(no subject)
The market is teeming with dull-faced, grim-faced busymen, women with sullen children and shopkeepers wielding brooms to beat off tricky street thieves. Light barely filters between roof spires, tall looming architecture swaying in on itself with the burden of age. Conversation is only an echo; people afraid to talk over each other, afraid to call out, afraid to move wrong, step wrong, look wrong. Afraid of the hell attention would bring down on their poor peasant heads.
From within the crowd, a girl emerges--grimy and smudged, soot under ragged nails and that faintly blue-bruised look around the eyes, the kind of thing that makes it look like someone hasn't gotten enough sunlight, or hasn't eaten enough vegetables, or hasn't slept enough hours. The girl flits through streams of strangers, barefoot, bangles and rings covering those knobby fingers. She's underdressed for the air's chill, hardly seems to mind.
Commotion comes, rousing the slow mechanical stupor of several bystanders when the girl stumbles into a stand of some exotic purple fruit, scattering basketfuls across the sidewalk. She doesn't apologize, instead rushes to scoop them up into her arms--keeping several for herself. The shopkeeper spits and seethes and grabs at the girl.