Market Fair

It is a warm day. A wispy breeze caresses your arms and your hair as it moves past you into the growing crowd ahead. Stepping from the dirt path onto the village green, you are grateful for the soft grass under the thin soles of your shoes.

Above everyone's heads, you see the cloth roofs of the market stalls. The smell of baked bread, beer, cooked meat, and spices fill the air like a wondrous invisible fog.

Another scent reaches you. Cloves and nutmeg. It is coming from the woman in front of you. The perfume is subtle and sweet. Thin gold flowers rest in her hair, which is styled in a long plait. Her dress is red. She is not another villager like yourself. Perhaps she is the daughter of the village lord, or she a passing noble who stopped by to attend the market fair. You cannot be sure. She is talking to another woman walking beside her and wears a blue dress. Her personal servant. You walk around them, past a woman bent down to comfort her crying child, and hurry towards the market. It is your first day off in a long time and you want to enjoy the festivities before the day ends.

The first stalls offer local pastries, pies, breads, and beer. You purchase a beer - handed to you in a wooden cup - and a pastry filled with boiled bacon and apple. The following stalls offer wines and spices from abroad. Merchants call you over to look at gold jewellery, precious stones, furs, perfumes, wooden sculptures, and more. Their voices desperately loud for fear of being suffocated by the shrieks of children and the chorus of a hundred voices.

The merchant in the stall next to you promotes his wares to a customer. You listen as they detail the magical and medicinal properties of each gem stone they have for sale.

Rubies to protect the wearer from poison, emeralds to ward off sickness and madness, diamonds to defend against bad dreams and help the wearer achieve wisdom. You wonder if what the merchant says is true. You have not travelled further than the nearest two settlements from your village. Everything you know about the wider world comes from the rumours passing travellers tell.

You return to the crowd that ebbs and flows amongst the stalls. The last stretch of the market is for the selling and buying of livestock. Fresh straw, hot animal breath, and sweat mingles with the sweet, salty aroma coming from your pastry. You hurry past until you reach the end of the market where the green stretches on uninhabited.

A solitary oak tree stands twelve feet away from you. You walk over and sit on the grass under the shadows of the tree’s branches. From there, you watch the market and those still wrapped up in the magic of the stalls and the merchandise they offer. You take another sip of your beer, a bite of your pastry, and close your eyes. Tomorrow you will have to return to work, but today you are free.