"No, thank you."
...
"Get that out of my face."
...
"STOP" -- Anon Guest
They said, Give a sweet thing to a sour face. Which was the very essence of the Sunshine Festival. Enough smiles, and the sun would rise, bringing an end to the cold of winter. Which was why the marketplace was overloaded with cloth flowers that had been soaked in cloying perfume. Honey-cakes abounded. Beautiful music filled every corner and turned every road into a cacophony.
Compliments that usually didn't enter Neg's ears flowed from every painted lip. People wore bright colours, lit every lamp, and there were blazing fires in every brazier, as if everyone were trying to give the sun an unsubtle hint. It was the worst day to beg for a bowl of stew, but Neg had to do it anyway. It was the only way he got to eat.
Honey cakes could fill his belly, but they would not keep him warm in the chill of the night. For that, Neg needed nutrition. Something that was lacking in the joyful atmosphere of the Sunshine Festival. He needed to fortify himself against the night, and there was no amount of false flowers that would insulate him against the lingering winter chill.
Neg was almost dripping with artificial flowers by the time he reached the places where people were cooking. Deep-fried fruit dumplings. Cakes of all kinds. Creations of nut paste and sweet things that would barely keep a mouse alive.
"Sweet cakes for a smile," said someone, pressing a sticky roundness into his hands.
Neg tried to press back, "No, thank you," but the giver was already moving on and the cake fell to the stone paving of the street. Not even the nearby dogs showed an interest in it. "All I want is a bowl of stew."
The cauldron at this stand was boiling down special tree sap into a sticky confection that the sellers collected in ribbons on sticks. No stew. Neg moved on. At least it was warm, with people pressed so close. He could keep warm while the crowds thronged. He could fill his belly, but the food was not fortifying. Its effects would not last.
He'd nearly died in the cold, the last time he'd filled himself on sweetness without substance. Sweetness did not last. Especially the sweetness of today. Just like the value of the cakes, any fleeting feeling of this day would be gone on the morrow. He could unriddle the fabric of the flowers and sew it into a motley coat, but the cloth was fine and thin. It would be no more use to him than the ribbons of candied sap or the apples coated in caramel.
He needed cheese. He needed meat. He needed something that would last at keeping him alive.
Someone pressed a mask on his head, tangling cords into his knotted hair. "Smile for sunshine!"
"Get that out of my face!" The carved wood blocked his mouth and Neg had to stop and saw at the cords holding it on his head. Now he had no meat and splinters added to his face.
The false smile of the wooden mask was meant to be a decoration hung on doors or windows, or even the flare lights on street corners. It was never meant to be worn and the rough hind side of it proved that. Neg tied it around his neck to stop another one coming his way. It would keep his fires going for twenty minutes, if he didn't mind the choking smoke from whatever that paint was made of.
Twenty minutes in the dead of winters' night could mean the difference between life and death. He would be sick from the smoke, true, but he would at least be alive to complain.
An ordinarily chaste maiden opened her vest, exposing her bosoms. "Will these make you smile?"
"Gods! STOP!" Neg shielded his view of her. "What is wrong with all of you?"
The party within Neg's line of sight faltered to a halt. False smiles fell away. Anger brewed. Let them be angry.
"Call me selfish, I know you will. Not a one of you with breath or beat will have a glance my way, should I make it 'till tomorrow. You want to blame me for stopping your party, fine. I just want enough meat or milk to live to see the next dawn. None of you give a heel of bread for that want. You want me to bare my teeth for the sun? Here!" Neg snarled at them. "There's my teeth. Now give me some meat or some cheese or fuck off!"
He was old. He was poor. He was lonely. Any other day of the year, none of them would care. He knew it. They knew it too. He stared them down one by one, his begging bowl out in the open and empty. One by one, they turned away. Even the vendors couldn't meet his eyes.
He was redolent with perfume, but he could still clear a space around him just by existing.
Neg was left staring down a small waif who was possibly a little old to be sucking their thumb, but they were indeed standing and staring and sucking their thumb. Neg didn't have any wrath left for this little one. They probably didn't understand what had just happened.
"Run along," he said. "Your mother's missing you."
Out came the thumb. Pop. "Ma says you shouldn' have sweets 'till you had a good meal. I tried'a tell 'em but nobody listens to me neither."
Neg started plodding on. "Your ma's a wise woman." Cakes. Candy. False flowers reeking of sweet scents. Pomanders. No meat. No cheese. Not even a pickled vegetable.
"Ma listens to me," said the child. "So that's why she's got a pot going for anyone who needs it an' I think you need it. C'mon."
Neg almost ignored the kid. Then his brain caught up with his ears and the hope of a decent meal lightened the rags that served as his boots. In a corner further from the common party atmosphere, a fire warmed a cauldron of genuine, rich, aromatic stew. A welcome relief from the suffocating sweetness of the Sunshine Festival.
"Ma" was a weathered woman with half her face drooping and a scar proving a reason if Neg wanted one. Many would call her ugly, but Neg would call her wonderful in that moment.
"Ain't got nowt to pay you," he said. "Got a false smile and fake flowers I got no real use for."
"Feh. Everyone's got them," she scoffed. Her own shoulders were wreathed in similar blooms and a red smear of rouge provided the other half of her smile where her real face could not co-operate. "Sit and keep my littles still with a tale if'n you got one. You get a meal anyways. 'Tis a time of plenty. Let's all share."
Neg found his smile at the bottom of a bowl of that stew, and saw her smile when he kept finding stories for the little ones.
It was when they all laughed together that the sun began to shine.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / clairev]
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