Closed Debts Unpaid

[Luciana Avgerinos]

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34th of Summer, 514

Luciana rolled her shoulders, working out a knot that was attempting to form somewhere just under the neckline of the simple black blouse she wore. She suspected it would fully form later, right in the spot that was nearly impossible to reach unless you were some sort of contortionist, which must to the dismay of a handful of men who had passed through her life, she was not.

The thought brought a smirk to her lips as she finished the careful stroke of a small paintbrush that left behind a delicate line, finishing the lettering of the word Belltor in flowing script in a blue to match the perfect summer skies of Ravok. Not her script of course. The client had gone to a professional calligrapher to have each word written in expert hand onto a piece of paper, all Luciana had to do was copy each to the best of her ability onto the front of shelves where various jars and bottles contained what she suspected to be various herbs, drugs, and medicines whose names she was painting below each designated spot. Not the most creative of jobs but she had already painted the large mural on the wall behind the counter a season ago. The colors were already fading, a product of low quality pigments at the time, but the shop's owner refused to let her touch it up. She'd convince him... eventually. Not today, however.

Today she was actually quite at ease doing the simple task of replicating the lettering and adding her own personal touches and designs near each word. Luciana glanced from the newly finished word to the sheet set nearby and back again, frowning at the lack of perfection. Her patron would never really notice the differences but anyone with a good enough eye could clearly see the difference. Thankfully they wouldn't have the sheet of calligraphy to make the comparisons either so it was good enough.

Returning the smallest of her brushes back to where she had set an array out, eying the rest of her brushes before looking back to the sheet of paper to decide which would be best to start the next word with. A roll of her eyes and an exasperated sigh left as she read off the next item.

"Really?" Her voice echoed slightly in the small shop, catching the attention of the elderly owner who had been caught between watching the girl and attending to his inventory. "Fish Supplement? You know that's shyke, right?"

The elderly man let out a knowing laugh. "And yet people still buy it."

"You're horrible." Luciana left the accusation lingering in the air before she turned back to mixing more of the light blue paint for the lettering. "You'll lose creditability if you keep that up, Papa."

The sound of her father's laughter once more brought a small smile to her as Luciana looked over her shoulder at him. He offered her a shrug before heading into the back room of the shop, leaving the girl alone with her task for the moment.

"Idiots." She spoke softly to herself before selecting a slightly larger brush that the one she had just finished using and gave the calligraphy another look over. "What kind of half-wit could be duped by such a stupid thing?"

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[Amoros Vittore]

...

Amoros Vittore poured the last few drops of fish supplement across his tongue with the desperate determination of an alcoholic chasing one last taste of whiskey. What felt like a cracked rib made it's disapproval of his efforts clearly known, but Amoros ignored it. The supplement was medicinal; for his own good. It encouraged healing, or increased blood flow, or stimulated some thing or other, probably. Or maybe it was just supposed to seep out of his pores and keep that giant fish away. To be honest, he hadn't really paid attention to the specifics of what it was supposed to be doing to him, or for him, and he had neither the patience nor inclination to waste effort finding out. Fresh air was supposedly good for you too, and no ever bothered to question that; so why bother with this?

He let out a grunt of disapproval at the empty bottle and sniffed, dislodging a clot of blood from his nose and coating the back of his throat with a bitter, coppery taste. He glanced about him and, finding the stretch of street deserted and unobserved, nonchalantly tossed the empty bottle into the lake waters. No one was using these bigger canals anyway, preferring to hide in the supposed safety of the narrower waterways, and besides: someone would be along to scoop it out eventually. Gotta do something to keep the slaves busy and stop them getting tossed in to feed the fish, right?

Hugging an arm around him in the most casual way possible - which, on reflection, probably didn't look very casual: but it was better than walking along and wincing every few steps - he trudged down the paving towards one of the few establishments in Ravok that wouldn't turn him away on sight. He wouldn't go quite as far as considering himself welcome, but the grudging, eye-rolling tolerance of his presence was better than being manhandled out of the door and literally tossed onto the street. Once a day was enough times for that.

He leaned heavily on the door of the apothecary, ready to limp his way in and avail himself once more of the kindness of old family friends. Their tolerance of this was no doubt almost stretched to breaking point, but almost was the operative word there. The second his eyes settled on her however, he froze in place like a startled deer. Leeching off her father's sympathies - preferably without any actual leeching being involved - only to have her berate him for it afterwards was one thing; her doing so before anyone had done anything to make the pain subside would be a fresh new hell. He considered aborting, but the threshold of the store was most definitely beyond the point of no return.

As casually as he could muster, he stepped inside, adjusting his pace to a slow swagger that didn't agitate his ribs too terribly bad. A hand snuck to his face, fingers subtly picking away at the dried blood and wiping it onto the seams of his work- and beer-stained slacks. Summoning all the charm he could muster, which wasn't terribly much, he flashed her his most genuine disingenuous smile.

"Well now, squirt," he greeted; anything other than an insult would have been considered suspicious. "Fancy meeting you here."

[Luciana Avgerinos]

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Luciana froze with her paintbrush hovering over its intended target, the new stretch of shelf yet unmarred by the light summer blue. The pause was just long enough that a bead of the pigment pooled together and dropped to the floor as if in slow motion as she said every prayer to Rhysol she could think of that please let my hearing be wrong so that it would be anyone but whom actually had spoken.

It seemed her god wasn't in a particularly gracious mood. Her head turned first, followed by shoulder before she finally pivoted to face Amoros and a soft tch at his appearance left her.

"Expert at pointing out the obvious still. Well done. I'd clap but..." she gestured, lifting the pallet and paintbrush in each hand in a subtle movement. The cool tone she used as well as the overall disinterested manner in which she spoke betrayed nothing of the actual shock of seeing the... What could Amoros be considered, exactly? Family friend? Overzealous watchdog? Babysitter?

The roll of her eyes that Luciana finished with was obviously over dramatic but it fell into line with years of expected behavior. Just as his term of endearment had been his part so too were the cruel words and callous attitude she answered with. It would settle eventually, the sediment of time apart would fall back to the bottom where it could be overlooked. But for the now...

"You look like hell." The comment rolled off her tongue, pushing forth all the obvious nature that it held. It wasn't until after she said it thought that Luciana actually gave the man a once-over glance.

Without giving time for a retort she quickly spun back to her work, looking back over the written word she was to try and copy as she waited for her hands to steady to the point where she would trust them to not entirely muck up the thing.

"I suppose now would be when I should ask what brings you here but I get the feeling I already know the answer. Do tell me that the other guy is worse off, at least?" There, with the last word she glanced over once more and finally let a hint of a smile form, more of an amused smirk than any true kindness and she turned away once more before she let him gain any sort of satisfaction from it.

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[Amoros Vittore]

...

"Yeah," Amoros responded quickly, his words more defensive than he would have expected them to be.

"The other guys do."

It was stupid, this relationship that they had. Amoros had been old enough to be considered a man while Luciana had still been struggling to tie her own shoes and use a bathroom correctly, and yet every time they met she spoke down to him like a mother chastising an unruly child. The worst part was the fact that Luciana knew how much that attitude stung; she knew how his entire life, Amoros' mother had never said a single kind word, and yet she adopted that same manner regardless. Tough love, he supposed you would call it. From anyone else, it would have been insufferable; but Amoros had suffered through too many years of having Luciana in his life to abandon tolerance now and let them all go to waste.

His arms folded protectively across his chest, which proved to be a tactical error as far as his ribs were concerned, but he managed to do a pretty decent job of disguising his wince as an unexpectedly timed yawn.

"And it pains me," he continued, adopting a theatrically wounded tone, "Pains me that your opinion of me is so low that you assume something nefarious is going on."

He sucked in an impertinent sniff. "Maybe I knew you were going to be here, and I just stopped by to say hello."

[Luciana Avgerinos]

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"You never just stop by, Ammo." Luciana sighed before finally pressing the tip of the paintbrush against the shelf edging. A quick sweep of her wrist finished off the first slightly curved stroke that would soon become a capital F.

A quick glance over her shoulder was cast to him as she placed the larger brush back down and picked up one of the smaller ones again. A small shake of her head accompanied the small swirling of the tip of the brush along the edge of the small mass of light blue pigment, gathering just enough paint to complete the last two marks to finish the letter off. As she drew the brush along to create the bottom of the two horizontal lines she spoke again, trying to force more calm and patience into her tone. There was no use continually snapping at the man, at least not before he had proven it was worth her time.

"You're a terrible liar, by the way. The only other person who knew I was going to be here today is in the back room and I don't think he exactly sent a pigeon with the information hoping that you would keep me company so he wouldn't have to." At best she sounded indifferent, the extent of which was enough to give her pause to wonder if she truly felt that way or was just trying to keep up her usual cool demeanor.

Luciana shook the thought off as she studied the next bit of calligraphy, trying to piece together where each mark ended and the next began, looking for the subtle hints that would reveal where the pen had left the paper so she could attempt to replicate the motions.

"So how about I piece together a story and you can tell me where I'm wrong, instead?" They had played the game before, mostly for her amusement than anything else. A test in how well she could watch people and figure out their daily lives judging on a few actions and circumstances. It never really had mattered if she was correct or not, at least when she was younger it hadn't. The game had continued even without the second party for most of her adult life, but now the pieces of information were filed away into the back of her mind, knitting themselves together slowly. Today's exercise, however, didn't nearly take so much care.

As the brush returned to the wood to begin the next bit of duplication she allowed the words to flow out from her, taking on almost the same delicate yet precise nature as the lines of paint she created. "Rumor has it a group of hunters returned to the city early this morning with a large haul of meat. I'm guessing they needed quite a few dock workers on hand to help orchestrate the unloading and organization of everything before it could be sold. Given our current circumstances I'm guessing things got a bit, shall we say roudy . So a scuffle or two later and that explains your current appearance."

Luciana frowned at the finished word before her. Fish. Funny how that simple staple of life and it's shortage played into her little story all too well.

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[Amoros Vittore]

...

A triumphant smile split across Amoros' features as every single word that tumbled from Luci's lips was proven to be entirely incorrect. "I wasn't even at work today," he shot back defiantly. "I got all this -" He waved a hand to indicate his slightly battered features. "- in a bar fight, thank you very much."

It took a few moments for realisation to register on Amoros' features. Luciana had done this far too often: it didn't matter when her guesses and suppositions were incorrect, because she could always rely on his ego to blurt out the necessary corrections. It had been worse when she had been younger; the number of truths inappropriate for her age that she had managed to trick him into revealing was a constant source of shame. It wasn't his fault though; it was all hers, her and her stupid know-it-all attitude, making every opportunity to put her in her place too tempting to possibly ignore.

His mind searched for a suitable retort, while his eyes searched for some of the familiar bits and pieces Luciana's father had used to patch him up in the past. He cursed himself for his lack of observation skills; vaguely remembering that the paste made to numb the pain had a brownish liquid, yellowish flowers, and some sort of pointyish leaves in it didn't really help all that much. Of course, even if he had remembered, his chances of being able to pilfer the correct ingredients and mix them together in the right proportions without Luciana noticing were pretty slim. Knowing his luck, he'd probably wind up making some sort of poison that would make his skin fall off, or whatever strangeness herbologists were capable of.

His gaze did however settle on the task that Luciana had been working on, the poncy writing of a recognisable word, and the vials of a familiarly non-descript liquid stacked on the shelves above. "Is that Fish Supplement you've got there?" he enquired, changing the topic as casually as he could muster.

[Luciana Avgerinos]

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An audible groan left Luciana. Whatever satisfaction she had gained from dredging the truth from the man was whisked away with his question. She couldn't bring herself to face him, not entirely certain she could keep her views on the subject from his notice. That wasn't how this worked, she obtained little bits of information wherever and whenever possible but never at the cost of giving up any of her own secrets. Like hai she was going to let, out of everyone, Amoros Vittore know that she may have been concerned he bought into the fad and actually thought it could heal him of whatever moronic injuries he had obtained this time.

"Oh Ammo," she chided. "Not you too."

Only the briefest of glances was finally allowed, a mixture of disinterest, disappointment and amusement showing all in that tiny moment before the artist shrugged her shoulder and went back to her work.

A fresh coat of paint was swirled around the brush in her hand before she began the long stroke of the capital S, curling each end as the calligraphy showed, adding her own emphasis in places that looked visually appealing.

"You know," Luciana began as she studied the next flow of letters on the paper. "They'll find out it was all some sort of experiment. That drinking it actually attracts the monster, susses out the nonbelievers so that they can be sacrificed."

The statement was left hanging as once more the brush returned to the shelving, a breath taken and held to steady her hand as Luciana began the arduous task of filling out the rest of the word in a single movement. It was taken slow, glances cast between work and reference material to make sure she got it just right. A slip up wouldn't have been noticed, not by her client, not by the man behind her, but Luciana wouldn't have been able to ignore it. Every moment she would have stepped into the shop it would have glared at her, pointing accusingly with the insignificant yet obvious error.

The word dragged out impossibly long, one "u", two "p"s executed to the best of her nature to make them perfect twins with a hint of individuality, the "l" and "e" flowing into one another, the awkward "m" that followed that gave way to another "e". She had to pause, long enough to will herself to draw another breath but not so long that the paint beaded in one spot before finishing the "n" and a neat line following. The slash to finish the "t" was as much a release as any she had experienced and the breath was finally let go of in a sigh.

Luciana looked over her shoulder, a wicked grin greeting Amoros. "I do hope you have your citizen papers readily accessible, my friend."

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