Solo The Learning Curve

[Savos]

48th of Summer, 514 AV

Lazuli Ink's dome glowed that night as Leth crawled patiently across the sky. Though that very day had brought an unforgiving heat to Lhavit, the mountains only needed a few minutes after sunset to cool back down. The high altitude of this rocky city that Savos lived in often experienced dramatic changes in weather from one minute to the next. He had yet to grow accustomed to it.

It was strange to work the night shift. When he had first applied to Lazuli Ink, he was two steps away from homeless and a miserable refugee from the Djed Storm. He was desperate when he asked Inecino for the job and told him that he could work at all hours, day and night. What he had failed to realize at the time was that in Lhavit, the night shift was common. Even in a small parlor like Lazuli Ink, clients wandered inside at any bell.

So now Savos was often called in to work at night time, and he hated it. Even after growing somewhat used to Lhavit's sleep schedule, he still felt many times more active and awake during the day. He still had trouble waking up for these shifts, and had asked his neighbor to knock loudly on his door about a bell before work started.

It had now been an hour since his arrival, and there were no clients to serve. Savos sat cross legged on the floor at a low table, parchments sprawled across it. Some of them were sketches, others were Inecino's business documents. Brush in hand, Savos hunched over his own little page, deeply concentrated. He had often avoided using brush and ink in the past, preferring charcoal as his medium of choice. But Inecino had insisted that using ink would help to improve the stability of his hand and the quality of his linework. There was also the fact that one could not erase ink on parchment, just as one could not erase a mistake on a tattoo.

Savos had not yet been allowed to tattoo a client himself. It took many hours of practice to become adequate at the art, and with a master like Inecino around, it was never necessary to trust a beginner like Savos with one of Lazuli Ink's customers. He wondered how long it would be before he could have the opportunity to do so, but awaited the moment with dreaded anxiety. What if he messed something up? There was no way to erase these things, and they were on another person for life. And how could a client trust someone like Savos, who was the only person in this establishment who did not have tattoos of his own?

“Hi there.”

Caught be surprise, Savos felt like he could've broken his spinal column with the speed at which he jumped out of his seat. It was Soraya, right behind him and stealthy as ever. He laughed at his own reaction when he realized.

“Soraya! I'm sorry, I guess I didn't hear you coming.”
“That's alright, I'm used to it,” She said with a smile. “A client just came in. Inecino would like you to assist.”



-

[Savos]

The client was a Lhavitian woman who seemed to be in her mid forties. She was talking to Inecino when Savos and Soraya walked in. They introduced themselves, and she smiled tenderly at them.

“It's nice to meet you. I am Laura.” She bowed. They retired from the entrance and Inecino began to prepare his tools in the main room. Savos went to go fetch a batch of clean rags while Soraya prepared the ink. This dynamic was common for the trio and they did it all without speaking a word.

When Savos reentered the room, Laura was explaining to Inecino what she wanted.

“I'm sorry for being so hesitant about this. I've been in and out of here so many times with revisions and cancellations.”
“You know I don't mind, Laura. Getting a tattoo is an important decision, and you should take your time with these things.”

Inecino brought reassurance to Laura. He saw the tension in her back lower considerably in response to his calm words. She turned to Savos and Soraya, as though she owed them an explanation as well.

“I am getting a tattoo of an Okomo horn, here on my forearm.” She pointed to the very spot. “About a month ago, my son got lost in the Misty Peaks. He's only eight years old, but a wild Okomo found him and led him back to the city. It was a miracle. It is a miracle.”

Laura's eyes were distant as she retold the event. Perhaps she was thinking of what might had happened had the Okomo not been there, had Caiyha never blessed the city with those creatures. Savos had yet to grow to love the animals as the locals did. It was not that he not appreciate their presence and marvel at their foreign beauty. It was simply that they were so alien to him that he still had an irrational anxiety around them. He feared the danger of offending the sacred beasts due to simple lack of knowledge. His own ignorance prevented him from loving the Okomo without restraint, as the Lhavitians did.

Yet almost one out of three tattoos commissioned at Lazuli Ink were related to the Okomo. Though Laura's story was personal and indeed important to her, it was far from unique. Soraya had already prepared the glowing ink that was her trademark creation, and the three got down to work. Savos brought over a small table for Laura to put her arm on comfortably. She sat down as Inecino took hammer and ink needle in hand and they got to work.

It was a simple job for Savos. He stretched the area of skin on Laura's arm that Inecino was tattooing, to prevent the skin's malleable features from interfering with the process. Laura kindly proposed to help Savos keep her skin rigid with her other arm, but he insisted that she stay still. It would be easier for her not to move if she wasn't trying to do two things at once.

Soraya used the rags that Savos brought in to wipe off the ink and blood that surfaced, systematically coming in whenever Inecino lifted his tools to dip in more ink. Later on, Inecino was forced to lift his tools even more often as the ink seeping through the skin blinded his progress.

Though stretching the skin was an important and required job, it was admittedly dull for Savos. He generally spent his time observing Inecino's method. The man never hesitated, hammering in new marks at an amazing speed and with expert precision. Savos imagined he could soon work with similar precision to Inecino, but he would have to do so much more slowly.

Speed did not bother Savos. He had quickly learned that the art of tattooing required time and patience, something he had picked up much more slowly when learning how to draw as a child. But clients, on the other hand, felt differently on the matter. Savos glanced over at Laura, and though she had done a good job so far of staying immobile, her face was contorted in a sour grimace at the pain of the tattoo. They were perhaps fifty chimes into the work, and she was beginning to sweat.

Many tattoos had to be completed in several sessions due to this reason. Laura's case was not so, since her tattoo was small, and Inecino was almost finished with his handiwork. Soraya ran into the back room to fetch clean rags.

The last few minutes were always the longest. Laura had begun to tense up to the point where Savos thought she might pull her arm back, but Inecino put down his tools and smiled as Soraya wiped at the last bits of blood and ink.

“All done here, I believe.”

Laura breathed a sigh of relief and observed the image.

“It looks beautiful, Inecino. Thank you so much.”

He acted as though he did not hear her praise and went on to explain the healing process. She would have to cover the tattoo day and night for a few days to allow the skin to heal with as little outside influence as possible. To keep the wound from festering, he handed her a bottle of alcohol and told her to apply it onto the tattoo with a clean cloth every night for about a week. If she had any problems, she should come to Lazuli Ink immediately. If she wished for a change, they could apply modifications within three weeks or so.

-

[Savos]

Savos followed Soraya into the back to clean the rags, satisfied with a job well done. As always, with Inecino's skill, the tattoo had turned out beautifully. Somewhere in the back of Savos' mind, something greedy wished that he had played a bigger role to that end.

Soraya broke their usual silence.

“There was a person who came in yesterday asking for you personally.”

This alarmed Savos. In the instant that it was suggested, a thousand thoughts raced through his head as to who it might have been, like a school of fish darting through a reef. Could it be a friend of his who was simply searching for him? For some reason, he was reminded of a drunken night in a tavern he had spent not too long ago. He had successfully provoked the wrath of two drunkards there, and had feared they would come to thwart his plans at having a normal life. The mere thought could send his heart racing.

“Oh?” He replied, feigning indifference, “What for?”

“He was raving on about how she heard that a Myrian worked here, and that He insisted you be the one to tattoo her for the sake of authenticity.”

Savos made the kind of face that one would not enjoy being photographed with.

“Oh. If I had a kina for every time someone gave me that kind of argument-”

“So Inecino agreed.”

“What?!” Savos lost his composure for a moment, which was a first at Lazuli Ink. It startled Soraya, who sprung up in the air in surprise. Savos was generally the calm sort to her, never quite prone to the occasional loud “what”. He immediately felt guilty for piping up like that.

“Ah, I'm sorry, Soraya. I just- I don't think I really have the skill necessary to tattoo a client myself yet, you see.”

“Oh, well. I'm sure you can handle yourself, you have a very steady hand. You might still be a little slow, but the technique is there.” Soraya reassured him with a timid smile.

Savos tried to hide his grimace, unsuccessfully. He said nothing, thinking about the possibility of tattooing another human being with a certain amount of dread. They spent the rest of the job in silence, and Savos felt himself being swallowed by hypothetical scenarios, the possibilities of failure. When they finished cleaning the rags, Soraya insisted that she wanted to see what Savos was working on earlier.

The re-entered the room where he had been drawing. He showed her the image, which was of a man smoking a pipe. The lines were thick and gestural, swirls of smoke circling around the figure. Savos explained that he had seen a man smoking a pipe like that the night before, and that the smoke was so opaque in the light of the glowing fauna that he could not even see his face.

“It's a good sketch,” Soraya said helpfully. “I see you are attempting to grow accustomed to pen and ink.”

Savos chuckled miserably in reply.

“Yeah, I've yet to get used to it. It's a lot harder to control, and I keep fighting the urge to smudge it like I do with charcoal.”
“I had the same problems when I picked it up... Would you like me to show you a few tricks?”

Savos accepted eagerly and Soraya sat down. She pulled out a brush and parchment of her own and pointed at a lamp in her line of sight.

“I'll draw that, for example.”

She began her line slowly, and Savos peered over her shoulder with wonder.

“The main difference between ink and charcoal,” she said while drawing. “Is that you have to slow down a lot. Keep your hand stable, you shoulder loose. Think of the contour and form of your object rather than the way light hits it.”

The drawing began to take form on the page, merely the outline of the outer part of the lamp. Savos noticed the biggest mistake he had been making when he was drawing; he was too fast. He was so used to working with quick gestural lines with charcoal that he rushed through the pen and ink drawings and regretted it when he made a mistake. He knelt down next to Soraya and began drawing the lamp as well.

The lamp was ovular and shape, and was made of a metal painted black. The metal had a myriad of holes cut into it that formed a design wherein light poured out. It was indeed a perfect subject for this lesson, as there was an extremely sharp contrast between light and dark, and there was no doubt as to where Savos should make his lines.

Slow and steady... His hand trembled a little more than the expert Symenestra, which forced him to make his line a little thicker in order to stabilize it. He completed the outer form slowly, his eyes darting between the object and the paper anxiously in an attempt to get the shape right. When he finished the contour, he was slightly disappointed that he had drawn the oval a little to wide compared to the reality, but happy to see that the line itself was smooth, and thinner than his earlier drawing.

He peered over at Soraya's drawing for guidance, who had become to focused to talk while she drew. He noticed how she tapered her lines in function to the light source. The holes where light pierced through were marked by incredibly thin lines while things around it that were shadowed had thicker lines to them. Savos attempted to reproduce them in his own drawing, and was eager to see how much this simple technique enhanced the perception of depth on the object.


-

[Savos]

Soraya continued to point at objects around the room and challenge Savos to draw them with her. She would always finish earlier than Savos, and create beautiful doodles on the side of her parchment to pass the time. He sometimes found those even more fascinating than the objects she drew, for they were surreal and flowed across the page as though alive.

He was drawing one of the indoor plants now, a Keokina flower bed as it were. He had always been fond of the little flowers, but attempting to draw them was a different story. Their organic formation and chaotic nature proved difficult to translate into a single brush stroke, and he was forced to slow down tremendously to get it right. He tried to see how Soraya was handling it. She didn't seem to have much trouble with it, and to emphasize the gradient of the pretty flower, she drew cross contour lines where the blue areas were to darken and give the image more contrast. Savos copied the technique, though he had trouble putting each line in the position necessary to emphasize the flowers contour.

A few bells passed, and Soraya had to mention to Savos that his shift was over, for he had not noticed the time pass.

“ You should practice your tattooing a little more for the next few days. If this client decides to stick to his plan, he should be coming back sometime next week.”
“Of course. I'll do the best I can.”
“I'm sure it will turn out great,” She smiled at Savos, and for a moment her eyes seemed to drift off as though remembering something. Perhaps she was recalling the first time she tattooed a customer herself.

On the walk home, Savos felt less stressed about the days to come. His drawing session with Soraya had done a marvelous job at calming him down, and learning those new techniques made him feel like he was ready for this new leap into the art of tattooing. He could finally have the chance at tattooing a real person instead of repetitively digging into pigskin or an orange. Though his anxiety about the situation was still raging on within him, he finally felt like he had something to look forward to.

-

[Brandon Blackwing]

Savos

XP Award:

• Drawing +3
• Socialization +2
• Tattooing +1
• Observation +2
  

Lore:

• Having To Work Those Hated Night Shifts
• Drawing with brush and ink
• Tattooing: Keeping the skin rigid is important
• Tattooing: healing process
• Drawing: differences between charcoal and ink
• How to draw a lamp and Keokina flowers
• A first client!
  

Notes:
A great read, as to be expected from you! I always enjoy the detail you put in every post and how nice and easy they read. Like I said before, I will be looking out for any finished threads of yours!

I noticed though that you wrote –in your third post, when talking about the new customer- ‘she’ and ‘her’ and in the fourth post there was ‘he’ and ‘his’. I assume it’s a typo? If it was intentional for whatever reason, please ignore this.

Please edit or delete your request in the request thread.
Comments, questions or concerns regarding your grade? Pm me.

credit goes to Adelaide Sitai