Chapter 02. The Boy, The Flowers and The Dragon
"How much are the flowers?"
Sael frowned slightly. Not in irritation, just puzzled by the sudden pause.
"Sorry," the man said quickly, seeming to realize he'd been staring. "Thought you were someone I knew for a second there." He gestured to the flowers in Sael's hands. "Half a Sol for the bunch you're holding. One for the mixed bouquet."
The apology was unnecessary, in Sael's opinion. He had no problem with staring. People looked at things they found interesting or confusing—it was natural. But he supposed most people considered prolonged eye contact rude for reasons he'd never quite understood.
Anyway.
Sael nodded and reached for his coin purse, but something made him pause. The man kept giving him those glances throughout their brief interaction. Not suspicious glances, exactly. More like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
But why?
Maybe he had something on his face? Or in his hair? Sael would have stared too if someone had bird droppings on their head and was wandering around oblivious. The polite thing would be to mention it, but then again, maybe the man was too courteous to point out whatever embarrassing thing Sael was apparently displaying.
He'd been in similar situations himself. Even now, he'd been tempted to tell this very vendor that he could regrow his hair if he wanted. The man wasn’t bald, exactly—more that he was refusing to concede the battle. He had taken the hair from the back and swept it forward in a valiant attempt at coverage. Unfortunately, a light festival breeze kept lifting the arrangement, revealing a perfectly reflective skull beneath. It made the whole thing more noticeable, not less.
Sael wasn’t judging, but he had thought it might offend the man to be reminded of it, so he kept it to himself.
"Excuse me."
The vendor's voice pulled Sael out of his spiraling thoughts. The man was holding out the flowers but hadn't quite let go of them yet.
"Have you..." He was hesitating. Out with it, young man. "Well, this is going to seem like a strange question, but have you been here before? At the festival, I mean. Maybe ten years ago? And... another time, maybe ten years before that? And... and another ten years before that?"
Sael blinked, caught completely off guard.
His mind went blank for a moment as he tried to figure out how to respond. Maybe the man had been a child and had seen him. Maybe he'd been working this same flower stand with his father or grandfather.
The expected and less time consuming explanation would be to say he was half-elven. It was common enough, and it would explain why he looked like a man in his late twenties with silver hair and beard, essentially unchanged over three decades.
Instead, lost in overthinking, the thought at the front of his mind slipped out. "You're bald."