It was the perfect day to go to the market, which annoyed Tanith. She much preferred to go when the weather was bad, wind and rain and so on. There were fewer merchants, sure, but they often wanted to make a deal and there were far less people. Crowds made Tanith nervous. It wasn't easy being a marked witch in a crowd. If anything went wrong, it was all too easy to start pointing fingers and suddenly there wasn't a crowd, there was a mob and someone ended up burned.
Reaching up, she adjusted her hood, trying to hide her horns without it looking strange. It was a little warm for the cape, but it made things easier to hide as many of her deformities as she could. The scales and the feet were sadly visible, but she could hide the horns and some of her face a little. She felt it helped.
The church kitchens needed replenishing and while she could grow a lot of things, she still needed trips to the market. Clutching her basket, it was already half full of milk and butter and a few other things. She needed grain still, but that would be delivered.
Fanning herself, Tanith leaned against a wall, enjoying the shade of a nearby tree. It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't have the cloak on, but as it was, she was roasting.
After so many days of bad weather, it was nice to have a reprieve. It was the perfect day to be out and about, enjoying the warm weather and purchasing a few odds and ends from market—which, of course, was as much a social excursion as it was a practical one, and Alexander had spent about as much time talking to his neighbors as he had browsing for goods.
His own basket was growing full and heavy and he felt he had enough; maybe he'd just grab a couple apples and call it a day. Even though it had been nearly five years since his wife had passed, and even though he had been doing this for those five years, he still didn't think he had it down (he always realized he was missing things whenever he got home, whereas she had mastered the art of collecting everything in one fell swoop) and he was still an atrocious cook.
She kind of had been, too, he recalled with a faint smile. But he'd complimented her experiments and cleaned his plate nonetheless.
Pausing by a merchant selling plump green apples, he had just started picking them out when a figure nearby caught his eye. A cloaked figure. Odd...he was warm even in his breeches, tunic, and arm-wraps, so she had to be burning up—wait.
"Tanith?" he asked, feeling he recognized what little he could see of her face, and a glance down revealed those strange feet of hers. Alexander winced. The last time he saw her, he'd made life ridiculously more complicated for her, and he still felt a little guilty for it. She was a hard worker and a repented witch, so life had to be difficult for her without rude people making it even more troublesome.
"Isn't it a little warm for that?"
When she heard her name called, Tanith tensed slightly, nervous as to why someone would have spoken to her. Few people really wanted to be friends with a witch and while people were often polite to her, they were rarely friendly. His next words and she recognized the voice.
The man from the other day with the dirty boots. Plastering a smile to her face, Tanith turned and beamed at him, trying to hide her paranoid nervousness, "Oh, not really. It's a light cloak and it keeps the sun off me."
The cloak wasn't all the light and she liked the sun on her, as evidenced by her tan. But she didn't really want to draw more attention to her deformities. Her grip tightened on her basket, though she kept the pleasant expression on her face, "What brings you out to the market today?"
