Day 60 – Winter - 512 AV Emitting a noise that was equal parts groan and sigh, Calen allowed his hand to slide from his face, down his chest, past his ribs, until, finally, it dropped clear off his bed, the appendage dangling lame and limp. His fingertips just barely skimmed the cool wood of the floor and Calen absently began to draw little spirals. Sighing, this time it was clearly a sigh, Calen began craning his neck into a remarkably uncomfortable shape, striving to glance at his window. After a few moments in which the sound of Calen’s bed linens and sheets rustling against one another filled the room, Calen was rewarded with the same expanse of dull grey, foreboding sky that he had seen earlier. Making a 'tsk’ noise, Calen sat up on the edge of his bed and began to fumble about underneath it. Normally, Calen wouldn’t have minded an excuse to stay in his room all day, but today was most certainly not a normal day. Having awoke from a nightmare that him getting up within two hours of dawn, Calen had spent the morning doing little else than trying to fall asleep, as he normally did whenever he woke in the mornings, but found himself completely unable to. Now, he assumed it was afternoon but he couldn’t have been certain, Calen was finding himself edgy and agitated for no other reason than he was unable to spend a few hours walking the streets of Zeltiva until he was tired enough to sleep. As he mulled over the facts of the day, his mood souring as time dragged on, Calen soon found what he had been searching for. A slight grin adorning his face, Calen gripped the neck of his lute before extracting it from its place of rest. As the lute slapped into his lap, Calen began admiring it; it was fine instrument, even if it’s owner and primary user was a player of mediocre skill. Running his fingers lovingly up the neck of his chordophone until finally, he gripped it as best he could at what he assumed was the appropriate point, he had held it in public before and no one had said anything, and propped it up as it was supposed to be. Licking his lips as he did so, Calen plucked at the uppermost string on the lute, grinning to himself as it let out a pleasant sound. His grin still plastered on his face and his mood notably improved, though he barely noticed, Calen plucked at the strings one by one in descending order. Once he had reached the last string, Calen shuffled about, removing the lute and laying it gently on his bed before he began fishing about for a few things. After a handful of moments spent searching Calen returned to his bed only to grab his lute and plop his bottom down on his floor, a well of ink, one of his empty notebooks and a pair of quills set out before him. Fidgeting this way and that, Calen got himself comfortable before he cleared his throat, dipped the tip of one of the Quill’s in ink and wrote down, on the very first page of his notebook ‘Chapter I - The Shape of The Lute’. He underlined the title of the chapter with what he imagined was a rather sophisticated looking swirl; it was more like a strangled squiggle, but it would serve his purpose adequately. Calen began drawing to the best of his ability. Due in equal parts to his lack of confidence in his own skills as an artist and his belief that the numerous lines made for a better picture, Calen began to flick at the page with the quill tip. He began at the neck of the lute, his favorite part, and he flicked and flicked away, making his way down until finally, he reached where he imagined his littler version of the instrument would began to bloat outwards to form its belly. As he reached the belly of the instrument Calen did away with his short, numerous strokes and attempted to draw a sort of, oval shape utilizing one, unbroken line. For his efforts, he was rewarded with what looked like a some sort of poorly crafted spoon. With a rugged, or perhaps furrowed would be a better term, neck that ended in a poorly rendered rather bumpy oval that was depressed in some parts but rose up in hill-like fashion before returning to it’s original course. All in all, it did not look much like a lute. Sighing, his examination of his work so far having depressed him quite a bit, Calen set his mind to the task at hand; he was certain he would improve with time and given how bad it looked outside, he supposed he had more than an adequate time. Having completed the belly of his lute, Calen set to work on it’s head; he would have tackled the issue of the lute’s bent neck, but he decided not to push his luck with the issue. Instead, Calen scraped away at the page for a moment before dipping his quill once more into the well of ink, ignoring as it dripped a drop of purple-black ink onto the corner of his page. After a few moments, his fingertips being dyed with the color of the ink and his tongue producing a slight tent in his cheek, Calen came to the conclusion that he was done with his perfunctory lute drawing. Never having held much faith in the god’s or their actions, Calen had never hesitated to include their names in his oaths or curses; he doubted they cared about the opinion or lack thereof of one hazel-haired punk anyway. All the same, Calen let loose a string of curses, many of which asked one of the more popular gods of Zeltiva to destroy his drawing. ‘Damned thing looks NOTHING like the real one!’ he muttered as he dipped his quill in the ink well once more before tapping it against the side of the container; he wanted no more drops of ink on his book, regardless of how horrid his drawings were. Taking the quill to the page, Calen drew another, much smaller and thus, much more accurate, round shape in the center of the lute’s belly. Having done that, he drew the numerous strings of the lute that stretched from the edge of the lute’s hole in the belly to the head. They stretched over the hole in the lute before reaching their point and some were a little less than straight, but overall, he was feeling better about his drawing. Shrugging to himself, Calen placed the book down before turning a few pages until he settled on a page he considered appropriately far from the one where he had first written and then drawn. He was going to have to draw that image again and again and he assumed he was going to need a few pages to get it right or even respectable. Pressing the end of his quill to the page Calen wrote out ‘Chapter II - The Initial Sounds of The Lute’ before he rocked back from his hunched over position and was more appropriately balanced on his bottom. Wiping his hand, the one that had ink dyed fingertips on his hanging bed linens, Calen grabbed hold of his lute and placed it in his lap. Plucking at the highest string, much as he had done before he began drawing, this time, Calen focused more prominently on the sound his lute made. Making a thoughtful ‘Hmm’ noise Calen plucked at the string again before he placed the lute at his side and wrote in his notebook. ‘Highest String- A bird chirping softly’ Frowning at his description Calen knew he had not done the sound justice, but he knew that if he read it again, as he aimed to, he would probably be able to recall the sound appropriately; the description was more to give himself something to work with rather than something to define the sound with. And so it went on, Calen plucked at the strings in descending order, as he had done earlier, and he gave each one it’s own description; he finished with the descriptions. ‘Second Last String- Like a coin dropping into a bowl’ ‘Last String- Similar to ‘Second Last String’ but more like a pebble dropping into a bowl’. Once he was finished, Calen leaned back and admired his sloppy penmanship and his equipment. He didn’t even notice that the sky had cleared up a fair bit. |
OOCThis thread comes with a free Calen-original illustration [Drawn on Paint] so enjoy!
