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

[Ifran]

16th Winter, 501 A.V.

"Where is that girl?"

The artist spoke rhetorically, of course, fretting at her absence while the grandson of the great Sadiki of the Northwinds sat gracefully erect on a divan in his spacious salon-cum-studio. Ifran was costumed and painted in Eypharian opera style as Royet, the pre-Valterrian river-spirit who had spawned the Eypharian race upon the human woman Eypha. Iridescent silk satin was shrouded by sheer layers to add depth and movement to the long, luxuriant fabric that pooled about him like water.

"I apologize, Lord Ifran. She's new. If she weren't so beautiful, I wouldn't bother..."

The young lord's head shook slightly, a hand making an equally minuscule gesture of negation. While his movement training was in the art of the khopesh, but the basis of his movement training was in stillness, and he was a statue when he wanted to be.

[Hana]

Seven days had passed. Some of that time was spent sitting for the completion of two paintings, but if she thought too much about it she would have realized that most of her time had been spent having attention lavished onto her. The art of Eypharian beauty made her uneasy. They had bathed her, not letting her lift a finger. They had covered her in foul-smelling herbs to bring out a red cast in her hair. They had smeared her in warm honey and ripped hairs away from her skin.

In truth it left her exhausted. She wondered why they put so much worry into the entire mess, though had she seen herself in a mirror she would have admitted that she rather liked the outcome.

She burst through the door with a slave following after her frantically in hopes of pinning one last flower to the shoulder of her sheer gown. Her shawl was hugged tightly in an attempt to cover herself up.

There was a helpless glance to the artist before her eyes landed in silent prayer for strength on the ground. It was unspoken, but something about the girl was purely wild like some animal. She wasn’t broken. She looked perhaps like she’d lash out at the man paying her to be there if he said the wrong word.

Though she did a little curtsy out of respect for both men, the dip of her body lasting a little longer in Lord Ifran’s direction.

[Ifran]

Though clad in the guise of a river-godling, his gaze was the intense blue of the desert sky, and it burned a lingering, lazy line from the tip of her toe to the top of her head, swaying with her curves as if they were dancing together. He let his eyes settle back upon hers. She had the look of an Eypha, but whether she had the requisite spirit was as yet unknown.

"Welcome, Eypha," he greeted courteously, far too courteously for a member of the Eypharian nobility, but they were an eccentric lot, so it could mean anything at all. Every word spoken by a true member of the race's Great Houses was as layered with nuanced meaning as an onion, and only another of their abilities could make it open like a river-floating lotus.

Before she could respond, though, he turned his attention on the artist. Nary an eyebrow was raised, but his manner begged the question: Shall we begin, then?

[Hana]

She didn’t need to see him to realize that Ifran was looking at her. There was no need to put her gaze onto him to feel him in the room. She felt herself a moth to his flame, unaware that she would be burned if she got too close. This time, though, she was wise enough to refrain from admitting that she was still not educated in the mystery of the myth she would be acting out.

“Ha’na,” barked the artist, snapping her quickly out of her silent reverie with his clear annoyance, “girl, what is wrong with you today? Worthless. Absolutely worthless…”

She visibly flinched, leaning away from the harsh words. The expression on her face was a tender mix of blind terror and embarrassment as she looked to Ifran, pleading for some championed defense she knew would not come. She needed help. She needed him. It was not the artist she was trying to make happy. She was trying to please Ifran, trying to not disappoint him again.

“Well,” continued the harsh words of the painter she was at the mercy of, “get to it, girl. I doubt Lord Ifran will bite you. He’s not some Benshiran dog.”

Her lips parted as if she wanted to say something. Her eyes widened like some little creature that had been caught in the grips of its predator. She found herself scurrying towards Ifran with her head down. The shawl was dropped as her cheeks flushed hot. She stopped in front of him, waiting for instructions or some hint of what she was to do.

[Ifran]

"She is frightened," he said mildly in Arumenic. Two fingers of one hand were raised as if in benediction, and though there was no rebuke in his intonation, the artist flinched as if struck.

"Of course, of course," he replied quickly in kind, though his enunciation was nowhere near on a par with the aristocrat. Whatever mode in which he might have spoken could not contain the sudden wave of servility that crept into his inflection.

"Ha'na," the artist continued, his voice kinder and couched in Common. "Royet was devoted to the goddess Makutsi, so much so that She snatched Him out of the cycle of reincarnation to become the totem spirit of a great, six-armed river.

"He fell in love with a mortal girl named Eypha, who sang songs of thanks to Him while drawing water, and dreamed young dreams while napping upon His banks. She spoke to Him of her hopes, dreams, wishes, and fears, until one day she stopped visiting Him.

"When next He saw her, months later and far from where she used to dwell, in the dead of night fleeing her violent husband, who sought to kill her for her defiance. When the greedy man tried to follow her boat, Royet took him into His cold embrace, and guided her small boat to shore by dawn.

"The Goddess, pleased with Her servant, granted him solid form again, and He was joined to Eypha in a sacred marriage, which was the source of the Eypharian race. When Eypha died, the river wept. It is said He was glad of the Valterrian, for it caused the river to dry up, and He was reunited with his Eypha."

The bare bones account, given in Common, was then finished. The artist glanced askance to Ifran, who did not seem displeased.

"There," Ifran said quietly to the frightened girl. A hand, hot as desert sand and cool as marble, rested on her shoulder. "Do you think you could love me?"

[Hana]

She listened to the story, peering all the while at Ifran in her ingenuous manner. She took it in, processed it, and worked it so carefully that she was able to imagine it in her mind. It moved her; she empathized all too well with the figure of Royet, understanding the pain of the one you loved going to another.

When he touched her shoulder, her head tipped down quickly so that she could press a hot cheek against his hand. It was a desperate movement, as if she was starved for the contact. It was all too transparent to be an act. She whispered to him, “How could I not?”

[Ifran]

"With effort, anything is possible," he told her, a strange lilt in his voice that might have been humor. With the barest of squeezes to her shoulder, he glanced to her patron for instruction. While proficient within his own bailiwick, the painter's composition must needs be his own and Ifran would remain silent unless asked for a specific opinion.

[Hana]

“Ha’na,” said the artist, “imagine yourself on a raft, half-drown and just waking up from unconsciousness.”

The young woman still had her eyes on Ifran, rubbing her smooth cheek against his skin as she picked it up. She nodded slowly at what the artist was telling her.

“Imagine a god coming to your rescue,” he commanded quietly.

“Very well,” she said softly, canting her eyes down over the man in front of her before they snapped back to his face. “Lord…”

It was then that she demonstrated that it was not just her beauty that actually kept her around and considered relatively useful. She swallowed, moving to lift up the hem of her gown just enough that she could move to kneel next to Ifran’s legs without it pulling the fabric in an unattractive manner. Then she twisted until she could take two of his hands in her own. She looked down at them as she explained, “I think perhaps it would look like this… With a hand here and here…”

She put one of his hands on her hip and the other on the curve of her delicate waist as she shifted a bit more closely. Her eyes didn’t leave his as she moved to press another of his hands to her ribs. She twisted until she was able to pull herself over his lap, whispering, “Please hold me up, Lord…”

There were two more hands left. She looked to the artist, gauging if he was pleased or not with what she’d done so far. Not seeing a scowl across his face, she took her shaking hand to guide one of Ifran’s final hands to the place directly under her breast. She delicately lifted a leg, voice trembling a little as she suggested, “The final just under the knee.”

[Ifran]

For his part, the lord Ifran assumed the form with remarkable plasticity, his final hand cupping the back of her knee as if it were some delicate lotus he had found floating down a placid river and picked up to revel in its perfume. The general shape assumed, he began to make tiny adjustments that only he, and possibly she, might feel, and the artist see.

He held her there, such a delicate thing when pitted against the strength of an Eypharian. Each muscle had been sculpted by Taharqa and his other trainers. What beauty his blood had bequeathed unto him and been honed and refined until he could channel that holy something that made theater so powerful when it was done correctly.

There was no need to ask her if his little changes were better; her body responded, making a promise of which even she might not be aware. It would not be a stretch of the imagination to see her moved from this position to arch her back and moan like a whore.

His eyes delved into hers like pearl divers plumbing the depths in search of hard-shelled treasures. The artist would direct them as appropriate; there was no longer any need to look askance in his direction.

[Hana]

She dropped a shoulder down and back, maneuvering her own spine until her torso opened like that of a dancer. A lazy arm lifted up, brushing her fingers against the back of his neck as she wrapped herself around him. The other arm gracefully falling across his legs. She went limp then, tipping her head back just so, blue eyes still peering back at him.

He was her world. He was everything to her. The expression on her face was confused ecstasy, something all too genuine about it – The curve of her bottom lip a love poem; the half-mast gaze a prayer of worship to him.

She noticed that his fingertips were not rough. They did not remind her of the past, and she sought solace in that fact. Her heartbeat picked up, betrayed by the quickening of the pulse point behind her knee.

The artist said nothing. He gave no commands. Instead he stood there in silent appreciation.

It was his wife, having sneaked into the room while no one was watching, that broke the weighted silence. Her hands moved to give a soft applause to the two in the center of attention.

“Lovely, Ha’na. Just lovely,” she complimented in Common. Her tongue switched to that she knew the girl wouldn’t understand as her comments were suddenly directed at the young Lord. “Don’t you agree? Beautiful little doll… Absolutely pliable and eager to please…”