Bug was in heaven as she looked at the new dresses finely displayed on wooden mannequins shaped with voluptuous curves to accentuate the female form beneath. Madam Borset always gave Bug a kind smile whenever she came in to peruse her dresses and fabrics. “Oh, you’ll like what they’ve brought me this time, Maddie,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “I even got some fabrics in from the far east!” she said, knowing Bug’s fascination with the lands beyond the waste. Just like the Feythean, who ruled the continent across the southern sea, it was said that the peoples beyond the waste were not quite human.
Bug’s eyes lit up. She even forgot for a moment the guilt she felt for coaxing Corey to come along. She had left him with the old workhorse they had ridden into town in a stable on the other side of Pirim Village. Her cousin didn’t take too well to crowds.
“Where is it?” she asked eagerly.
“Here, my dear.”
By the time her eyes came to rest on the spools of fabric, she completely forgot about Corey. The most exotic fabrics she had ever seen filled her eyes. Silks shimmered like liquid where they hung, waiting to be tailored into the kinds of dresses that only people like Mistress Sartor might wear. Hangers held robes where red dragons flickered with an essence of fire that somehow seemed to be entwined within the garment’s weave. Beside these robes were iridescent damasks with gold-spun seals of local noble houses. One particular fabric held the moonlight glow of a cold winter’s night. As she touched it, the moonlight flickered with striations of sunset vermillion one moment, and the next ran with veins of quicksilver blood.
“What is this?” she asked breathlessly. “It looks like something spun from gemstones!”
“Oooo… don’t touch that!” Madam Borset cried out. That’s made of a special weave only the Feythean know how to work.”
“The Feythean!” she gasped.
“It’s a rare thing indeed,” she said. “That’s only for display. Already been commissioned to make it into a gown for a countess who stays here the summer season.”
The fact that it would be gone soon made her sad.
“They say there’s magic that’s put into the spinning of the fabric,” she said.
Bug continued to look for a long while, but her conscience finally intruded on her. She thought of poor Corey, who must be lonely and growing frightened by now. She told him that she would only be gone a short time. There was no way she could have taken him with her into town on a day like this.
Corey had always been different from the other children of Pirim Village, the cruelest of which called him a “feeb,” or worse. This wouldn’t be half so bad if the name-calling came from the lips of gutter-born bullies like Bode and Card, but nearly everyone had their own amusement at Corey’s expense. To Bug, he was a gentle and tender soul, and although he was older, she had become like a guardian spirit for her cousin. Too much activity and too many loud sounds caused him to become extremely agitated, and it was Bug who soothed away his frazzled nerves.
When a performing troupe from the capitol city of Pallodine came to Pirim Village for last year’s Harvest Moon festival, Corey had hidden himself beneath tall benches where the spectators sat with his hands clasped tightly over his ears. While the performance left Bug breathless; it also left Corey banging his head against a support post. She didn’t find him until most of the spectators had left the arena. Corey had hidden himself so far under the staggered rise of benches that she might never have found him had Bode and his gang not found him first. They were in a semi-circle beneath the highest row of seats, daring Corey to hit the post harder with his head.
Corey hadn’t wanted to make the trip today. But the lure of Madam Borset’s shop on a day like this had been too strong for Bug to take no for an answer. Now tears began to well in her eyes as she realized she had left him alone at the stables far longer than she had promised.
With one, last rueful glance, she turned and left dreams of a life where she was a countess or a princess behind. Only her new blooming guilt accompanied her through the door.