Howl Your Appellations

What's Inside

BOEN OPEOR

Without noticing it, I closed my eyes shut and clutched Nikki’s hand tightly. We’re walking normally, Nikki not giving my nervousness into consideration, or maybe slowing down won’t do me any good anyway so she continues like normal. I place my steps with a stop as if the ground’s about to descend a step.

“You don’t have to be so nervous. But I warn you, it’s going to be a bit cold in there, and there are some pretty strong Appellations so you might want to tone your range down.” Nikki says to me, still walking at the same pace.

She’s only wearing a thin brown sweater on, I don’t think it should be me that she should be worried about. Nevertheless, I don’t say anything, after all, who’s been to the Inner Market countless of times? Not me. Nikki’s probably used to the cold.

“Wait, how do I tone my range down? Uwahh!! We’re so close!” I exclaim, immediately closing my eyes after opening them. We’re almost at the threshold and through the gate.

“Alright. Here we go! Watch your step!” Nikki tightens her grip of my hand and the shock made me laugh and trip, luckily her grip was strong enough to prevent me from fully falling over.

“Why are you eyes still closed? Didn’t you want to see the market?” Nikki shakes me like a rattle through the one hand she’s gripping me from.

I can feel a cold winter-like breeze rush inside my hood and she shakes me, “W-wait! Stop! I’ll open my eyes! It’s getting cold!”

“Hmph, well hurry up, we have a curfew to worry about!” she loosens the grip of her hand.

I open my eyes, and light rushes in as if they were starved of my eyes. The sky is the color of the cosmos that seems to be inside a lined dome. From our position, I can clearly see the whole market, and it’s HUGE. At the middle end of the Market is a gigantic throne, bigger than any tree or mountain I’ve ever seen. It’s designed in cubic style and all the stalls and stores are situated inside, on and over these stone throne cubes.

So many bridges cover the market like a serpent with a thousand bodies and heads. These bridges are riddled with beautiful leafy vines and what seems to be little statues of the fae. I can’t be too sure though.

The sun isn’t visible nor at all present, but the lack of it is compensated by the twinkling of everyone’s Appellations. It’s so bright, in fact, too bright.

“M-my eyes! Aughhh!!!!” It has dawned on me that the scene had gotten too bright to appreciate and take in. I let out another embarrassing scream after the previous one.

“I hurt my eyes the first time too. I went with Sana and Nike and they called me a wussy.” her voice sounds happily melancholic, but I am too busy rubbing my eyes to see her expression.

“Suck it up, wussy. Just remember that all you need to see, it their names. Then the place would be twenty times dimmer!” She exclaims, almost letting go of my hand.

“P-please don’t let go! I’m almost over it. Please give me a second. The market is…so pretty..” It’s hard to wipe my elated tears with only one hand but my feelings and expectations were met beautifully by a surprisingly giving reality.

“It’s so good dude. We need to take a picture together, Nikki. I’ve been taking candid pictures of us since we started. ” I take out my phone and stand up.

I half-opened my eyes and realized that I haven’t restricted my view of Appellations yet. They make it sound easier than it is. I just need to think about names, right? Just like I used to, just like I used to.

“Yeah!” I did it! I actually manged to do it on the first try! This must mean I’m a natural!

“Great! You can take a picture but, photos registered here do not register outside. Closed dimension rules.” Nikki explains but smiles anyway, “But let’s take one anyway, it’s the thought that counts, yeah?”

I grin so widely that it hurt my cheeks. I can’t believe Nikki’s being so accepting of me.

“Yeah! Let’s take a pic!”

I place the phone camera in front of our faces and went in for a pose. Nikki’s thin face contrasts mine but we equally look impressive. Just two girls going grocery shopping in the enchanted parts of the forest.

“Alright, let’s get going. We have to hurry before they close up shops.” Nikki tugs me excitedly, “We’ll have to get a basket bag first though. Since it’s your first day here, you get to pick which one we’ll use.”

“Whoa, is there no price limit? How are we going to pay?” I ask Nikki, as I am not used to having a limit for my purchases. I’m very, extremely privileged to have this sort of life. Although I’m not really much of a ‘wanter’, I buy what I need and then I buy it. It’s a little different when it comes to food though.

“Oh! I completely forgot to explain things to you. I’d assume Reese told you already but she apparently didn’t.” She taps her forehead.

We’re walking rapidly down the stone stairs of the market. It’s a marvel how people can just walk such slopes and not get tired after a long way of shopping. I wait for Nikki to explain Inner Market currency to me.

“Hmmm, well it’s a little complicated. I’ve had four of the elders explain to me then.”

“The elders?” I ask. This is the first time I’ve heard of them.

“Nike, Imus, and Sana.” She replied. Oh, she meant those elders.

“You can imagine how difficult it is to understand Sana’s explanations, she’s a bit better now, but she was absolutely useless before. And Nike didn’t really understood it fully either. He just relied on Imus.” She chuckles.

I give her a chuckle in reply, Nike’s just a bigger Lissana, after all.

“Yeah, so, before Mei joined the pack, Imus set up a shop up here. It was a trade shop for glyphs. He was an expert is a lot of them, and most of the clients are people who wanted to write love letters.”

Nikki runs ahead of me, trying to hide her expression of adoration, and romantic excitement. It seems she has a weakspot for these sorts of things, how cute. I’m not one to differ since I can feel my cheeks blush at the idea that Imus helped write love letters for different Weres and people.

Speaking of people, everyone around us right now, just looks like regular people except with a difference in fashion sense, and that some of them have animal ears, and scales on their skin. Such a diverse world.

“I can’t believe used to do that! Why’d he stop?” I abashedly asked.

“Well, we don’t know for sure. He probably just didn’t want to think about more things when Mei suggested to set up his shop. Maybe he was getting tired of writing for other people’s love letters.”

We reach the end of the stairs, we were rushing a bit but it still took a bit of time to reach the bottom. Looking back at the stairs now, it’s hard to think that we were actually up there and now we’re down here. The ground floor of the market, or so I assume.

It’s incredibly organized for a market situated around a giant unused throne. It’s designed like a swerving botanical garden with much emphasis on exotic trees, flowers and plants.

“Hey, stop your sight-seeing for a bit. We’re going there.” Nikki points at a shop with a numerous stacks of baskets.

“Wait! You haven’t told me how we’re going to pay yet!” I remind her, and myself apparently.

“Oh, we trade with goods, and good Karma!” Nikki replies.

I twist my brows, “What do you mean by that?”

“We don’t have goods to trade with so we’ll rely on good Karma.”

I get even more confused, “H-how do I know if I have good Karma with me?!”

“That’s where Mei’s shop comes along! You see, there’s apparently this thing called, ‘collective Karma’. This place works to harvest it and turns it into currency. Whenever our shop makes a sale, our Karma goes up. That’s how it works.”

“Ohhhhh okay… but, so…so I have a share of Mei’s Karma too? Because his shop is for the pack?” I ask to clarify but I have more questions in my mind, too much to organize at the moment.

“We share the same amount of Karma he does. But there’s also personal Karma. You can use that too.” She replies.

So when I think about it logically based on what Nikki has explained, the currency for this place is good Karma and goods. There’s personal Karma and there’s collective Karma. We share Mei’s collective Karma because of his shop, but he has his own Karma that he doesn’t share with us, just how I have my own.

It seems relatively simple enough. It’s actually a really nice system, from what I’ve heard about so far. If you cheat a customer, no good Karma for you; and if a client steals goods, they won’t get good Karma.

“Hm, I think I get it. But one last thing, how will we know, how much good Karma we have?”

Nikki grins, “That’s the fun part! These shops with no vendors are self-regenerating. Um, so basically, it’s one of Luna’s little shops. These never run out. It’s almost infinite. We pick one, and the number will show up behind your eyes.”

She waves the index finger of her free hand as we enter the shop of Luna’s baskets.

“That sounds so ridiculous, I can’t wait to try it.” I commented, “I wonder how the first Weres figured all this out. ”

“Just think about which Karma you want to see and it’ll appear. Now which basket do you want us to use?’’ She gestures at all the beautifully woven baskets.

“”We’re going to use these to buy groceries, right? We should take two; one for the food stuff and the other for…other stuff.” I explain, “We should take this one.”

I took a big basket that’s also a backpack for the food, just in case Nikki intends to but the large food of names I don’t know about that’s hidden away in The Train’s cold storage.

“We’ll take this one too, a smaller side bag one for, uh, other essentials.” I smile and give Nikki the side bag basket.

“Fair enough. You’ll have to carry the heavy stuff for the rest of this outing. Now, think of good collective Karma. It should show up when you close your eyes.” Nikki closes her eyes.

I would have liked a chance to protest on carrying the heavy load, but it’s too late. I close my eyes and think about what Nikki instructed; I think about our good collective Karma. And there it is!

180, 453 Karma!

“Well? Is it 180k for you too?” Nikki’s voice is in the form of a grin in my imagination.

“Yes! We’ve accumulated a lot! This is a lot, right?” I ask, unsure of how much Karma things cost in the Inner Market.

“Yeah! Just enough. This is the pack’s monthly budget. ”

The both of us open our eyes and smirk. “The rules are simple. No buying anything useless with the pack’s collective Karma, and don’t do anything to jeopardize it. That’s all.”

“How do I know not to jeopardize the Karma?” I ask a question before thinking.

“Same way you don’t jeopardize your own. Just be mindful and remember that the CK only works in here. Personal Karma is valid everywhere though.” Nikki answers, with the intent to warn me.

“Don’t ever let go of my hand, okay?” she looks at me straight in the eyes.

“Okay.” I stare back, strongly.

Nikki leads us out. I’m excited and also pretty nervous. I’m too sacred to look at the good Karma I’ve personally accumulated.