying up on it had given her a little bit of secureness, but there was only so much you could learn from books. Most of who had been just stories, and not real life accounts, but it was all she could get.
Now she was trying hard to fake her way through this unknown terrain, all while trying to keep track of the small things.
Smile? Check! Bright but not overly bright to make her seem like an idiot.
Eye-contact? Still struggling with that one, but staring someone in the eye all the time was not good as well, so the level she managed to maintain was probably sufficent. Besides, the dials gave her a good reason to not look at the vendor as it was reasonable to be curious about them. Something she truly was.
Listening closely? Right right! Sure she was! It was actually a lot easier to listen to what the others had to say while not looking at them and she wasn't distracted at all by the thoughts of what those dials might be useful for!
Just as she had hoped Basti stepped forward to take the matter of the dials into his own hands. She watched him curiously shaking the shell next to his ear, wondering if one could hear how full it was just like with a waterbottle, while also taking a mental note about how his wings were apparently larger than the average rather than a typical representation.
POOFFFFF!
A very bad odor started to spread over the deck and Kohengi had to take multiple steps away from Basti. Her ears were stinging from the pungent smell and even though she closed her nose between her fingers and tried to breath as shallowly as possilbe, she still felt like her sensorys were crying out in pain from the system overload.
Luckily the warm sea breeze was blowing it away quickly and Kohengi could start to breath normally again.
„Ugg! Why in the depth of Pele's maw would someone want that! This is horrible!“
But just as soon as she had said that, her brain was already starting to work out usages.
Basti had called it a smell dial, was this thing storing odor only or was it storing a specific gas? Depending on the gas that could be useful, and even if it was simple smell, there ought to be something one could do with it.
She gently took the sack from Basti and started to carefully shift through its content. From her observation just now, she assumed that it was common to activate the dials by pressing down on their apex whereby the dial released the stored up matter.
„More dangerous clientel?“ she asked, or rather repeated Avis' words, while shaking a dial next to her head. She couldn't hear anything, not from this one nor from the next one. Either her ears were not good enough or Basti was just fooling around when doing so.
„Not everyone is as nice as me and while we merchants have a good incentive to keep our clients alive and paying, some goods are very rare even here on the market and the other clients might be willing enough to resort to violence to get rid of a competitor in order to get their hands on what they want.“
Cold shivers went down her back at the though of what dangers might lie ahead, but on her face there was nothing but her usual mild smile.
She opened the folded paper she had found in the bag with the dials and was now reading through the list that described each dial's looks and usages. Thanks for the man or woman who had made this she wouldn't have to rely on Basti testing them all out for her.
„So? Do you still want to go?“
Kohengi cconsidered this for a moment. The truth was that she was feeling scared. She was way out of her familiar waters and the less she could predict an outcome the more insecure she became. Still she didn't want to back down now.
Turning to Basti she asked him with a smile.
„You're there to protect me, right? So I don't have anything to worry about!“
Just asking that though made her feel a little guilty. He had told her how important it was for him to feel needed and she felt as if she was exploiting his feelings. But even if he said yes, there was someone she needed much more than him.
Trying to establish eye-contact for such an important question, she turned to Kanra.
„I still want to go. Can I count on you?“