<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/a/a1/Onnecamug2.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>Two days before game start<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Morning<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Bodega de Goni<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Jia Li<br/><hr/><br/>When Jia Li pointed to the colors, Onneca rose and tried to match the angle of reaching fingers to a single hue amidst the rainbow of the ribbon spools. "This plum?" she asked, not quite getting the guesstimate right. All colors, that was a little bit easier. She stepped over to the ribbon rack as Jia Li was turning the potential energy of a biscuit into the kinetic energy of an irrepressible laundry girl. She rolled out a short length of the red color, a dark brick that would go with the black of Jia Li's hair, and gave it a snip. A bolder orange, tangerine, and a faded watercolor yellow whose subtle shade would be enhanced against a dark backdrop were cut to the same length. Green the crisp youth of a spring bud, turquoise blue- always a popular blue- and a careful shade of indigo before plum like a Victorian jewelry box's trim.<br/><br/>She started to assemble the parts in tiny little bows, a not insignificant task even for a nimble tailor's fingers. Knots no larger than the head of a pin, tied like a cross, gave flourishes of four petals each like two-colored flowers at each of the joints. The whole thing took her a couple of minutes, but then, she was moving slowly. It was nice to have someone to talk to who might be a friend and not just a customer. A human connection. She held up the completed multicolored daisy chain. "I will put it in your hair, si?" She was expectant, and seemed to think that Jia Li had all the time in the world and was a doll to be dressed up at her whim. That was the social contract of the bodega, after all; women came in to have conversations and to be pampered, and never mind that the young woman had a job to do.<br/><br/>Most of them, she had to admit, did come into the bodega in a better state than Fu Leng's workhorse. She scrutinized the hair that the ribbon might adorn, and realized how nicely the laundry girl might polish up, if only Jia Li would let her. But a wet comb, steeped in oils to reunite and perfume the stray hairs that mapped the twisting of the Gomorra winds, that was a good start. She went to fetch one. "It is like a museum of colors here. Did you see the paintings on the side? The children from the school, they come at the end of school and paint that. The linseed oil makes it shiny and protected from water, but it is the most pretty the day it is painted." One day of loveliness, that was what Onneca was offering with a comb that would turn frazzle into silk and ribbon that would bring bright character to hair like stars in the dark night sky. It wouldn't last, but that was never a reason not to try.