The market breathed with color and sound, lanterns strung like stars above the streets, the air thick with spice and sugar. Every stall sang its own song: bangles clinking together, fabric rippling in the breeze, merchants calling out promises of "genuine Suramar silk" and "pearls blessed by Elune herself."
Tyrande tugged Lytavis eagerly from one stall to the next. At the jeweler's she tried on a bracelet of glass beads, twisting her wrist until it caught the lantern light. At the fabric stand, she draped violet silk across her shoulders, striking a pose so solemn that both girls dissolved into laughter.
Lytavis humored her for a time, but her gaze soon snagged on a quieter corner - an archery stall, racks lined with bows of polished ash and quivers stitched with silver thread. She drifted toward it, fingertips brushing the curve of a bowstring, eyes bright with interest.
Behind her, Tyrande had already spied her quarry. Two older boys manned a stand of candied nuts and fruits: one tall and gawky, the other freckled and eager.
Lytavis half-listened as the bowyer explained the balance of a lighter draw, but Tyrande's voice carried anyway - pitched low, velvet-sweet.
"Do you always sell sweets," she asked, "or are you sweet yourselves?"
There was a clatter. Lytavis didn't need to turn to know the taller boy had dropped his scoop. The freckled one stammered something, then shoved a skewer of candied berries into Tyrande's hand as if it might save his life.
Suppressing a sigh, Lytavis leaned closer to the bowyer, murmuring a question about arrow fletching. Skye shifted on her shoulder, gave a quiet, reproachful caw that sounded far too much like disapproval.
When Tyrande rejoined her at last, cheeks flushed, she clutched a small bag of sugared nuts like treasure. "Did you see? They were falling all over themselves."
"I heard them choking," Lytavis said dryly, testing the weight of a new bow. But her smile betrayed her.
Tyrande popped a berry into her mouth, syrup sticking to her fingertips. She licked them clean with a grin. "That's how you know it worked."
Lytavis shook her head, handing the bow back with a polite nod. "You're insufferable."
"Admit it," Tyrande teased, looping her arm through Lytavis's. "You're impressed."
Lytavis glanced sidelong, amused. "Not with your aim."
Tyrande stuck out her tongue, but when they passed beneath the lanterns again she spun in a sudden circle, skirt flaring wide. Laughter burst from her, bright enough to turn heads.
For that moment she was not a priestess-in-training, not the girl destined to bear the weight of faith and war - just Tyrande, bold and sugar-flushed, while her best friend stood steady at her side, bowstring's hum still thrumming faintly in her fingertips.
The laughter of sugared stalls lingered behind them, faint as the taste of honey on their tongues. Lanterns swayed lower now, their glow softer, stretched thin across crooked alleys. Music drifted into slower measures as the night deepened, strings sighing instead of singing.
Tyrande tugged Lytavis's arm again, whispering, impish and breathless, "Don't look now."
Two young men had stepped into the lanternlight. They walked side by side, yet seemed a world apart.
One had hair black as ink, falling loose around his shoulders, and golden eyes that burned too brightly in the dim. He carried himself like a blade - restless, honed, searching.
The other's hair was green, his presence steadier, slower, his attention fixed on the stalls as though every herb and charm deserved careful study.
Lytavis felt the shift before she understood it: the crowd parted around them. Not from recognition, but instinct. Something in them pressed at the air.
"Who are they?" Tyrande breathed.
"No idea," Lytavis murmured. Her gaze lingered on the dark-haired one. His restlessness was magnetic, dangerous in a way she couldn't yet name. When his golden eyes flicked briefly toward her, heat prickled at the back of her neck.
"Do you think they saw us?" Tyrande asked, lips quirking.
"They look like they see everything," Lytavis said, softer than she meant to.
They turned quickly, pretending to fuss over candied fruits. Yet laughter bubbled between them, too loud, too deliberate, as if the act of being overheard might matter.
The crowd swept between them again - lanterns, spice smoke, music too loud for reflection. When the twins glanced back, the girls were gone, leaving only a scatter of petals and laughter echoing faintly through the night.