“I see what you mean,” I said, bluffing a little. “At least, as much as we can see from here.” It seemed like a safe statement. We were currently standing in an alley which severely limited our view. Basically, it was something to say without really saying anything.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, though. Hot Stuff?”
Massha frowned, craning her neck to peer down the street. So much for bluffing. Now that I had admitted noticing the similarities between Perv and Man-hat-tin . . . wherever that was, I was expected to comment on the differences. Well, if there’s one thing I learned during my brief stint as a dragon poker player, it’s that you don’t back out of a bluff halfway through it.
“Give me a minute,” I said, making a big show of looking in the same direction Massha was. “I’ll get it.” What I was counting on was my apprentice’s impatience. I figured she would spill the beans before I had to admit I didn’t know what she was talking about. I was right.
“Long word . . . sounds like disguise spell?” She broke off her examination of the street to shoot me a speculative glance.
“Oh! Yeah. Right.”
My residency at the Bazaar had spoiled me. Living at the trading and merchandising hub of the dimensions had gotten me used to seeing beings from numerous dimensions shop ping side by side without batting an eye. One tended to forget that in other dimensions, off-world beings were not only an oddity, occasionally they were downright unwelcome.
Of course, Perv was one of those dimensions. What Massha had noticed while I was gawking at the landscape was that we were drawing more than a few hostile glares as passersby noticed us at the mouth of the alley. I had attributed that to two things: the well-known Pervish temperament (which is notoriously foul), and Massha. While my apprentice is a wonderful person, her appearance is less than pin-up-girl caliber . . . unless you get calendars from the local zoo. To say Massha would look more natural with a few tick-birds walking back and forth on her would be an injustice . . . she’s never tried to look natural. This goes beyond her stringy orange hair and larger than-large stature. I mean, anyone who wears green lipstick and turquoise nail polish, not to mention a couple of tattoos of dubious taste, is not trying for the Miss Natural look. There was a time when I would get upset at people for staring at Massha. She really is a wonderful person, even if her taste in clothes and makeup would gag a goat. I finally reached peace with it, however, after she pointed out that she expected people to look at her and dressed accordingly. All of this is simply to explain why it didn’t strike me as unusual that people were staring at us. Similarly, Pervish citizens are noted for not liking anyone, and off-worlders in particular, so the lack of warmth in the looks directed at us did not seem noteworthy.