Facing the web of busy streets and still lively stores he felt a strong thirst come over him as he entered the trade district of the city. He easily found the same sweet drink he had been ordered by Yuki only a few nights ago. It felt so long since he was on that boat, crossing Lake Mead. It of course had a different name in Gaia, one that was hard to pronounce even if he had been granted a magical fluency for the language. He got a second beverage to go. As he sipped on the blend of cactus pear and pomegranate he meandered through Capris’ busy nighttime shopping scene. The pub hadn’t been arranged for effective thievery but he managed to get in plenty of practice on the adjacent street.
Black was put into a state of wonderment by all the things he saw. There was Dead Sea Alchemy, an apothecary that smelled different each time he turned his head to look at something new. It was something like a cross between a garden, a kitchen and a garage. As Mortimer, the curator went to retrieve a silver pestle he was going on about, Black nicked what looked like an assortment of precious stones.
After declining the sale price and losing interest Black found Lod’s Carpentry: Specialty Wand and Staff Sellers, est. 1065. Black failed to recollect being told that Gaiean counting began in what he knew as five-forty-two A.D. He criticized just how old the store really could have been as he considered magical building maintenance. Whatever the truth was judged the freshly carved wood shavings that were tucked into the corners of the floor and sticking out from the edges of dusty floor rugs. There were glass cases with fancy oversized locks, filled with the most intricate looking batons and staves he had ever seen.
He wondered if the clerk would be in more trouble for the mess all over the store or for the missing padlocks. Black hadn’t taken anything inside the cases. The mental image he got of himself waving a wand at people was ridiculous, and his curiosity proved that the locks could indeed just be melted whole, into his box. He justified that they would look pretty sweet on the outside of his bedroom door at the castle.
Black didn’t take anything from the armories and weaponries he saw but he made a mental note of their inventory all the same. He was feeling so good by now that he even gave a freshly pick pocketed beggar one of his own coins back.
Feeling like he had just won the world labyrinth championship, for which he saw poster advertise, he wandered into a sporting goods emporium. It was shaped like a coliseum, after which it was named, with the center of the main floor being open to the pit below. The walls were lined with banners and the official jerseys of select teams from around the world. Clubs, spiked and otherwise, along with an array of sticks, poles, pokers and non-lethal weapons comprised about half of the store. The second story of the building housed cages full of balls with feet, flags with a handful of legs and dozens of eyes and all sorts of flying objects. Black didn’t find the stairs to the third story so he went down instead, to take a look at the fighting pit.
As he descended the ramp to the lower level it occurred to him why the store had seemed so strange to him. None of the odd magical items or vicious looking equipment were to Black the strangest thing about the store. The hardest thing to wrap his head around was the fact that all throughout the place the dominant sport still seemed to be plain old regular soccer. From the levitating displays or league sized balls to the cleats that scurried about from department to department keeping what looked like a reluctant but professional distance from the customers. Among the larger displays that read football were shin guards but not wrist guards or body armor. There were apparently smaller less popular variations of soccer, some involving magic or brutality but the basic stripped down sport seemed to have the bulk of the attention.
He noticed that even in the fighting pit were small magical pets playing the sport. In fact there was an entire pet section surrounding the arena, which he didn’t understand since there was a whole pet store, also three stories tall, next door.
The animals in Pandora’s Pet Shop however didn’t meet regulation standards he found out from one of the smelly sales clerks. He thought about buying a monkey but exercised a bit of better judgment before the salesman got too far into his pitch.
Browsing New Dynasty: Fine Clothier’s, Black stole the closest thing he could find to a pair of jeans and a hoodie. He thought they looked decent enough to actually buy but he felt the store didn’t deserve it as he didn’t know how on earth he would get the smell of caked-on cologne out of them. Maybe he would end up burning the clothes instead. He hoped they wouldn’t make the other items in his box stink. He carried on inattentively past a theater, a bank, and a music store, fuming that with two entirely separate worlds he still wasn’t able to find decent looking clothes without getting a headache.
His appetite quickly returned when he walked past the familiar looking Scrollery and Bounds that smelled oddly unlike papyrus, parchment and paper but like fresh watermelons. No watermelon cart in sight however, he shrugged and decided to try a few odd delicacies from the street vendor that had taken the now available space.
Enjoying the skewers of tempura hydra eyes immensely he grew bolder and tried some pickled Scythian Vegetable Lamb that went very well with it. Black then discovered his new least favorite food, the very enticing looking but vomit-worthy fish sucker. He forgot what it was called but that’s what it amounted to and he hurriedly finished off the cactus drink he had been carrying around. Directing his gaze anywhere but the eyes of the cackling lady under the umbrella he realized he was missing about half of the view.
Shoppers stealthily zoomed above him around the upper levels of the street on flying carpets. Like a light bulb suddenly appeared above his head, he changed his direction and found his way back to the carpet shop he had seen the day before.
The seller was a skinny man, bald, and wearing brightly colored robes. He wore a wide smile and tiny spectacles over his pickle shaped nose. He looked Indian and he clapped his hands together and bowed once at Black as he entered and once at a statue of what looked like a girlish and cross legged version of himself. He definitely had an accent that couldn’t have been from Capris, based on Black’s developing knowledge of the language and the variety of the other dialects he had now been exposed to.
“De card reada told me you would be bahk again,” exclaimed the excited merchant.
“You sell flying carpets here?” Black inquired.
“Yes Yes I am selling de best capets in alla da cidy. Come come look!”
Black was led into the back room of the shop where there were no shelves, racks or hangers draping carpets from the ceilings. This room was instead full of carpets perfectly and evenly spaced hovering one over another, large ones near the bottom with smaller rugs at the top. Looking at the pyramid shaped displays Black saw himself flying over sand dunes in the desert, the air whirring in his ears as he soared past the pyramids and dived down to the waters of the Nile.
“Which is de one you are wanting?” asked the almost bouncing seller.
“Nothing too big, but not the smallest one either. Something fast,” was Blacks response. “I’ve never been on one before.”
“OOHHHH,” said the merchant in awe as he dropped the rugs he was carrying. He clapped his hands and they all flew back to their places. “I know just de one. De card reada told to me dhat you must not hava children’s rug, no you mustn’t.” He disappeared into a dark doorway almost before he had finished speaking. He popped out another doorway that Black was sure he hadn’t seen a minute ago.
“I ‘ave been working on dis rug just for you, it is fate.” As he untied the rolled carpet in his arms it unrolled itself and flew around the room. “Many men come in here for my wild rugs. I cannot keep dem on de shelves, actually de don’t on shelves. I cannot keep dem in de store, but dis one iz not a wild rug. Dis is my most diziplined, my fastest and my most agile creation. It is not a beginna’s rug, but it will deach you to fly like an Indian carpet racer.”
The rug was the most extraordinary thing Black had ever seen. It was red and gold, intricately woven and embroidered, adorned with black tassels in the corners. The pattern didn’t look like a typical Indian design or like anything from that part of the world as far as Black could tell. It had harsh edges and long points that reminded Black of some gothic cathedral. It was like no flying carpet he had ever imagined, not that he had spent much time imagining flying. There was one kid in one of his temp-homes, as he called them, also a foster child, who was obsessed with fantasy and mythology. Whenever the nerdy boy was asked what he wanted for Christmas he said it was a sword, or a magic wand, or a flying broomstick. Feigning interest Black had tauntingly told him that a flying broomstick would be a dumb idea and that a flying carpet was the way to go. Now here he was in a room full of them.
“How much?”
“Id iz da best one I have in de store but de card reada said I must be fair, or de godz will go crazy on me.”
Black didn’t negotiate very hard before he hovered out of the store. Exhilarated he blew upwards past the many stories of the city weaving around the bridges and walkways. He rocketed upwards like he was being chased again. He actually passed more people in the air than he thought he would have. He determined the way to see this city was not from above or below but by sailing in between the buildings, circling the towers, seeing all sides and every angle.
The flying wasn’t too difficult for Black. Just as the merchant had said the carpet seemed to be trying to teach Black maneuvers and technique. It seemed anticipate his every move. Black wondered to just what degree the carpet was programmed. Then he remembered there were no fiber optic cables woven in with the threads. There was no on board nav-computer with satellite gps. ‘This is as magical as it gets,’ he told himself when the carpet guided him into a sharp dive toward a waterfall. He wouldn’t have minded a sound system though.
The October air changed drastically as Black spiraled over, under and around the innumerable viaducts from the north rim’s downtown area to the suburbs of the south rim. It was much warmer down here looking up at the city past all the massive stone arches. Impossible temples, built on skinny sandstone peaks linked together the raised highways. He gripped the tassels of his carpet tighter as he imagined having to try and traverse all the connections on foot. He soared up high again, about even with the north rim and looked down at the man-made web.
All across the whole canyon, branching out from diverse pinnacles the clusters of paths looked like the roots of great trees. Little clusters of denser city surrounded the monuments dotting the expanse where traffic intersected. Of course there was a main highway and an aqueduct that snaked out from the fountain of Poseidon, carrying with it water to the rest of the city.
Black wondered how much of the everlasting spring was underground in the city in order to supply this many of its residents. After some time of uncharacteristic star gazing, lying on his back gliding back toward the city center where it was cooler he decided he ought to head back to the castle.
All in all he felt like it had been an excellent first run. He only felt like he might fall off a few times and he only once nearly decapitated himself flying too close to the claws of a dragon. He wondered how keen people in this city were to swear at other flyers as he came within sight of the palace.
Black appreciated his new perspective as he saw the castle complex in more detail than one could at ground level. He thought he found his tower room in the complex and steering with the soft black tassels he pointed the carpet towards it.
Something flashed in his eyes as his body crumpled into an invisible wall. Black felt the stomach tossing feeling of a free fall for only a few seconds before he blacked out.
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