[Flashback] The Artist's Model (ifran and ha'na)

[Hana]

9th Day of Winter, 501

“Look at her,” whispered a woman into the ear of another with a touch of humor lilting through the tongue. “She barely looks old enough to be away from her mother…”

The other woman, eyes lined with kohl and lapis-pigment, looked at the one being spoken about. She let out a chuckle as she took in a bruised calf showing underneath a pile of red silk. She tsked, “Now that isn’t very kind of you to say, darling… I heard he plucked her of the street two nights ago. Found her begging. Unsuccessfully at that.”

“Pretty enough to be a concubine though if it wasn’t for those hands of hers…”

“And the fact that she has no confidence to speak of.”

“Most likely no talent either.”

“Well, perhaps she has a few… My brother told me that those markings mean she was caught as a whore.”

“If she was good at being a whore, she wouldn’t have been caught.”

Both women started to laugh.

The young woman listened to the Eypharian hags carry on in their native tongue. While she wasn’t fluent, she had been capable of surviving long enough on the streets to pick up that they were speaking poorly of her. Her cheeks flushed underneath the layer of gold that had been dusted onto her skin. Blue eyes dropped from their distant gaze to piles of silk that had been draped about her form.

She felt like a doll, tinted in gold and painted in reds. The hand holding a jeweled cup was dropped until it rested in her lap. She seemed to crumple really.

“No, Ha’na, I didn’t say you could stop!” barked the artist behind his canvas. He had been using the young woman as a model for his latest work The Beautiful Benshira. He was all too proud that he’d saved her from the street, kept her from starving, and gave her a home to stay in.

A regular saint.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly in Common, looking up again. Her eyes filled with tears. “My arm is hurting. And I’m hungry…”

The murmur of the people gathered in this home seemed to pick up as she spoke back to her savior. They looked at her sharply, perhaps thinking she shouldn’t have complained in the face of such generosity. The slaves in the shadows looked at her with disdain. She was free, or so they perceived.

“Fine,” said her patron. “Go get a bite to eat, but don’t be long. I wish to finish this tonight.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. She took her shawl and pulled it up onto her shoulder to give herself a bit more decency in the thin white gown she was wearing. She pushed from the floor, feeling the stiffness of her tired muscles fight the movement.

She glanced at the women as she stepped passed them, trying her best to keep her head up. It didn’t happen. She scurried past like some scared animal, nearly bumping into a potted palm.

There was laughter. She felt the burn of wounded pride in the back of her throat. Quickly she was out the door and into the hallway. The hunger in her stomach growled loudly, but she couldn’t will herself back into the room. Not just then. She leaned back against the wall and sank down into a crouch. Her hands lifted up to cover her face. If she cried, she would ruin the makeup that had been painted onto her, angering those that were taking care of her. So she tried her very hardest in that moment not to cry. Not to let the tears flow.

Unfortunately that particular plan was not working.

[Ifran]

The first person to happen upon her barely noticed her existence. The herald, clad in brocaded silk with beaded fringe that rattled like sand, rushed past her to announce some guest. His excitement was a herald apart, indicating a last minute arrival, unexpected, unheard of. Even in the hallway, one could sense a renewed energy in the rooms beyond.

A northerly wind blew them in, chasing the herald with staid grace, this coterie of goddesses, borrowing the plumages of peacocks and firebirds, their arms as sinuous as snakes. Among them, a god. There was a stillness to him even in movement, a self-possession and poise that seemed effortless as the sun rising and the moon setting. His skin was ivory with a golden patina of age, eyes of fine blue chalcedony. Each arm circled round with a band of gold, a torc hanging from the pillar of his neck.

As they passed the recumbent model, his chin canted down and to the side, kohl-lined eyes taking her in. Taking her hostage. Behind his icon-face, his mind was unknowable as a god's. A slow blink, and then he was gone, his entourage with him.

A cheer rose in the other room. The clever musicians worked a well-known phrase of music from one of his performances into their own.

All that was left behind for her was an afterimage burned into her eyes like the sun, and the hint of masculine bergamot and sandalwood on the air and rising above the varied scents of his women.

[Hana]

She had found that many Eypharians did not care to be directly looked at by those they perceived to be lesser than them. In fact, Ha’na had become quite the expert on the race’s feet, not wanting to incur whatever punishment their owners could come up with. With the commotion that took place in front of her, however, she’d forgotten this fact. She looked up.

He’d not gazed past her like so many others. He’d not squinted his eyes to only look at what was considered a lesser’s face. She could have sworn that he’d broken through her skin to look at her very core. That wasn’t to say that she thought he cared, but simply that he had seen her. She’d been there. She wasn’t some little ghost, but instead flesh and bone. Ha’na, it seemed, existed simply because the man had looked at her.

She couldn’t stay out in the hallway for very long, but she thought that she’d get a bit more respite than she did. A hand wrapped around the doorway’s frame. Then another, and another, until finally came the glowing face of the artist flushed with the exhilaration of this new arrival.

She was still staring at the space where the man and his entourage had been.

“Ha’na,” barked her employer, “the servants are all tied up with other guests. I want you to attend to our new arrival this evening. Do not let him lift a finger.”

Still her eyes were tuned into the air as if she could see the fragrance still lingering there. The voice of the man had snapped her out of her silent reverie. She jumped, looking up at him. Part of her wanted to tell him to shove off. She was not a slave. Her stomach that wanted his food, on the other hand, and her body that preferred the comfort of a bed over sand to sleep in, bid her otherwise. She replied submissively, lowering her gaze finally, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Pull yourself together and get in here. What do you even have to cry about?” He was still lecturing her as he started off.

She swallowed, carefully dabbing at the tears soaking her face. Slowly she stood up. Even more slowly she crept into the room. Despite the party peaking into its finest moments, the room seemed still as she found the man again.

There was a moment of hesitation before she moved to join him, coming to his side as a group of women showered him with compliments. No one bothered to notice she was there. The conversation did not lull, which terrified her. She would have to interrupt. When one of the women was blathering on, she leaned over, careful to not touch him. She whispered at him, “Sir, is there anything I may get you?”

[Ifran]

In the time since she had left the room, he had become the party's nucleus. Whether intentionally or not, everyone had begun to arrange themselves in relation to him; an obelisk among monuments. They chattered like birds around him, the many-armed men and women, and the artist seemed pleased by the sudden infusion of energy and nobility into his salon. He spoke little, but when he did, each word was collected greedily by those around him, hoarded and recorded to be shared with envious gossips. Giving nothing away of himself, he could move and mold his surroundings. A nod here made a man glow with reflected light; a smile there sent a telltale flush through the generous skin of a woman.

And then an insect alighted upon him, a Benshira monkey with her cowering and supplication. Those others, vying for his attention, moved as if choreographed to shut her out, but his eyes, full of detached intelligence, found her again.

He shook his head slightly, the bare gesture a poem of economy of movement and self-control, and then his gaze turned away from her.

A woman held out an empty cup before the Benshira model and let it drop, assuming she would catch it and take it away.

[Hana]

She was not a slave. Nor was she even really a servant of any sort. Just a poor soul that seemed unable to say no. The expression on her face said exactly that as she looked from the cup then on the floor and her bare feet to the woman’s face. She was quick, however, to turn her attention back down to the floor.

His foot had gotten a single drop of whatever liquid the cup had held. Carefully she bent down, unwrapping the shawl from around her body. She set about dabbing gently at the spot as if it was tender from the abuse.

[Ifran]

The locus of this attention remained removed, following the conversation as if in a dream, though his gaze was too present, too collected, to be that of a high class dusker. He was the river rock that diverted the flow of water around himself, conscious of the conversation around him as proven whenever something said required a response from him. Even the conscientious magdalene at his feet roused no interest, though his foot responded, anemone-like, rising into demi-pointe to allow for its maintenance, then back, his heel meeting the floor while maintaining an elegant arch, when she was finished.

As the conversation moved about him, he would, from time to time, look elsewhere, taking in the details of the room, or people-watching far away knots of guests. When the artist saw his gaze settle on the unfinished canvas, he brightened and immediately moved in to jockey for position.

"Lord Ifran! Do you approve of my new model? Someday you shall have to sit for me..." There was the faintest tremor oscillating in his voice: hope, fear, effort.

"Yes! Yes!" exclaimed the beautiful people, excited to have a clear opportunity to pour on the flattery. "Royet and Eypha!" called another with an eye for concept.

[Hana]

When she was certain that nothing else stained his feet, she leaned back onto her knees. Very carefully she wrapped herself back up in her shawl. Biting her bottom lip, she pushed up from the ground again.

The artist approached, and she felt her skin crawl. She didn’t know why, but she was becoming more and more uneasy as this situation played out. She should have run when she had the chance, but now she was caught up in the actions playing out around her.

She found herself staring at this man, this Ifran. Her breath caught. She realized she had no idea what anyone around her was saying anymore.

[Ifran]

After a moment's thought, Ifran smiled and inclined his head to the hopeful artist, accepting his request with good grace. Several people applauded with joyful anticipation, some feigned others not.

One woman whispered to another behind a fan, "I would consider chopping off my arms for that opportunity!"

The other giggled, her fan beating more rapidly. "If you looked like a monkey, I wouldn't speak to you again!"

They shared a laugh and swayed to reposition themselves in front of Ifran that he might better see them. Meanwhile, the artist pushed Ha'na forward, hand at the small of her back and another between her shoulders.

"Aren't you going to thank Lord Ifran for his generosity, Ha'na?" he asked, a tsking obviously held at the ready.

[Hana]

As she was being pushed forward, she struggled to make out anything anyone was saying. The room was starting to spin. She felt her body shudder at the feeling of more than two hands on her. It reminded her all the more that she was not with her kind. She was with them.

His generosity? Is that what she’d heard? She had heard that word quite a bit, but she had yet to really see what she considered to be actual generosity.

Her mouth opened just a little to protest, but she closed it again when she realized that she didn’t know how. Nor would it do her any good since she needed this job rather badly. What she thought was happening was they were… Well, she was starting to worry that maybe the artist was trying to sell her despite the fact that she’d done quite a good job at modeling for him. Despite the fact that she didn’t belong to him.

I am not a slave.

She looked up at Ifran, eyes wide with a strange mix of fear and wonder. Her throat was burning yet again, but she was thankful that tears were not starting to show. Her heart ached. She didn’t know why.

Slowly she nodded. While it would cause a stir of disapproval around her from those that thought less of her, she didn’t lower her gaze when she spoke to the man. “Thank you, Lord Ifran.”

He was beautiful, but she wasn’t sure she meant it.

[Ifran]

A gasp and a few titters rippled out from the woman's indecency, but the lord in question seemed unfazed by it as by everything. His eyes found her for the third time, then, and the moment stretched out long and languorous as he seemed to actually measure her. Whether he found her wanting or not, he nodded to her and finally spoke such that she could hear.

"I do not think," he said softly in common, "that Eypha would be displeased."

His voice, thrown so low, beckoned a person in, bade them be silent and listen. Speaking the vulgar common, one knew that many of the subtleties of Arumenic were lost in translation, but the words were for her and so they were couched in a language she would have no trouble discerning.

The flapping of fans took on the quality of angry birds shifting, and one could almost imagine the thunderous buzz of a swarm of angry bees emanating from those who had never received such a compliment from the young lord. Young, he was, only twenty-three, and his kind aged like expensive wines.

Ha'na, it would seem, had made herself several enemies.