It evolved into a game of sorts. He would wander around the bazaar, and the children would try to sneak up and grab his tail. But the limb was flexible and fully prehensile, and it moved with the speed of a striking viper. And he didn't have to see the children to know that they were there. The tip of his tail eluded them again and again, pulling away from outstretched hands, dancing away from sweeping arms, then tapping them on the head or chest to taunt them for their slowness. His tail made the children giggle and laugh, and forget their cares and worries as they tried to sneak up and grab it. It only caused him one episode, when it began swishing again on its own, then happened to make contact with a woman's backside. She whirled with an indignant look, then saw who-or more precisely, what-had dared to pat her on her backside, then she laughed nervously. She was a rather pretty young lady with honey colored hair and a heart-shaped face, and her dress was made of brocade and silk, a soft rose color, covered over with a very light cloak of a darker red. This was a woman of property.
"Sorry, it moves by itself," he apologized.
"Apology, no is needed, no?" she replied in a heavily accented voice. "I see play you with children. I no am angry, yes."
The short time in the bazaar had quite an effect on Tarrin. He had worried that he would be out of control, or would not be accepted. But neither had happened. He felt very good, even a little happy, and the Shaceans hadn't shown any fear of his appearance. Shaceans were known for being tolerant and inquisitive, great believers in hospitality and making all feel welcome, but he didn't know if that would extend to him. Or more to the point, if they knew what he really was instead of what they assumed him to be. But the hospitality of the Shaceans had worked its magic on him, and he truly did feel much better than he had the day before.
But, he found, Den Gauche had everything that other cities also had. At the fringes of the bazaar were children and older men and women wearing tattered garments, many of them looking unhealthy. Beggars and the poor, the lost children of most societies. Such things still offended his sensibilities. In Aldreth, everyone helped everyone else. If someone suffered a poor harvest or an accident, the entire village rallied around that unfortunate, helping them with gifts or helping hands until they were back on their feet. For people to be so uncaring towards their own seemed to totally violate everything Tarrin had grown up to believe in. But in the cities, people forgot that everyone was their neighbor, and neighbors helped one another. He knew it had alot to do with size. Cities were large, and most of a city-dwellers neighbors were strangers to him. It was hard to care for a stranger. Even in Aldreth, a stranger was approached cautiously, though he still received hospitality. But then again, in Aldreth, one never know exactly who or what a stranger was. Many strangers came from the Frontier, and it was generally accepted in the village that they were disguised forest folk, like Were-kin, or solitary hermits, woodsmen, rangers, and even the occasional Druid. Yet even they were accepted warmly, and allowed to trade and visit the inn, so long as they behaved themselves. And they invariably did.
Two such beggars seemed to stand out to him. It was a young woman, dirty and bedraggled, holding onto a scratched old wooden bowl despondantly. She looked to have been very pretty before she got so dirty, and her eyes were dominated by milky white spots that laid over her eyes. They wore clothes that at one time had probably been well made and fine, but were now filthy, with many tears and holes in them. She was attended by a young girl that couldn't have been more than six or seven, and both of them were shockingly thin. The girl's appearance made her the woman's daughter, and the look of her told him that the mother was starving herself so that her daughter would have enough food to eat to survive. When he approached them, the young girl gawked at him, then remembered to raise her little bowl and plead with him in their language. The sound of her voice was broken, hopeless, and it pulled at both sides of him with a power that he found was impossible to resist.
Tarrin knelt down in front of them, wrapping his tail around his foot and knee to keep people from stepping on it. Without saying a word, Tarrin reached out and put his paw on the woman's face, his fingers covering over her eyes. He touched the Weave without thinking, and sent probes of Divine energy into her body. She was malnourished, and had grown very weak after months and months of improper diet. She had a few mended bones, no doubt broken by street thugs, and there was something inside her eyes preventing them from seeing anything. It wasn't a sickness, and because of that, Tarrin could do something about it.
Tarrin learned two things from that touch. One, that being so far from the Conduit in Suld, it did indeed take longer for him to build magical energy to weave spells. The other was that distance also caused the power of High Sorcery to take longer to find him. It had to build the same way that regular Sorcery did, and that little bit of extra time was all he needed. He wove together a spell of Earth, Water, and Divine energy, and released it into the woman. It sought out her eyes, breaking up whatever it was that was keeping her eyes from working, then mending the damage done to the very intricate inner parts of her eyes. He isolated the cause of her blindness, a defect in her eyes that would make the blockages grow back, and eradicated it permanently. While he was there, he repaired some of the damage done by her long months of eating poorly, giving her body what it needed to recover on its own.
Tarrin pulled away his paw, and the woman closed her eyes quickly and flinched away from the light. "Ama?" the little girl called, giving Tarrin a sudden wary look. The woman turned her head back in his direction, and then opened her eyes. Brilliant blue eyes stared up at him in absolute awe, and he could see them slowly focus in on him. He smiled at her gently, reaching down and patting her on the shoulder, as she raised her dirty hands and stared at them in wonder. Those hands began to tremble, and she stared up at him again with tears forming in her eyes. He took the little leather pouch and pressed it into her hands, smiling, and then he stood up and started walking away.
He never said a word to them, and he moved out of their sight quickly, but he could hear the woman begin to cry for joy. It wasn't much, but in a way, it made him feel better. He had a long journey to atone for what he had done, but helping the woman seemed to lighten the burden around his soul, if only for a little while.
He wasn't exactly sure when he wandered away from the marketplace, but the next time he stopped to take stock in his surroundings, he was on a street running parallel to the slop of the hill, a flat ridge on the hillside upon which a street with houses was built. The bazaar was nowhere in sight, but it had to be behind him, for he didn't rememeber going up or down the hill's slope. He had no idea where he was going. For that matter, he had no idea he had left. He just wanted to look around, and found himself quite a distance from where he was supposed to be. He turned around and started back for the bazaar, very aware of the looks and curious glances he was receiving from the other pedestrians. They weren't looks of hostility, just ones of curiosity, so they didn't really bother him that much.