The Flaneur & The Gladiator

[Thomas]

Thomas did indeed join Zilrud on the couch. For one thing, he wanted to have a crack at the pattern books. It was evident that Zilrud had not the faintest idea what Thomas had been trying to tell him but was gamely trying to soldier on. He appreciated the man's willingness to humor him, and his trust in him. He had every intention of paying that back with friendship and boots.

When the shopkeeper reemerged with the pattern books for calf-length and knee-length boots, Thomas showed them to Zilrud. Each of them had sketches in them showing different models of boots. There weren't hundreds, but there were certainly a few dozen base models of each, allowing for things like a point at the toe box, gentle curves of contrasting leather over the vamp, patterns or adornments of some kind on the front quarter, different lacing patterns, and different styles of heels and heel heights. Many models also had additional bells and whistles that Thomas assumed Zilrud would hate given his stated preference for things to be on the plainer side, but the sketches demonstrated that many things were possible if the orkhai willed them: additional straps or stays, buckles instead of laces, tassles and even a bit of fringe. Thomas was unsure who would want some of these things, but if provided an option, someone would take it. Somewhere out there was a Rienese fashion plate who would start a trend, or at least try to do so. He felt grateful to be insulated from such things due to his rank and his life on the estate keeping him far from Kastren.

"See, Zilrud?" Thomas said, motioning to two different possible models of footwear. "While both of these can be made to your measurements, the addition of the buckles here will make the boots quite narrow across your calf in a way that I am not sure you would like. Whereas these are looser, but may gape open if not tucked into a pair of trousers. This is what I was attempting to demonstrate when I said 'imagine wearing them as you look at them.' If you see something and think it impractical or uncomfortable or otherwise unsuitable for you, we won't purchase it."

[Zilrud]

Zilrud was trying or at least trying to try. Boots were a simple way for the Orkhai to try and start down the path of doing things a little differently. Glancing downward toward the book, he watched as Thomas flipped through pages for a moment, and it was only for a moment. Because while Thomas was busy flipping through the book, Zilrud looked up to look to the shopkeeper and allowed his red-eyed gaze to take in the shopkeeper and how he was acting. He was curious about a few things, but for the time being, he kept his thoughts to himself and lowered his gaze back to the book.

Reaching over, he took the book, none too delicately but gentle enough that it did not harm any of the sketches or the binding. Doing his best not to mark up or tear any of the sketches, the Orkhai was flipping page by page. Many of them looked too fancy for him, something he wouldn’t enjoy wearing. Not because it wouldn’t serve the function that Thomas had mentioned for him to use boots for. It was mostly because, although Zilrud had almost no fashion sense, he still had certain things that he liked.

Most of the designs he saw didn’t seem like something he could settle on until he was nearly two-thirds of the way through what designs could apply to him, and he paused. That thicker, leathery, green brow rose as he looked at the book and seemed to pull it closer to his face. A low growl came from the Orkhai’s throat as he was studying the sketches and lifted the book to look down to his own feet, then back to the book. The growl turned more into a humming as he thought until he pointed at the book and showed it to Thomas.

“That one.”

The Orkhai pointed to the book that Thomas would then be holding. It was a pair of quite simple black leather boots. The heel was simple and gave him a slightly extra lift, and the toe was slightly pointed but not terribly so. The leather went up high enough to almost reach a knee, and he pointed to the book again.

“Tie or no?”

He was asking Thomas the question rather than the shopkeeper. Zilrud wanted to know Thomas’s thoughts on the boot as well. Zilrud knew getting something large enough had the potential to fall off his foot and leg if it was too loose, so he knew it would have to be fastened somehow. And then he had a creative question.

“Fur?”

Reaching over, he pointed to the top of the boot where the leg would be coming from around the top edge of the boot.

“If yes, wolf or bear fur.”

He nodded and looked to Thomas before looking to the shopkeeper. They wanted him to be specific. That was as specific as he was going to get. Hopefully, if there needed to be a translation of some kind, Thomas would be able to understand what Zilrud was after. If not, then Zilrud would have to figure it out.

[Thomas]

Thomas thought about Zilrud's calves when Zilrud asked the question. Not in a prurient way, although that was never too far from his thoughts when it came to his esteemed guest. He thought about Zilrud bending, squatting, or otherwise flexing them. Any leather good the man wore over them would have to be able to have some give to it or it would just end up limiting his range of motion and upsetting him. Any sort of fastening would have to have a similar flexibility.

Thomas nodded to Zilrud's question about a tie. A smart kind that could move with the man would be good.

"I think," he said to the shopkeeper, "A leather strap to secure. Something that has notches in it so that it can stay flush to the skin as it stretches. As for fur, I'd recommend a pair with fur lining and trim and a pair without. Provides options, that way." He saw the questioning look Zilrud shot him, so he went on to say: "It's always good to have more than one pair of boots, anyway. Boots need care and maintenance, same as anything else, and this leaves you with one pair to wear while the other is serviced."

The shopkeeper looked at him with a polite smile frozen in place. "Very good, m'Lord. There is now the matter of getting measurements of the sole and the ankle and the leg."

Before Zilrud could do something gauche like put his leg on the table, Thomas understood the issue. Zilrud's bare feet still had dirt and slush caked on them from the trek here. The shopkeeper was not going to touch those things with his hands unless Thomas forced him to, and as a general rule he liked to maintain a good relationship with the people who made his clothes.

"Of course, my good man. Could you show us to where you have a footbath? My dear friend just needs to freshen up a bit before we take measurements."

The shopkeeper's entire affect relaxed. It was apparent that despite making shoes for a living, this was not a man who enjoyed feet. Or at least not these feet. Thomas tried not to laugh at how relieved the man was.

"This way, Sir. Um, Sirs."

The shopkeeper took them to a small chamber to the back of the store, next to what Thomas presumed was a washroom for the shopkeeper and customers. The room had little in it other than a footbath and some towels for guests to use when they were finished. He also left them alone, and closed the door.

Once they had some relative privacy, Thomas thought it might be good to check in with Zilrud. "So far so good, I hope, my friend? I appreciate your efforts thus far."

[Zilrud]

Thomas needed to be hired somewhere as a Common translator for those who spoke Common. Tilting his head, he looked to Thomas, explaining why Zilrud had asked for laces or something that could be tied. Glancing down to the book, then back to Thomas while he spoke, by the end of it, the red-eyed, green-skinned man was looking at the shopkeeper with a raised brow as he started to speak about the Orkhai’s feet. If Thomas had not spoken, Zilrud would have plopped one, if not both of his feet, on the table and offered them up for measurement, not thinking anything of it. The most direct path between the two points was a straight line.

Just as the Orkhai was about to hoist one of the meatier climbs up onto the table, Thomas started talking and requesting the location of a… What? With a grunt of curiosity, Zilrud’s head turned towards his Griscian counterpart and looked for an answer as to what the footbath was for. It seemed the pair understood what was happening, and he looked down to his feet, not seeing a single thing wrong with them, but they were ushered to follow the shopkeeper.

Keeping his gaze on the shopkeeper until he left them to their own devices in the footbath… Room? Turning to regard Thomas, he was confused about why they needed to wash his feet. How would cleaning his feet make it easier to take a measurement? It took Zilrud a few moments to catch up to the fineraspects of the humans’ thoughts, and he realized his bare feet had gone through dirt, snow, and other things and now had to be touched. The shopkeeper had not wanted to touch Zilrud’s feet because they were not clean. For a brief moment, he likened the experience back to when Thomas had practically required Zilrud to be clean and then touched him. Glancing down at his feet, the male’s toes gave a bit of movement and flexed as he looked at them.

After a moment of thought, the Orkhai grabbed a towel and bunched it up in his fist as he approached the footbath. Not having a need to sit or do anything awkward, Zilrud would go through the motions of cleaning his own feet. Doing his best to make sure that he cleaned between each toe, the soles of his feet, the arches, and then up the ankle just to be safe. Once he had finished one foot, he finished the other, taking the time to dry them off, and was satisfied enough that they would be clean enough to be measured.

Having not answered Thomas’s question until that point, he glanced at Thomas and then to the door. “So far.” Mimicking Thomas’s words in response to him, with a glance over to Thomas as he approached the door, the Orkhai opened it and pointed for Thomas to exit first. The Okrhai would follow Thomas so they could go and let the shopkeeper know that his feet were clean, and they could take care of the measurements to see if the boots could be made to the specifications that Thomas had translated for Zilrud.

[Thomas]

Thomas wasn't looking for assurance from Zilrud that he was having fun. Plenty of people did not enjoy shopping, even those that grew up in a society that touted it as an aspirational activity. Zilrud has not grown up in such a culture, so presumably he found this entire exercise strange. While it was not the same thing, it reminded Thomas of being first introduced into a noble house and learning how the other half lived. As a child, his whole life had been immersed in others of his class standing, which is to say no standing worth mentioning. Having to learn how to converse, how to school his expression, how to serve, how to be polite and deferential without appearing as if it were any effort to do so had taken years of practice and real effort. Zilrud was attempting to do something similar and he did not have the benefit of even being Rienese. There seemed to be next to no common cultural ground between Lorien and Rokhan relative to Thomas' experience.

He felt that expressing this might be patronizing, however, so instead he just watched Zilrud cleanse his feet and then nodded in satisfaction when the orkhai indicated he was finished.

"I'm impressed by you," he said, hoping it didn't sound smarmy. It was the truth. Then, he thought it might be good to give the man a heads up. "When we return to the common area, he'll be taking your measurements. He may take a cast of your foot, as well, so that he can make you a custom sole. It will be good, I think, to ensure that everything fits, because if he gets the measurements less than precise, I don't think there are many Rienese fellows who have your measurements. Well, some Argents, perhaps, but most of those wouldn't be caught dead buying second hand."

Thomas felt like everything he said just risked confusing Zilrud more. It was only when he listened to himself talk and tried to think of it from his companion's perspective that he realized how truly arbitrary so many of these rules were. To him, they were just The Rules. Or at least, they had been. Being with Zilrud made him question their efficacy and purpose, and he found he was enjoying doing so.

"Shall we rejoin our shopkeep, or...?" Thomas looked up at him curiously.

[Zilrud]

Having dried his feet off with the towel, the Orkhai laid the towel somewhere and had been about ready to open the door and leave when Thomas offered the compliment of being impressed. It was funny, really. Thomas said he was impressed with Zilrud, and Zilrud felt almost entirely out of place. Perhaps it was some form of culture shock since the only cultures Zilrud knew were what ties he held to his memory of Rokhan and being indentured for a long period of time. They were two varyingly different cultures of Orkhai versus slave… And now he was walking in the presence of people carrying themselves vastly different than he had experienced before, but they still looked at him the same way people did when he was in chains.

It would take some time for Zilrud to get around the idea of people looking at him in that direction. Regardless of it all, he paused at opening the door. Being told Thomas was impressed had forced Zilrud into a line of thought he had not anticipated. Instead of speaking on it, Zilrud’s head turned and narrowed his gaze on the other. “Little One is a good translator. Also impressive.” Tilting his gaze back toward the door as Thomas was preparing him for what could come next.

A mold of his foot would make sense, especially if they did not have many Orkhai customers. Nodding at each step, the Orkhai took a deep breath and opened the door. “The longer the nervous one waits, the clumsier he will get.” Referring to the shopkeeper. With the door opened, Zilrud stepped back to let Thomas lead the way. Allowing Thomas to be in the lead would allow Zilrud to have at least a momentary delay between what Thomas was trying to offer in a common ground for the two worlds to meet and acting in a way that went against what Thomas was trying to do overall.

With Thomas leading the way, the Orkhai would approach, feet cleaned, dried, and readied for the shopkeep to do as he needed to take the proper measurements. Zilrud would do his best not to shove his feet through the man’s head or break anything. But in all actuality, there really were no promises to be made. Whatever happened would happen, but the Orkhai was at least attempting not to be the proverbial bull in the said shop of delicate finery.

[Thomas]

Thomas smiled up at Zilrud when he heard the compliment. He knew what the Orkhai meant. He wasn't translating anything linguistic; everything happening was in Common. Which was fortunate for Zilrud, because Thomas did not have much of a head for languages. The closest he'd come was haltingly conversational Gentavarese when he was in secondary school. No, what he was doing was opening up this world and explaining its rules to Zilrud. No one person had done that for Thomas, but he'd learned from example.

When he'd first gone to serve the Ashley household, he had been quite young. He hadn't known much more other than that being clean and quiet was the ticket to getting invited back, and that if he didn't get invited back he would have been put into back-breaking manual labor at a manufactory or been tasked with doing something dangerous like sweeping chimneys or hauling away refuse from the streets. Desperation to avoid such a fate had made him study the rules of service with a fervency that he had never really felt for his schooling.

Thomas found himself wondering what Zilrud would have made him back then. For that matter, what would he make of who Zilrud had been ten years ago? Like many pointless flights of fancy, the need to reflect on it and daydream was almost all-consuming once it alit upon his fevered brain, but he resisted the urge. Instead, he led Zilrud back to the couches.

"You're right as you often are, my friend. Let's have him finish up taking your measurements and then hurry off to the next shop. I think we can get you fitted for some trousers and shirts at a a general outfitter, and maybe also a jacket. Then, I think it might be good to get you some cloaks. They are of course rather old-fashioned, but they are quite useful in keeping you warm and they are simple to take on and off. They can also be used as a blanket in a pinch."

When they returned to the shop floor proper, the shopkeeper did indeed have the supplies needed to take a cast of Zilrud's feet in addition to a cloth measuring tape. Thomas returned to the couches, and the shopkeep bade Zilrud to remain standing. He knelt in front of the man, intent on beginning the tasks of taking his measurements.

[Zilrud]

It was still a form of translation. He had run into the issue before he had cared to try and piece together his Common better and just used words as they came to his mind and out of his mouth. Since stumbling onto the estate and meeting Thomas, he had been practicing when he was not healing or finding himself in Thomas’s presence. He still had much work to do before he spoke as fluently as he understood. His biggest problem was referring to himself with personal pronouns rather than his name alone. It also might have seemed like Zilrud called Thomas Little One similarly, but it was not. It was a term of affection and endearment as Thomas had tried helping him the day he had found him with the wound in his leg, and he was too little to really do anything to help move the Orkhai to somewhere less filthy and better for caring for wounds.

Noting the smile, he followed behind Thomas towards the couch and was about to turn and plop himself down to see if the shopkeeper would be ready for him, but instead, he was halted from joining the other, and he perked a brow in curiosity. Turning to regard the shopkeeper, he saw the man already kneeling before him, and Zilrud looked up and over to Thomas. The Orkhai’s mind had gone in a different direction and was about to question how Thomas had instructed him to behave. But thankfully, the rational part of his brain, which was still minor compared to the part of him that responded with action and rage, took over, and he saw that there were tools and things to make that mold/cast that Thomas had mentioned to him.

Trying to show that he respected the man’s space, he made sure not to keep the other foot too close and instead gave room for the man to work or do what he needed to do. Looking to the shopkeeper, letting the red gaze linger on the man’s head as he prepared to take the measurements, Zilrud’s deeper voice spoke to the man rather than to Thomas. “Better?” The Ork asked this as he partially lifted the foot so that way the man could position it or measure it however he wanted. It was amazing how a momentary breath in a closed-off space could do for the Orkhai. He was quicker to anger or to react than he was to be rational, but he was also getting better at, at least, trying to walk away and take a breather. Thankfully, Thomas understood the shopkeeper with the footbath ordeal, allowing Zilrud not to want to remove the shopkeeper’s head and drink from the wound.

[Thomas]

To someone who had not spent almost every day with Zilrud, maybe they would not notice anything was different. Thomas had, however, and so he noticed the dramatic change from when they first met.

Something had shifted in the Orkhai since they'd grown closer. At a guess, Zilrud had been unsure if anything that he categorized as something akin to "The world of Humans" was worth understanding or being around. He was still quick to point out hypocrisies or inconsistencies, which Thomas actually appreciated. When one spent all of one's time pretending that something was true, it was easy to forget it wasn't. Zilrud was a bucket of cold water on the cheery illusion of a fire in the warm hearth. If the hearth gave no heat and light after the man was done with his objections to societal mores, well, there hadn't really been any there to begin with. Only the impression of it, the sort of thing Thomas could see in the corner of his eye and could believe in as long as he did not look directly at it.

Zilrud made him look. He smiled at the orkhai as he watched him get fitted for the boots. It was hard not to be fond of the man, even though they had not known each other very long. He was intriguing and refreshing, and doing something as mundane as shopping with him made him think deeply about how society was constructed and why it was the why it was. Also, at a base level, it was still fun to shop.

When the shopkeeper was all done, Thomas gave the address of his estate. They could send the bill there.

"I think you're going to love your new footwear." Thomas said to Zilrud. "Shall we move on the outfitter?"

[Zilrud]

Zilrud knew he was changing, even if it was only little steps at a time. Those little steps were big steps for him. Either way, when they finished having his feet measured and placed into the cast, he watched the shopkeeper for a long moment and then tilted his head towards Thomas as he semi-assured him of enjoying the new footwear. The thought of wearing boots was still foreign to the Orkhai, but he could at least see the benefits if they did turn out to benefit as Thomas had laid them out for Zilrud.

Nodding in Thomas’s direction, the Orkhai reached over as they readied to leave and invaded the shopkeeper’s personal space without a thought. His large hand opened up, and Zilrud offered a heft clap of his open hand to the shopkeeper’s shoulder in thanks. He was not big on saying his thanks, nor was he really affectionate with many people. The Orkhai at least recognized discomfort, and the shopkeeper had been uncomfortable from the moment the Orkhai had wandered into his shop and asked for boots. The clap to the shoulder would be quick, and it was accompanied by a nod of his head and a grunt before he turned to head for the door. Having thanked the shopkeeper appropriately, or so Zilrud thought, he would wait for Thomas to finish whatever he needed and leave with him. Once outside, the Orkhai paused and took a deep breath in. Zilrud’s green nose flared as he inhaled the slightly fresher air than the air that had been inside and looked at people who may have been passing by or standing nearby.

“Outfitter?”

Zilrud asked, not quite sure what the idea of an outfitter meant. Part of him thought of an outfit like Thomas talked about, but it didn’t make sense precisely what an outfitter did other than having something to do with an outfit. Blinking, he looked to the ground, then to his clothing, and shrugged his shoulders.

“If Little One thinks it is the best place next, we can go.”

Nodding at his words, he would allow Thomas to lead or at least walk in a general direction. Zilrud would remain at the other’s side, walking and taking in the sights. It indeed was his first ‘shopping experience’. Something many people took for granted, and Zilrud was just trying to keep up with everything and not get left behind.