RP:Philosophy and Ink
Summary: Despite growing up on Rynvale, Vydarri has never paid SoulsKin a visit nor encountered Lita. There is first time for everything. The man surprises Lita with a far deeper conversation than she was expecting for the night.
SoulsKin
There is a faded message painted across this shop's front door which reads, abandon all Hope. It may be just cryptic enough to pique your curiosity... Two glass display cases dominate the center of the room, filled with trinkets and jewels from around the world. In the back corner, beneath the stairs that lead to a second floor, there is a bookshelf with a comfy armchair next to it. A low work table lines the entirety of the western wall, a couple of chairs and a bench sitting in front of it. There is a curtained partition, for those that might wish to have their ink work or body modifications done in privacy. The work table is usually littered with bottles of ink in various colors and sketches of viable tattoo designs. Feel free to chat up the artists who might be working if you're interested in having some work done.
The shop was open but quiet, seeing how there was some big witchy protest going on in Larket. The shop door was propped open, a wisp of cool breeze carrying the scent of the ocean up from the south and the noise from the Barrel trickling down from the north. Lita was halfway perched on a bench, left foot tucked beneath her, bare toes bouncing against the floor. She wore the usual little black sundress and a mess of raven curls tied into a loose braid over her right shoulder. She had a knife in one hand and a little wooden figure in the other. She wasn't much for the three-dimensional creation but she'd gotten a wild notion and now the figure in hand was beginning to look roughly like it might be a figure with wings. Someday. When it grows up, perhaps. The amount of wood shavings turning the floor around her into a mess might suggest the figure was at one time supposed to have more than the two inches long it now was.
Vydarri didn’t have to travel far to get to the strange shop from his house. The knight and the nurse who normally travelled with him left behind to be with their kin who lived in the secondary homes within his family’s own sprawling estate. Tonight he simply desired as he had earlier in the day, to travel by himself. A pale white cane rested in the curl of his right palm and he walked without using it so much, but when he came to a halt which was occasional, leaned upon the ivory stick almost devotedly. He was wearing regular clothes now, the white of the Ettilyn house’s etched mithril armor lost to a dark purple dress shirt and black pants. His boots too seem plain and they make only the faintest clip upon reaching this tattoo house. The tagline indeed inspired intrigue, and when he entered, those light eyes drifted not solely over the shop, but the tiny wisp who was readily encompassed by her wood shavings and the task in hand. “Why so small a figurine?” Innocent as a question might be, but he was serious, so many shavings suggested either a few angry re-shaping efforts, or knowing intent at the least.
Lita heard the steady intention of boots at the shop's front, tilted her head slightly as she tried to imagine- without looking up- the person who might be there. No one she knew, at least. Even the voice sounded foreign. With a little huff of breath she straightened where she sat, not having noticed the tension in hunched shoulders. The little figure nestled in her palm as she stared down at it. "I s'pose it was determined to see its inclinations met, was all." No mention of the fact that she had miniscule talents at wood-working. It was far easier to move the pictures from her head to paper and skin with ink and charcoal. If she was disappointed or unhappy at her creation's lack of skill, the emotion was well hidden and after another moment spent staring down at the figurine she lifted dark eyes to meet the stranger's gaze. A tourist, then? And yet at such an hour. Dark eyes drifted instinctively towards the stranger's cane, the craftsmanship and pale ivory color a memory that drew a brief smile across her features. "If it gets much smaller," she continued, lifting her gaze again, "I shall simply say that I meant to disappear it all along."
Vydarri leaned upon the implement and whereas most would have attempted to make it seem casual, the set of his body and shoulders shown the truth of the lean high born and his apparent weakness. Strange, and yet his smile forms a crooked thing, sparing a solitary dimple as Lita gives her answers in kind. “My skills are sadly less impressive, I once made a toothpick and a slingshot successfully though. “ He was a paladin, or perhaps not even that if the high-born were present, still, his eyes shifted about the shop before turning upon the woman once more. “I am Vydarri, and I am sorry for the intrusion but I have heard of your shop. Funny, seeing as I grew up on this island and passed it many times, but have never seen the likes of it, nor of your beauty before.” Charmer? Perhaps he was, and yet all the same he spoke with a strange sincerity, as if one day he might not be capable of speaking his exact thoughts and simply voiced them now. " They say this shop is skilled, not just with art but also tattoos with magical properties?"
Lita always found it strange that people 'heard of the shop' despite her best efforts at living in the shrouds of secrets and shadows. That's what was to be expected when partnering with Meri, she'd suppose. The girl was all the compassion and love for life and all its social charms that Lita would never need to be. She certainly didn't recognize the stranger's name and she feared that trying to pronounce it would skewer the beauty of it. So instead she settled for a grateful smile and a little nod for his compliment. She didn't offer a seat, where most might have. On some level she was aware that while he seemed to need the cane, it wasn't entirely a choice anymore. "Beauty is a rare and fickle mistress." she agreed. "I'm Lita and I promise I'm far more adept with ink than wood." A joke perhaps, even a poor one. She didn't linger. It had been some time since she'd attempted small talk with a stranger. "I've done runes and charms, a spell or incantation, but they are only tools to be used in magics, not imbued with the magics themselves." She had no magical abilities to speak of and though she'd never admit such a thing, she'd always shied away from the practices. "Though I suppose in theory the inks could be spelled with a magical property of some sort, I've no experience with such a thing." And then, as always was her way, curiosity took the better of her. "What is it you're looking for this evening?"
Vydarri was not in possession of the niceties that his station or court would have desired tonight. Perhaps that was what allowed him to respond to the raven-haired woman in ease. “Peace…” There was a half-chuckle and he amended the answer. “More time.” The direct fashion in which she answered his query though allowed for something of an acceptance, there would be no ink to help heal him, or keep his illness at bay. Such was a long shot though, and while he’d come with some miniscule hope, those light eyes offered a blink of the resignation he had found years past when another series of chance encounters in his youth had led him to another hopeful solution; one that fell short in the face of the reality he faced. Vydarri instead turned his questions to something else which intrigued him. “What is the most common request in your mind, for ink?” Silly, but he was inclined to not be a normal patron from the start anyways.
Lita might have laughed at any other person standing in her shop talking of peace and time. It was deeper a conversation than she'd expected from the man but the smile that lingered on her lips was soft with an understanding. She'd give him the rest of her eternity to see her wife again, all the peace of loneliness to hug her son. Everything came with a cost, without exception. She licked her lips, quiet with her own thoughts for a moment before she'd stand, brush a few wood shavings from the front of her dress and cross towards the center of the room and one of those glass display cases where a trio of sketch books were stacked for prospective patrons to look through when they needed perhaps a bit of inspiration. "You're looking for the wrong things." she explained as she flipped idly through a few pages. "In the absence of peace there is something worth fighting for." On the pages were colorful depictions of animals and landscapes, names in various script types, a cathedral of shadow and rain. "In the passage of time, we learn appreciation, forgive, find who we are." She stopped at last at a blank page, almost towards the end of the book and she turned it towards him. There was nothing on it and she tapped a slender index finger against the corner of the page. "The most common request for ink is simply, hope." Even the small pieces she sported on the insides of her wrists- the dual triquetra and the spade. They were her hope. "The trick is only in finding what yours looks like."
Vydarri surveyed the blank pristine white of that page and he actually seemed saddened by it. As she offered a form of response a tremble shok his fingers and the book Lita shown him was taken into the grip if only for him to settle it upon a counter top. The gesture showed his own weakness perhaps, but he would reach into the confines of the satchel on his hip and with all the ease of a drug-addict devour a concoction of swirling blue before returning the small vial into the pouch it came from. Time would require the mixture to be effective but he remained transfixed once more by the page and oddly the artist. “Hope..” He did not manage to give her the artwork she thought perhaps. The murmured word was followed by a response strangely profound, Emotion once darkened what he said now with strange lilting accuracy and grace. The words came beautifully and with grace, the joyous sound of his voice, but they too were empty. “I assure you miss, hope has left me. It has no use for a being who is doomed to end from his very beginning. I survive on the whim of the gods I serve, in service not of my family name or title as would have been expected but those around me who need it. To know my hope, would be somewhat foolish and sound terribly weak. My hope is that I shall find peace, be it with my coming death, or a cure I have yet to find.” Because it was all that he possessed, his code as a paladin, and his life alone save for the pair of guardians normally at his side. Strangely, Vydarri blinked as he finished speaking. “ Peace, would be my anchor, my hope I suppose.” A breakthrough he had not expected from the brief tirade, or from this meeting with the mostly unknown woman.
Lita was grateful for the truth in the stranger's response. Even if neither of them understood its depth or even its utmost significance. Dark eyes flickered towards the concoction he swallowed but she made no mention or question of it, despite the curiosity that was likely more than noticeable. She'd seen sickness enough over the years to understand its destruction. "The trouble with being born sentient is that we understand the concepts of time." she mused as he found his conclusions about peace and hope. A little smile tugged at the corner of her mouth despite herself. "The sun rises each day and then sets, another ending. And yet from the sun's perspective it is always rising, somewhere. And in this sense it knows not of the sunsets it leaves behind, of the nights which chase it." She paused, moved back to the workbench for a handful of colored charcoals and she turned the book to face her once more. "The sun rises without worry of what's before it or care of what's behind it." She colored as she spoke, a smattering of colors on one half of the page, smears of reds and orange and yellows, blurred and mixing the way they would in a sunrise. "There is only ever that one moment. Without time, without measure, without calculation, with no need for it." On the other half of the page she smeared blues and purples, fading into black at the far edge away from the brighter colors. In the middle of the page she smeared the colors into a single streak of blurred grays with the pad of her thumb and she drew a stark jagged black line between the two, outlined it in silver and then a lighter blue, leaving little branches as the image evolved into a strike of lightning. "We create that in-between. We decide where one thing of beauty ends and the other begins. But the truth is there is no difference." Sunrise, sunset, this may have been a veiled depiction of life and death, perhaps poorly done. She turned the book around again for him to see. "If I could in some way help you to find that peace, I would be honored."
Vydarri listened to her phrasing, in some ways the high born might have considered Lita to be among those ‘touched’ by a god. If merely for her ability to give perspective and light to a moment. Still, the paladin stared at the raven-haired woman and allowed her to take to her drawing with rapt attention. To say she held the whole of his focus would be true, red tendrils of his hair hanging round to frame those patrician features and pale eyes as she spoke and created that strike of lightening. “ We are all works of heart, works of art. “ He spoke a bit loosely before she concluded her statement to offer it to the sickly male for review. “I would not mind to have the company, despite my normal accompaniment, there are not many who grasp what I feel or hold in my thoughts. To be frank, you would not be the only one honored, miss Lita.“ The tremble was slowly easing and he flashed the crooked dimple of a smile. "A mixture meant to help me when I start to lose internal my battle." The explanation of his vial was an after-thought, something he clarified in part because of that curiousity her features had held.
Lita would have laughed again for his entertaining thoughts that she might be touched by a god. She didn't believe in any gods for one thing. And for all her talk of perspectives, she had, since becoming a vampire, only ever seen it- herself- as a darkness and a monster. His words brought a smile to her lips all the same and she was quiet a moment as she mulled over his explanation of that vial. "Better than the whiskey, I s'pose." That might have been a joke. "Though Simon cooks a mean batch with honey for the Barrel." She was a big fan. "I have an acquaintance-" not quite a friend, yet- "who may be able to help." She nodded slightly towards his bag, where he'd stowed that vial. "She deals in arts of magic I do not and she's quite talented. Perhaps she could do something about spelling a bit of ink after all. While I doubt it would evolve into any sort of cure, it may limit the need to carry those around." The vials, that was.
Vydarri could appreciate her love of whiskey perhaps only through the claims of his Knight, Bryg. The older male often praised the Barrel and her ‘special’ batch while often comparing it now to the regions in which they had traveled. He’d never drank the stuff, and he blamed those guardians and his health for a reluctance to do so. “Were I capable of standing effectively without much effort I’d probably try a bit myself, but Brygranth praises the Barrel often.” Those thought’s he’d voice, it was friendly enough right, damn was he still smiling? Then the new acquaintance offered another sort of revelation, spelled ink. IT could be done? “I had heard some rumor of things like that, but what would the cost be?” He spoke with something of a quirk in brow, from his experience such forms of lasting magic were not without a cost, and he was somewhat reluctant to cost someone else a part of themselves merely to keep his feet under him. A heavier clip of boots was audible, building as they drew closer, no doubt mention of the guard had called him, surely the surly old elf was the devil. A grit of teeth shown the displeasure at the notion and Vydarri glanced from Lita, to the door, not surprised when the male stomped his way inside in full armor. "Bryg." A cool adress of the other and yet he would return his focus to the vampiress. "Miss Lita, this is the aforementioned male. Ignore his glower, it is meant for me." A smirk, but little else came in explanation, and the guard did not speak beyond a bow and to grimace and fold arms across his chest impudently as he waited for his charge.
Lita likely drank more than enough for the both of them but she'd leave some things mysteries for other meetings, should there be any. "I'm not sure of the cost." It was honest enough, though she was careful to hide her own trepidation of such ventures. Meri would at least find amusement in the fact that she was branching outside of her own comfort zone. And what for? A stranger? A client? The possibility of a job? She flickered a glance downwards across the vague portrait of sunrise she'd managed. For peace. "Bryg," she repeated, finding the shortened nomenclature at least amusing. She returned the knight's bow with a nod, shifting her weight slightly from one foot to the other. It had been a long time since she'd kept such proper company. "Surely your man doesn't mean to stand there scaring off all manner of business." The words were more amusement than annoyance, the shadow of a smile curling the corners of her mouth upwards. For reasons she didn't yet understand she found Vydarri's company to be a rather enchanting thing. She waved a hand in lieu of answer to her own question and turned attention back to their conversation over spelled inks. "Don't worry over costs, let me first see if it can even be done. I'll need a bit of time," she motioned a hand towards his bag then, "and a vial of that if you can spare one. Are you staying on the island long?"
Vydarri actually laughed in response, attempting to conceal the warmth of the sound with a hand. Brygranth smirked and gave a shrug, shouldering further into the room. “ I blame my surely demeanor on master Vydarri.” From there the knight would simply turn his attentions to the books and his interest in ink. The paladin though has attention more meant for Lita, as she waves off his worries and addresses the moment instead as well as aiding him. He had plenty of the little mixture at home and he could procure more with the help of his nurse and the funds at his family’s disposal, but that was not the point. It was more a matter of trusting her here and forwards. “This isn’t a precious liquid, just hard to make. It is called ‘Moon’s Dominion.’ I hope your friend, can help.” Because he was entrusting her with a shred of hope perhaps; or they could call it peace. Vydarri reached into the bag and pulled out one of the small stoppered vials, offering it to Lita, with a stable hand. Strange how important that was to him, strangely important that his ailment did not show him as truly weak to her.
Lita had half a mind to ask the knight to leave but she'd had more practice at wearing masks than she had with being honest so she managed a smile instead, distracted perhaps by his apparent interest in the art books on hand. She'd leave him to his own perusal, shifting her attentions back towards Vydarri. There was a part of her- fear and paranoia and that fight-or-flight response that reared its ugly head- that didn't want the vial of magic liquid anywhere near her shop let alone in her personal possession. She swallowed her unease, reached for the paladin's hand as he offered the name of the mixture and while she had no meaning to put to that name, she could tell he held it dear. So she closed her fingers around his hand as he handed the vial to her and squeezed gently, briefly, reassuringly. She wouldn't even correct his liberal use of the word friend. "As do I." She released his hand, closing the vial in the palm of her hand and was surprised to find that she meant it.
Vydarri realized perhaps halfway through the last of their interaction with her hands upon his that he had not answered Lita’s query and strangely he was at a loss for how to answer it. “I do live here, I have a small house near the council’s lane and then another quarters elsewhere.” There would likely be no peace and Bryg seemed only intent to ensure it as the guard meandered towards the door, only pausing to look at the pair with a snort. “ The young Master’s other quarters are at the House of Ettilyn’s estate, where he has been since his birth. Pretty easy to find the banners, miz.” And he would stump out without realizing the set of jaw or gritted teeth that the young paladin made visible at the revelation he didn’t need. “As he said... But you can find my house easier, and I will likely be there as opposed to the family home.” There was some flash of dislike in the mention of the family home though without doubt, if Lita sought it she could easily learn about the ‘cursed heir of Ettilyn’. Rynvale was small and everyone liked to talk, especially over their mugs. Another sigh, slow and steady and he returned to his more easy and crooked smile. “I’m afraid I must be off though, perhaps I can call upon you again in a day or two miss Lita?” He would not wander out of his way for most, but to converse with the artist before him, nay, the woman before him; Vydarri would happily take a walk.
Lita would suppose it was a good thing she had spent much of these past few years in the chosen company of a solitary beach. She knew little of the ways of politics and the noble families on the island and the whispers she did hear amongst the tavern crowds tended to be lost in the whiskey and dance. Even she wasn't so naive to pick up on the tension that suddenly blossomed between the pair with the knight's exit and her lips pursed slightly to keep her words from escaping farther than they'd need to. Lita nodded at his request to seek her company again in a few days' time. "Certainly. I will hope to find good news for you. In the meantime," she tore the picture she'd scribbled between them from its book and handed the drawing out towards him. It would likely seem little more than a blur of color to anyone else, not having known the context of it. She wouldn't take no for an answer if he were to try. "It was an intriguing thing to meet you, Vydarri." She'd avoiding any titles of 'sir' or 'master' that might have otherwise been important to someone in his standing. The name rolled across her tongue in foreign syllables, coaxing a smile from her lips.
Vydarri would be only too content to accept the gift, something he would undoubtedly pin to the wall of his study at a later time. He actually appreciated that the vampires avoided his titles, the seldom brought him any joy at all. Another bow and with the flicker of that dimple and blink of those light eyes despite the curtains of red hair framing it dipped his head before responding in like. “ I assure you, it was a pleasure and an honor meeting you, Lita.” The fact that she spoke his name, was something he undoubtedly enjoyed, it was perhaps written upon his features, and yet the inflection and oddity of his accent infected her name as well, it was a carry of his tongue perhaps, that rolled the title, and made it sound more eloquent than the simple spelling behind it. Still, his fingers brushed against her’s one final time at the collection of this parchment and he turned making an exit with the aid of the cane in his opposing hand.