((August, Late afternoon))

A roiling, vibrant crowd with the aftertaste of curry and the heat of a boiling stew parted to admit the bold cut of a woman. She had no escort and allowed for nothing less than a moment or two of undivided attention from complete strangers. Her tangible presence gave the impression that perhaps she might step from the road she created to put to words the dialogue she made simply with the carriage of her head.

It was as though a few might want to talk to her if they could speak proper English. This was not, perhaps, because she was different, but because she fit where she should not have fit. All the same- she preferred her space just then.

Violette stepped off of Portobello Road with stares and greetings and incomprehensible words at her back and into a foreign treasures shop, sinking into the blinding aroma of incense as though the smokescreen was refuge. This was no place for a lady; exotic fabrics and rugs hung over the windows, creating indelicate darkness and trapping the smell of stale smoke. And Violette was drawing on this air as though it gave her a rise and sighed it out in kind, relaxing back into her body before casting her eyes lazily about.

All in all, her entrance took a more time than it did for her to find what she was looking for.

“Dreadful!”
This came out like the word “red” written in blue ink and there was an easy smile at the corners of her lips, which were just parted. Oh, it was a delightful mask; African, with a long, painted, savage face, violent and harmless. She was taking it into her slender fingers off of a wall with a sign that read “Do Not Touch.”

The drowsy looking man behind a colorfully draped counter scrambled out of his seat to catch a disaster before it happened- or else he was attempting to seem abreast of a situation which had clearly left him behind.

“Sir, you can’t—Oh—Forgive me my rudeness, ma’am, I—“

Either way, he was failing miserably.

“What would I pay for this mask?”
Violette observed the wooden face at eye-level before glancing up at the store clerk, brows arched like idle question-marks.

He drew himself up and answered before he could stop himself,
“Seven shillings.”

He promptly deflated under her imperious gaze, realizing he’d given a moneyed woman the actual price; she must have realized it, too, because she was already gliding past him and to his counter, mask still in both hands.

“Six really should do,” she cut across his open mouth with a voice like steel sheathed in velvet, laying the shillings out upon the cloth. He appeared hurriedly behind the counter, heavy eye-lids beating rapidly. The coins he collected in an entirely distracted fashion; he did not offer her a bag and his expression was somewhere between perplexed and frustrated. She smiled a smile like honey, slow and sweet, thanked him kindly, and strode out.

This smile lingered for a moment before fading unnoticed into the crowd where a very colorful, out-of-place piece of work wove her way; she carried with her into obscurity more than one artificial face.