The next stop of the afternoon is Fazoul’s Fabulous Fabrics. The elves enter the shop by walking through some of the eponymous material. Carpets are rolled up outside, and there is a curtain pulled aside at the shop entrance. The weaver is a man with light brown skin and curly brown hair, probably somewhere around Alric’s age. Tric is impressed such a young human would be running their own shop, though of course Alric runs his own inn. All these humans, younger than me and Heppa are, having successful businesses! Of course, we elves don’t really have businesses, we just sort of do stuff… Tric finds himself wondering whether all elvish settlements are like that though, or if the Estbryn elves can get away with it because their group is so small.
“Welcome to my shop!” the young man greets them.
“Isn’t that what Roshanak said? Is that the standard shop greeting?” Tric mutters to Heppa. Raising his voice, he replies, “You’re Fazoul? The proprietor of this fabulous fair house of finery?”
“Indeed! Indeed!” He looks the newcomers up and down. “Ah, those are very functional leathers you have. Can I interest you in a vest perhaps? Or a headscarf?” Although most of the wares at the street are rugs and other household fabrics, the walls of the shop display clothing as well.
Tric turns to Heppa. “You might benefit from a scarf for protection against the sun.”
“Oh, yes,” Heppa agrees. Her salve protected her from additional injury, but her skin is still in the process of fading back from beet red to pale white. She points out to the shopkeeper what the sun did to her, and he directs her to some wide but lightweight scarves. He demonstrates multiple ways to use them, wrapping them around the shoulders, the hair, the entire head, and so on. Fashion does not matter so much to Heppa; her fine dresses at home were all picked out by her mother. These scarves are relatively inexpensive, just five coins, so she allows herself to splurge, valuing the item’s function over its form. Then a thought occurs to her. “Do you have any scarves that are in the Dunefolk tradition?” she asks. She is not sure if it would be considered weird for an elf to wear such a thing, but she would like to be able to show Alric.
“Well, this is as close as I can approximate,” Fazoul tells her, gesturing to the one she has now and the others like it. Heppa smiles and happily completes the purchase.
“Forgive me, but I heard that several years ago some folk of your family organized an expedition back across the Sandy Wastes,” Tric says, addressing their true reason for coming into the shop.
“Oh, did you come here through South Tower?”
“Yes,” Tric acknowledges, no longer surprised that word has gotten around. “I’m Tric Manu.”
“Ah! I am Fazoul Kahlé, but I do have Manu relatives, and those were the ones who undertook the journey.”
“Indeed, sometimes we’re very foolish,” Tric says. Fazoul groans in agreement. Tric explains that he is interested in knowing how they outfitted for the expedition, where they launched from, and what their plan was. He is noncommittal when Fazoul asks if he is planning to undertake a similar journey himself. However, when offered a chance to look at the expedition notes, Tric’s enthusiasm shines through. Heppa, too, would love nothing better than that.
Such an activity would take more time than Fazoul can spare during the business day, though. “Come back after dinner when my shop is closed, and I will show you the notes they left behind. I can tell you now, though, that they did not retrace the route that the Great Storm forced the Manu on. They instead attempted a crossing from southern Wesnoth. And obviously my kin never did come back.”
Tric offers his condolences on the loss and suggests that maybe they did succeed in their journey but determined it could not be reliably retraced.
Fazoul nods. “I like to think that they made it across but did not have the wherewithal to send a message back, and it was too dangerous to come back again themselves. I hope they were reunited with the other half of the Manu clan.”
The clan was actually cut in half? This is news to Tric, that not all Manu were separated from the Dunefolk by the Great Storm. It is proving to be a very educational day so far.