Talia’s Tea and Leaves, Kingsway Market, Uptown
Cat was working, Ava thought, on a big project. Something that made her afraid? She had seen something like a flash of fear on the other woman’s face, an inward withdrawing that she had shaken away.
“The sign is beautiful,” Ava said gently into the other woman’s stillness, a soft nudge.
Cat continued, her motions quick and fluid; Ava had to watch carefully to follow her, although she did not let the effort of it show on her face. Her smile remained friendly and pleasant, encouraging, and she nodded slowly when Cat said what she had said about a thing’s use is to be beautiful.
“That’s a lovely sentiment,” Ava said, firmly, confident enough in her understanding to respond directly. “But I don’t think you should need to choose! Your sign is a wonderful example of both, I think,” her smile crinkled her eyes, lighting her whole face. “It has a very practical use, of course, but its beauty helps draw one’s eye to the tea shop.”
Ava did not look down at her dress, but she might have; she wore only her own fabrics, beautiful things made into useful shapes, and she rather thought that Cat had put her finger on the heart of it. Sometimes a thing’s use was to be beautiful; it was a lesson that Ava tried to teach her customers every day, the ones who could, maybe, afford a fabric nicer than the rough linen of every day wear, who could buy a panel of something lovely for a dress or shirt. Fabric wasn’t lovely in the abstract though, at least not to Ava’s customers; it was lovely in the way it made them feel, in the pride they took in wearing it. Few things made her prouder as a shopkeeper than seeing someone return dressed in the fabric she had sold them, than seeing someone having found pride in themselves through something beautiful.
The music swelled, and Ava could not quite resist glancing over at Aodh, enjoying the tea, company and music alike. She thought perhaps Cat was looking somewhere else, off into the distance, but she could not tell what the other woman was focusing on.
“I’ve no skill as a tailor, I’m afraid,” Ava said, smiling. “I hope you might come and see my shop some time, though, if you’re ever in the Painted Ladies.”
The music had ended, and Ava was a little sorry to think of Aodh going; she did not think she could have gotten up and gone to speak with him, not outside, but she wished she could have told him she liked his song.
There was a moment of quiet, and then the soft, rough tones of Aodh’s voice, his familiar northern burr, the brush of the edges of his unobtrusive glamour. Ava looked up in surprise, and her smile broadened, a faint hint of genuine pleasure for just a moment, before she smoothed it back into a smile appropriate for a shopkeeping woman greeting a wick tradesman in public - friendly, polite, kind, but not too broad.
“Good day, Mr. Elzo,” Ava said. “I’m well, and I hope you are also?” her eyes crinkled slightly more at the edges, and smoothed out; she did not look down at his ankle, not more than the faintest flicker of her gaze. “Cat,” She turned to the other woman. “This is Aodh Elzo, the man who was just playing so beautifully outside. Mr. Elzo, this is Cat, a very talented blacksmith.”
Ava did not invite Aodh to join them; she would have liked to, very much. It was terribly awkward to have him looming over them, and she thought he did not enjoy it either. In truth, there was nothing she would have liked more than for him to sit with them - and yet she did not ask, she could not ask. She did not know who else was in the tea shop that day; she did not know who might see and who might wonder. Better - safer - not to be seen being too friendly with him.