"This one's a pudge-fawk. And these," long, pale fingers run caressingly over wooden handles and long metal necks in obviously specific, inscrutable curves, "are spinkles—"
"Spinkles?"
You shouldn't have come along to the Goblin Market. You shouldn't have wandered off. You shouldn't be looking at things, eyes stickily catching on fascinating sights; shouldn't be asking what you know are stupid, tourist questions.
The lady with the slightly-uncannily-long and elegant shape, the shadow-obscured face; the eye not hidden behind the fall of her hair gleaming, unblinking, like a disc of mother-of-pearl, runs her hand back across half a dozen tools with an obvious family resemblance.
"These are for push-spinkling," she says, fingertip tracing metal. "And these are for Belgian spinkling." Her hand moves on, to unrelated instruments. "These—"
"I really meant...." You swallow. "What are they all for?"
She laughs, then, a quiet dry sound like a single brittle autumn leaf wind-skipped along a pavement, ha! ha! ha!
"I could show you," she says. "...If you're volunteering."
