[Galadria]

Attalus! You quit hinting to Calaethis. [img]graemlins/nono.gif[/img]

After the rest had left, Sefa approached Galadria. "My lady," she asked timidly, "can I have some money?"
Galadria reached over to her desk, touched a spot, and a drawer that had not seemed to have been there before opened. It was full of gold coins, various sizes and denominations. Sefa's eyes bulged. That was enough money to make anyone wealthy for life. "How much do you need, Sefa, and what for?" Galadria asked casually.
"Oh, not near that much, Mistress," Sefa protested. "I ... I just want to look good for when I meet, er, my father, Snurll. So, I need a new outfit. And my hair dressed. Please?"
A smile of pure love came across Galadria's face, the smile that made her so adored by all the inhabitants of the House of the Dome. No one really was able to describe it, and it occurred rarely. Affection, devotion, friendship, and the determination never to let them down, all came across in one fleeting look. Sefa's heart was melted once again. She scarcely heard it when Galadria said, "Why, of course, we will go shopping and make him sorry that he ever let you go, my darling Sefa. Tomorrow, you and I, with Em and Cho, if they want to go, shall take you out and make you utterly delectable."
The next day, the four women sallied out into the merchant's quarter of Baldur's Gate, Chorania heavily cloaked, as usual. She was well known to the authorities as being in Galadria's service, but she disliked the glances that she would get from the uninformed. Galadria herself had offered to cast an illusion upon her, to make her appear human or a surface elf. This, the proud woman had declined. "For, I am Drow, abbil," she had said at the time. "I am proud of my people, even if they are quite the reverse of me. Ellistrae lead them to a better understanding."
When they entered a shop where they all were known, however, she cast back her hood and shook her silver hair loose. Noemi could not but comment. "Cho, you are so lovely. I hate to see you all muffled up, like a sufferer from some plague."
Chorania smiled at the little redhead. "You are kind, m'zint to, to speak of me so. But, what would you? Would you have urchins throwing refuse at me, as they used, before your sister took me in? Or hear the words of the louts that would find me attractive and yet a threat to their puny masculinity? Pah, wearing a cloak is a small thing to avoid this; and," she added, "I do suffer from plagues, the rivvil's ignorance and intolerance, and the continued evil of Lloth and the Drow under her sway."
"They wouldn't bother you with Gal and I around," Noemi bridled. "I'd send them to the Abyss," she caught her sister's eye, "or at least home with a very sore body." She finished defiantly.
As the shopkeeper bustled up, Chorania hugged her small defender. "Do not kill them, mzint to, not for my sake and my nonexistent honor, for that would be a thing abhorrent to Lord Helm, and He would wish me to urge against it. But, I will allow you to make faces at them, at which you excel. But, you merely make my case for hiding my dusky face. Some day, when the world is changed, it may no longer be necessary. Hasten the day!" She then touched a pendant that hung between her breasts.
They found a luscious orange dress in satin, and sandals to match. Noemi insisted on buying a pendant with a strange blue stone, a beljuril, it was called, to hang around her neck, saying that it complemented her dress and brought out the blue in her eyes. Sefa was very pleased, especially since Noemi was notoriusly careful with money. It was the first piece of jewellery that she had ever had that someone else had bought for her. She insisted on wearing it home from the shop, and indeed, it called attention to her fine young neck and the high color of her skin.