After Rose's Tale: Part 1

Merry Friday the 13th
Story Generator
Setting: Bazaar Of The Bizarre
Plot: The Siege
Narrative Device: Mind Rape
Hero: The Drifter
Villain: The Evil Genius
Character As Device: Walking Disaster Area
Characterization Device: Squee

Rosetail got its name a while ago. No one's entirely sure where, anymore, though my favorite one tells that some determined young thing named Rose got the people here, then no one bothered to write it down.

Whatever the story, the place is absolute heaven for someone looking for weird stuff. You know that thing you had when you were seven, and you've never been able to find it since? You can find it here. Eventually.

The man's mouth twitched as he walked.

If you've got money to spare for a guide, then you can even find the thing efficiently. The vaguer the description, the better the guide, the more the money.

That was what Daniel Riverside was here for, at the moment. He traveled all over, but always ended up back at Rosetail, one way or another. For a few supplies he couldn't find elsewhere, to be a guide for a little extra cash, just to breath air that had touched coral-kissed sand and dry desert nights. Never had a place to call home, but Rosetail came pretty close. When the rain soaked through his coat, or someone got a little too close to...

That night, the one he didn't talk about, the one he wasn't going to think about here, the one he would not tie to Rosetail if it would save his life because Rosetail was still home, still here, still the same, even if he wasn't...

Riverside gestured to the shop with a polite smile. "I believe you were looking for the tintinnabulator, miss." The name didn't really matter. It was a pretty little machine that made lovely, lightly jingly and twinkly. The thing wasn't particularly rare, but the young woman had an odd cadence that made her a little more difficult to understand, so she had gone to Riverside anyway. The uselessness of the object didn't bother him. He got his rate.

Riverside wandered back to where the guide-seekers lingered, though he took a scenic route. For business, it was good to check for anything new, and for pleasure...

"Fresh apples even in the driest regions!"

"Here, rub a little honey into the back of your hand, and it'll make your soft skin even softer--"

"Oh, my, these are beautiful..."

The guide smiled at the thrumming market. It remained enough to bring back old memories, and changed enough that the old drifter might not much mind calling it home, if he ever tired of drifting.

The not-that-tired drifter glanced over the walls absentmindedly, not really expecting to see what he'd become accustomed to looking for...

Riverside sighed and swung up and through the hole in the wall nearest the new cracks.

"River!" Happy, but still jittery little Jen.

"Jennifer," he drawled, as she expected and he was used to. "Fancy finding you here."