Legba
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There are many marketplaces in the worlds ... you can have anything you want. It's all out there. But there is only one which specifically and successfully specializes in anything you want, discretely and negotiable.
Funny how that notion instantly drives our mind into secret desires and all of the assumptions of our own tawdry imagination ... Leaping wonderful bounds into the darkness of the idea that thing we'll never admit wanting could be found in alleyways there ...
And yes. It's our minds which map such places and it's our want which creates the channels. Yes, it's dark in Legba's marketplace. Filled with hidden ways to sneak quietly into with your biggest secret want. Funny how quickly we think of what we want ... but not so quickly what we have to offer that may be it's equal.
This is no tempter's land and the soul market has long since crashed with the emptiness of hells, though there is a collectable market of those few cryogenically frozen ... neither living nor dead with all the usefulness of both.
"Paranoid moguls flee the Baron in a freezer !" Legba laughs. Useful souls not imprisoned but willfully bottled in perpetual sleep. They are collected and their archetypes controlled by the collector.
"Mister no man." Legba smiles. "What do you need ?"
"A corkscrew and a tiny blow torch. This is very old gin."
"Oh. I see." Legba plays. "And what do you have to give ?"
He places a bottle of honey in the shape of a bear on the stump where Legba does his business.
"Oh ! I see ! So you believe you know how I like my drink." Legba widens his smile, showing his broad perfect teeth. "And you will tell them ?"
"I will."
"Yes ... Yes ! Now we are doing business mister nobody."
He walks into his small shack house behind the stump and retrieves the trade from his own kitchen, filled with pictures and symbols of his sisters and brothers, cousins and neighbors, with all of their favorite things surrounding them.
Returning he says "This cork screw was used to open bottles in Versailles and then stolen by a thief along the way to pry out the lock on the secret door to the left of the bar."
"That works ?"
"It did for her." He places it on the stump. "And this is a butane lighter used by three children to bore through the clear plastic door of a shopping center to eat the candy inside while their parent's slept. They were not caught and even got the day off from school the next for their belly aches, all three ! It is almost out of fluid. I don't have any more."
With a dismissing hand and turn of the head, he places it on the stump.
"Perfect."
Turning an eye toward the gin's progress as his guest pulls two short glasses from his coat and sets them down to begin wrestling with the blunted and bent corkscrew in the cork. "Careful, now. I don't drink cork." His eye narrows.
"I know you don't ..." He responds patiently.
Legba watches in humoured but true judgement the preparation of this drink now that the cork has popped cleanly. Two glasses filled, he watches the hand approach the honey bear. "What kind of honey it that ?!" he demands.
"Fairy blooms. It's been a day."
With a short laugh and turn of his head to face the bottle. Feigning great seriousness and threat, "And that gin ! Where did you get that gin !?"
"Remember that cryo-chump I got here last year ?"
"Yes ! Mister big movie man. From the collector, yes ? The demon." His face becomes faux serious. "What did you pay ?"
"Shhh ..."
"And this frozen man dreams of ancient gin !?"
"And fairy blooms. At least he did the other day."
"Ha ! Yes, yes, pour the honey."
He squeezes honey from the bear into a glass and ignites the top with the torch quickly before it settles, working his way in circles from the center.
Cryo-souls are a new oddity to these lands as they appear as would any other soul ... except they don't do anything. Years passed and if just to clear them from the path, people began to collect them. It's treated like being a caretaker, depending on how it's treated ... but either way someone has to and thusly will do something with them or they simply become litter !
And since only the wealthy in a brief but stylish period in history could afford to be frozen, there has become a strange market for them and the stories they represent ...
Setting down the lighter he licks his palm and places it over over the burning drink and overturns it not spilling while looking Legba quite seriously in the eye.
"I see." Legba says as the drink is righted and placed on the stump. "You call the big contract." As the drink is slid across the stump toward him and the next begun.
"I do." As Legba places his hand over the glass in it's time.
In the heat of the marketplace they drink.
"This very good. Thank you. What do you need ?"
"Access to all of the channels into Sanctuary that I don't know about." He stares over his empty glass to savor and judge the after taste. "Hm. Yeah, not bad. It's the the sweat and saliva. Breaks down the honey a step further while adding a shared element. That's the idea, anyway. Other than that I just like burning."
"I've noticed that. You're very good for business." He sets down his glass "But what you ask is very bad for business. And it means a lot of work. You'll return to your place when this job is done and safe smuggling will no longer be a thing I can promise anyone, no matter how much I would trust your word, they can't be expected to on mine."
"I know. You would never be able to use those routes again."
"But it is intermingled with this place as well. It is not even so simple as that. What do you bring to pay me for that ?"
"A better system. Beyond my sight entirely. They wouldn't need to fear what 'look the other way' policies we already have."
"Describe it."
"It's a singularity turned inside out. Not an experiment I could repeat. The only one to survive the process, a prototype realm. Never used and abandoned. Clean. I picked it up along the way."
"I do not doubt that you did. And you say singularity. As a realm removed ? Yes, there are many but turned inside out. This is new. What does it do ?"
"It permeates by nature, but outside of time. Seeks and connects with outside data as though it were internal, and internally it acts as an abyss. Completely removed, impossible to map. It's been my private storage for a little while now. I cleaned it out for you, too."
"And so it will connect according to directional need, passively ... and only trackable in the flash of transit. Yes. This is useful." His arms fold as his eyes move clearly from his guest to the bear and back. "But still there will be much work."
"I've got the change. What do you need ?" He pours two more glasses.
