The catfolk and the kiosk attendant seem to be talking about what kind of protection against wild creatures would be needed for people who might go to the catfolk's territory to do some sort of temporary work there; the catfolk thinks they should bring their own guards and the kiosk attendant is trying to convince him that this would be inefficient.

"Is everything all right?" the prince asks quietly when he spots Skon. (The catfolk's ear swivels to face the prince when he speaks.)

"Yeah, I was just wondering what you were talking about," says Skon.

"Nothing we need to worry about - they're having a good year for sugarbuds and want to bring in some extra workers to harvest them all. We can go if this takes more than a couple of minutes."

"Okay." Skon wanders back to the aesthetic debate. Birds and pomegranates is winning.

The prince rejoins the group shortly, as promised, and they can get going. He explains about the sugarbuds on the way - they're a wild plant, and the catfolk don't farm and only do a little bit of harvesting, so they don't have enough workers with the right kind of experience to collect them all, and it'd be a shame to let them go to waste - and says that the ambassador will be staying for dinner if they'd like to meet him.

The prince leads them to one of the side exits to the plaza, where the avenue is lined with shops; they'll see loose gems and colorful piles of spices, porcelain amphoras of wine and tiny vials of perfume, even a kite store with a boy out front expertly flying a small brightly-painted example just over the crowd's head and a fortune teller doing card tricks between clients, before coming to a storefront draped in fine silk and ribbons.

"I think this is what we're looking for. I'll see if there's room inside."

The visitors rubberneck a lot at everything and Kiv wants to watch the card tricks several times. Uamok puts him off her back at the store so he can go in even if she can't.

The shopkeeper pokes her head out a minute later, and then there's some thumping and scraping from inside and Raafi comes out to report success and teleport Uamok in. It's only a moderate squeeze for the entire group to fit in the shop, with the tables that had been in the center of the room pushed to one side leaving just enough space for the shopkeeper to shimmy in between them to get to the merchandise laid out there. It's not very clear what the things on the tables are, mostly, folded up as they are, though Uamok and her mates might be able to guess that the various metal objects displayed on stands in the centers are jewelry. The clothing hanging from the walls may be more recognizable as pants and shirts and vests, in various bright colors and trimmed with variously fancy decorations - there's a feathered vest, and a shirt made of the skin of a giant snake with some of the scales painted bronze and gold, and a cape woven with a river scene, and so on. The back wall holds accessories - a cloth-of gold pouch takes pride of place between knee-high blue silk boots and a copper tiara set with citrines, and a pair of carved wooden busts in the corner hold wigs with feathers, beads, and strands of gold and brass and copper woven in.

"What are those?" Zoi asks of the wigs. Skon gambols around getting his nose into everything.

The seamstress leads Raafi back to a pedestal to take his measurements, leaving her assistant by the front to keep an eye on Skon and the others.

"They're wigs," the assistant explains. "Human women wear them instead of their natural hair, when they want a fancier hairstyle than a hairdresser can make."

"Why can't hairdressers do these styles?"

"I'm not actually sure how they're made exactly. A lot of the pieces are glued on, though, and it would be uncomfortable to try to sleep like that."

"Why?" asks Skon, trotting over.

"Well, you'd be laying right on them."

    "Humanoids don't usually sleep on our stomachs, and we have to rest our heads on something," the prince clarifies.

"Oh, huh!" they say.

Skon reaches for a wig to try to put it on.

"Wait, let me get that for you, it'll tangle." The assistant skootches through to the back of the shop to help.

Skon accepts help with the wig. He looks ridiculous. The others all giggle at him.

The assistant hovers a bit, ready to take it back as soon as he seems done.

He doesn't want to keep wearing it long and he doesn't try on another. He goes and looks at the snakeskin next.

The scales are huge compared to the ones on the snakes in the zoo earlier; the creature this skin came from could easily have been bigger around than him, if they're proportional. Most of the scales have been left their natural colors, sandy yellow and brighter black-speckled orange and a few an ashy grey, but a selection have been painted, bronze on the bottom shading into gold at the top, to draw the eye.

"Flashy, isn't it?" says the assistant. "It's going to take just the right person to wear something like that, but it'll be stunning when it does work."

"How can you tell who will wear it?" asks Skon.

"Clothing is a little like a language, is how we usually think about it. Every piece says something, and other things about the person wearing it say things too, and it all works together to make a particular statement, if you get it right. Or says something ridiculous, if you don't. And I expect the right person for that shirt will be, I don't know, a powerful bard, or a famous sorcerer or something - somebody who can make it say 'look at what I can get away with' instead of 'look what I'm trying to do and failing at'."

    "Bards are - I'm not sure I can explain bards, actually. They do magic by singing and playing instruments but that's not the important part at all."

"It's not? It sounds important," says Uamok, from her vantage point.

"It's not unimportant. But it doesn't explain this at all."

    "They're showy. A really good bard doesn't just play music, they put on a show, they make everything feel a little bigger and less real. And a shirt like that fits with things being bigger and less real, it doesn't fit with the normal world. Or not as something someone would wear, anyway."

"That's a lot of depth for not wanting to go around naked," says Zoi.

"Well, yes," the prince says, amused. "Not wanting to go around naked isn't most of why we wear clothes."