Caldera

____& Buddy

“Let’s check out the market, she said,” Buddy grumbled. “It’ll be fun, she said.”

“Wha’?” Cal took her head out of the white paper bag it had been in, her mouth so full of fudge that she couldn’t bring her tongue to the roof of her mouth to form the ‘t’ sound. Buddy looked at her in disgust, and she swallowed with some difficulty. “’Chu on about, Bud? They have so many weird things here – ”

“And you want to sample all of them,” Buddy muttered. Cal punched him on the shoulder.

“Aww, Bud,” she reached up to ruffle his short, spiky mane. “Are you just sad because we haven’t passed an aja grooming table yet?”

He snorted in derision, but Cal knew it was true. Buddy liked shopping… when she was buying things for him. The market in the grove reminded Cal of the farmer’s market in the Volcano – food-oriented, except that a lot of the food here wasn’t raw. There was the fudge, but also cakes, biscuits, bread, and all manner of sweet things which she’d never heard of before. The Volcanic diet consisted primarily of vegetables and meat, and a bit of dairy if you could afford cattle. Bread was imported from the Desert, but not in vast quantities. A simple Victorian sponge was as exciting and exotic to Cal as Buddy was to the people at home.

She slipped the paper bag of sweets into her backpack and gave her aja a one-armed hug. “Come on. They’ll have carrots here somewhere.”

“Don’t pander to me,” Buddy muttered, but he craned his neck eagerly to look over the stalls. Cal grinned slyly. She’d never met an aja yet who couldn’t resist the call of a carrot.

They wandered past a few more stalls. Cal was distracted from the carrot quest by the tantalising smell of freshly baked brownies when she was brought back to earth (or Shaman?) with a swift, sharp nudge in the back by Buddy, who had poked her with his muzzle. She turned to see him pointing his nose excitedly towards someone in the throng of people.

“Look,” he hissed in her ear, his soft nose tickling her neck. “Doesn’t Lorraine have golden hair?”

Cal looked, and quickly saw what he was staring at. One girl stood out from the crowd like a… well, like a goddess in a crowd of ordinary people. She was tiny – probably only about five foot, or perhaps even smaller – and had a mass of long, golden-yellow hair. Cal had never actually seen yellow hair on someone before; most people in the Volcano had brown or red hair, with the occasional rare black. Lorraine, a goddess worshipped primarily in the Swamp but also one who was held in high esteem by members of the Volcanic elite, was famous for having soft, golden hair. Cal knew, too, that Lorraine and the rest of the ker-fairy pantheon were living on Shaman at the moment.

“Don’t stare,” she scolded Buddy in a whisper, while trying not to stare herself. When he didn’t avert his eyes, she gave him a poke in the shoulder. “Buddy! Quit it.”

“I bet my tail that’s Lorraine,” he muttered under his breath.

“I’ll take that bet.”

With her aja following one step behind, Cal started to make her way through the crowd towards the woman. Aja didn’t follow the same pantheon as ker, and Buddy worshipped different gods, but he’d always had a soft spot for Lorraine. Probably because she was associated with grooming products.

It was a short walk – Buddy was large enough to clear crowds. The girl’s back was to them, so Cal tapped her cautiously on the shoulder.

“Uhh, excuse me,” she cleared her throat, trying to remember how to pronounce it correctly “Sebauza?”