Believing in Blue by Maggie Morton

Author:Maggie Morton [Morton, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626396920
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2016-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

After breakfast, Sia told Wren the five of them were supposed to go to the open-air market in town. Denise attempted to beg off, but a bit of pleading from Wren and Torien managed to convince her to come along.

“After all,” Torien said to Denise, “how often do you get the chance to explore an unfamiliar planet on such a lovely day?”

The weather spoke of summer when they got outside, the air fresh and warm and free of certain human-caused things Wren had barely registered on Earth. Like the smell of car exhaust, and honking, as well as technology’s not-so-subtle markings: no one’s face in the Winged Blue’s city was staring at a screen of some sort. Instead, the people were actually interacting with each other, smiling and greeting and hugging. After all, Wren thought, who would want technology when you could have the ability to fly, and who would need it if everyone in town had their own fantastic magical power?

Wren couldn’t wait to discover what hers would be, but the sight of the colorful market a few streets away from the mansion thoroughly distracted her from thoughts of anything else. The breeze carried many different scents as she came closer, and not one of them was unpleasant to Wren’s pleased nostrils.

Here, also, was the racial diversity her town had always lacked, people of so many ethnicities scattered among the stands it almost took Wren’s breath away. She entered the crowd of many-colored robes and diverse peoples and began to excitedly look around.

Sia explained while they walked how their society operated. Most things were free, but the market involved a barter system—you traded the use of your particular magical power for something from a person’s stand, and these trades were apparently going on all over the place as Wren walked around. She took in the varied aromas from a spice vendor’s stand, all the heaps of spices looking like they would make quite a mess were the wind to pick up. Next to that was a booth full of mind-bogglingly beautiful flowers, with many familiar types and a fair number she’d never seen before, probably native to the Winged Blue’s world. It was interesting to Wren to see the “cross-pollination” between the humans’ world and the Wingeds’. She had assumed the worlds would be very different, and in some ways they were, but thankfully, there was enough familiarity here to keep Wren feeling right at home.

More at home than she’d ever felt back on Earth, she realized as they reached a stand full of jewelry, each piece dangling from small, copper-colored trees with tiny, dark green leaves on their branches. Wren jumped a little when one of the branches reached out in her direction, brushing against her arm in a gentle caress.

“It’s saying it likes you, miss.” The woman who spoke had a long, blue-black braid down her back, and a small, Egyptian-looking eye was painted in the middle of her forehead. Wren almost jumped again when the eye blinked, but the woman’s sweet, welcoming smile helped to reassure her enough to smile back.

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