Stealing Names

[Eris]

38th Day, Spring of 510 A.V.

Eris bent over the dark wooden table, her hair falling in her eyes – a remainder that she needed a trim. Every time her elbow came to rest on the wooden surface, the table creaked perilously. Her hand trembled a little as it hovered over the blank yellowish paper. Annoyed with herself, she put down the quill and flexed her fingers. Just let the ink make contact with the paper. The pen will guide your hand from there. Picking up the quill again she made the first mark, slowly tracing the elegant shape of the J onto the paper. Taking a deep breath, she finished the –onas in a few seconds, hoping that the more natural the signature felt, the more natural it would look. A few more seconds and the surname of the man was on the paper.

She inspected the original signature on the old ledger and her crude copy. There wasn’t enough ink on her quill and the double Ls had come out scratchy and thin. The entire signature was slanted and the a at the end seemed disconnected from the rest of the name. Eris sighed, her nostrils flaring. This was not how she had wanted to start her first lesson. Then again, it could have been worse. Looking over the original ledger, she smirked, wondering if Jonas Marella knew how useful he was being. She was once paid a round sum to steal a packet of the man’s documents. It later turned out that half of the papers weren’t useful to her employer, so she saved them for just this purpose. She’d been planning to practice forgery for quite a while now and this cool, spring night was perfect.

[Eris]

Taking out a random paper from the stack in the corner of the table, she briefly looked it over. It was a marriage contract, one that had been useless to its owners for at least a decade. Robert Tompson and Thalia Gisele had died twelve years ago after living a happy life together. This document was actually obtained legally...or as close to legally as Eris ever came. A clerk who wanted to repay Eris for a favor had given her some old contracts “just in case she ever needed something to light a fire with.” The clerk had been perfectly aware of what Eris usually did with these sorts of papers, but chose to look the other way.

This time, she carefully observed the letters of the original signature before starting. The R began with an elegant swirl – uncharacteristic of a man’s signature – and traveled down to a rounded oval. Eris traced the R onto her paper, trying to make the swirl look as effortless as it must have felt to Robert. She felt that as she wrote the man’s name, she was finding a door into his mind. Granted, it was a mind long gone and no longer useful to her, but interesting nonetheless. Why did Robert write his Rs in such a feminine way? Was he trying to make his signature as fancy as possible on his marriage contract or did he want to impress his wife? Eris had never realized how much of themselves a person could reveal in their handwriting. It was unfortunate for the writer, intriguing for a scholar, and profitable for a thief.

Eris finished the man’s first name with no problems and was quite proud of its likeness to the original. The surname however, presented some problems. Her hand shook slightly at the long slash of the T, resulting in a shaky, uncertain line. Robert wasn’t uncertain when he signed this contract. He was confident and happy to be marrying a woman he loved. Eris banished the romantic thoughts out of her head, focusing on the task at hand. The hooks on the ns were even harder than the T. She wasn’t used to embellishing her own writing with so many curves, hooks, and swirls. The ns ended up looking as unsteady as the T and the entire surname was smudged from an excess of ink.

[Eris]

Next came the wife’s name. The script was even more flowery than Robert’s. The T seemed to be needlessly ornate, with lines going this way and that with no apparent purpose. Eris could tell that she would not have liked the woman if she had met her. Somehow, she managed to get the first half of the name right, but made a mistake on the l, falling back on her own handwriting. She lost her concentration and ended the first name with an a that was more slanted and thick than it needed to be. Eris scowled, annoyed at both herself and Thalia. Why on earth would she make her signature so complicated? She must have been of nobility, taught from an early age to decorate her writing with swirls and wavy lines. No, Eris would most definitely not have liked her. Taking a deep breath, she finished off the signature without picking her hand up from the paper. The result was somewhat better than her previous tries, but still far from perfect.

[Eris]

Eris leaned back in the chair, her wrist slightly numb, and her eyes tired from staring at the paper for so long under candlelight. Candlelight has always been her most favored medium of light after total darkness. The candle created dancing shadows on the paper as it flickered. The light fell on the arcs of the Os and the straight, arched backs of the Ts. The writing wasn’t hers and she felt as if she’d just acted out a role in a play. Before she could become proficient enough in this “acting”, she’d have to learn all the lines.

It was still dark outside when Eris finally looked up from the table. She absently ran her fingers over the thin pale scar on her palm. A quill and a dagger weren’t so different after all; both were weapons of a sort. Eris figured she still had a few hours before sunrise. Carefully, she put all the papers into a nondescript leather satchel and slid it under her bed. She decided that from now on, she’d take the satchel with her or else find a better hiding place for it. This was a rented room at Traveler’s Row after all, not her own private apartment.

She was surprised at how much she learned in this short time. Sure, she still had a long way to go before she could become as good a forger as she aspired to be, but she was now well on her way. Joel would have been proud. Eris stifled a yawn, finally surrendering to her need for sleep. Throwing one last glance out the window, Eris blew out the candle. Her last thought before sleep claimed her was a question just floating into her mind. What did she reveal with her own handwriting?

[Dusk]

XP Award! Eris XP Award Forgery: 2 XP Philosophy: 1 XP Additional Note Nice start! This is the first time I've seen anyone work on forgery, and you've done an excellent job of looking beyond just practicing writing and getting into what makes a good forger. You'll need to edit it to add a timestamp to the first entry so we know when in the Spring this is taking place. But a great start, and I look forward to seeing more!