Solo The Literal Meaning of the Universe

[Zuhre]

Timestamp: Autumn 33, 518 AV

The sky held scars. They were thick jagged stretches of lights that would appear and disappear within seconds of each other offering flashes of light that illuminated the otherwise Stygian atmosphere.

Zuhre was reaching for the stars that surrounded her, trying to lure them closer to her. They resembled fireflies, turning on and off their glow, twinkling in rhythm with every breath she inhaled; every breath she exhaled.

Some of the stars had started to draw closer to others until they were almost in contact with one another. They started to make up a thick mass much like a stream of water if every particle of light was like a molecule of water. No one star twinkled at the same time, sending the stream into a sort of glittering effect.

Zuhre was mesmerized. She dared not to blink, her focus captivated by the show being performed before her. She felt like she was floating, like she really was swimming in a stream, a stream of stars.

One particle of light soon began to grow, sending off heat waves that kissed her cheeks. It quickly shot above her head, and tore through the sky: another thick scar marring the darkness. As it reached a point too far for her to see, it suddenly exploded, sending sparks flying in all different directions.

She felt at home up in the sky. She felt like she belonged here. The stars were surrounding her, comforting her, hugging her at all angles. They made sure she felt safe. But they soon become suffocating. The blanket of light wrapped around her too tightly, pushing out all the air she held in her lungs. It was all too much. What was happening? Why was her home suddenly feeling too small, too tight, like it was telling her something?

Like she didn’t belong anymore?

Zuhre was no longer swimming in the stream, and there were no more bright lights igniting the space around her. It was dark. It was so dark and so quiet. Her own thoughts sounded like waterfalls expelling thousands of gallons of water from their peaks. And she still couldn’t breathe.

Water was filling up her nostrils, and her mouth sucked in litres of icy cold water. Panic began to set in, clouding her mind as all but one thought was picked for her undivided attention.

She was drowning.

Zuhre started to claw at the water around her in any and all attempts at trying to find the surface. There was nothing to base her position off of. There were no lights, there were no shadows, there was nothing. There was just her and the bleakness encompassing her.

And her lungs continued to burn something awful. And her eyes started to grow heavy. And her cheeks bulged so far out from her face that the pain became too excruciating and she opened her mouth. Water filled her body like thick tendrils of fate, consuming her life force until there was nothing more than just an empty shell in a capacious space of black.

✫✫✫

Her heart raged, striking the inside of her chest as it pounded up and down, up and down. She tried to breathe, raking in the crisp morning air, finding it a challenge to consciously understand that it was air she was trying to inhale and not water.

She propelled herself up from her bed, throwing her legs over the side. She placed her hands on either side of her body for stability, still under the impression that if she didn’t, she would surely start drowning again.

She hung her head and her eyelids fell gently to a close. That was the second nightmare in a row and they didn’t seem like they were going to stop anytime soon.

Zuhre tried to picture herself back up in the sky, past the clouds, past the sky and into that realm of stars and streams and surrealism. It was a picture, a snapshot of time that yet, still moved seamlessly for a short period of time as though it was on a loop.

Envisioning this masterpiece gave her some sort of solace, some sense of belonging. It also calmed her breathing, and relieved her heart from its astonishingly fast thumping. Altering her focus from the image to her surroundings allowed her to transmute her awareness, to bridge the proverbial temporal gap between the real world and the world she had created.

As she opened her eyes, she was not welcomed by the glow of stars, but neither was she met with complete and total darkness. The room that presented itself to her was just as she had left it the night before, only a small streak of light had filtered in from the window adjacent from her, illuminating the unit like the stars in her dream ultimately had.

She may not have been in the safety of the celestial realm above, but she was safe here. And ‘here’ was good enough for her.

[Zuhre]

“Welcome to Funel’s Ink,” came a sultry voice the moment the door closed behind her.

“It’s just me,” Zuhre said, crossing the hard wooden floors without much as a sound. “Though I love the cheeriness in your voice as you greeted me. You should do it more often.” As she passed Matthew, she winked at him. She then took a seat on the opposite side of the room.

Matthew whistled. “If I did it all the time, you’d get used to it and I’d just hate to lose my charm. I can’t settle for ordinary, you know.”

She watched the way his eyes smouldered, which only added to the confidence that radiated off of him. He was a charismatic individual, always socializing and complimenting whenever it was called for. While a part of his advantageous mannerisms came from the need to gain customer trust and increase income, Zuhre knew that he was a good guy by nature.

“What are you working on today?” she asked him, reaching across the table in order to start unpacking the tattooing kit. She started to lay out the needles according to size, the wooden handle attachment placed on end farthest to her left. Various colours of ink were held in thin, glass vials. She took those from out of the tool box too. She laid them out on their sides across the table based on their shade. She had two different colours of purple, to which she put the lighter one to the left of the darker one. She did this for the other basic colours until she had a limited ombre effect of ink.

She didn’t realise Matthew was standing behind her until she felt his warm breath caress the back of her neck.

“D’ya always organize your shyke that way?”

Zuhre rolled her eyes. “Yes, Matthew, I do. Or at least I try to, so that I can access them more easily. It helps me keep a rhythm, a system.”

Matthew scoffed, before walking back over to his side of the room. “I just randomly pick up what I need. Don’t care where I put it back at.”

She smiled to herself, but was quickly interrupted when the door opened. In stepped a tall, thin woman with brown shaggy hair striped with blondes and reds. Zuhre was amazed how so much hair could fit on top such a small head. But astounded her even more was the way that all her facial features fit on her face without so much as overcrowding one another. She had a tiny, button nose, and small eyes that were almond in shape. Her lips were narrow and held tightly in a frown by the corners.

Her emerald green eyes scanned the place, never stopping to land on any one thing. It was when her eyes landed on Zuhre that her thin lips split, and the corners of her mouth lifted, revealing a wide and white smile.

“Are you the owner?” the woman called out to her.

Just as Zuhre was about to answer, Matthew side stepped into the woman’s field of vision. “At your service.” He shot out his hand and gave her his award winning smirk.

Zuhre continued to watch the woman, wondering if she was displaying false enthusiasm. Some people that come into Funel’s Ink do so on impulse, or because they desire something new, something beautiful, something that lasts forever, but are inwardly afraid. These people are oftentimes afraid of the pain, while others are afraid that this commitment may turn out to be something they should have contemplated more. She was unsure if this woman was one of those people or not.

Concentrating, Zuhre began to think about herself, her body. She thought about her arms, about their essence, their “-ness”. She thought so hard about them, about what they were there for, about what they were, and why they were there that she could have swore she started to feel them tingle. It was psychological, like when someone thinks they have immediately contracted an illness, after all they have done is sneezed.

She continued concentrating, only instead of on her arms, she concentrated on her chest, and her stomach, until she was sure she was feeling something more than just psychological. She felt something bubbling up inside of her, and she was certain it wasn’t due to any kind of abdominal distress. She felt the essence within her start to make waves, in turn heightening her senses, until someone began to appear directly above the woman’s head. It was a weak gleam, that reminded Zuhre of the reflection of sunlight in the water right before the clouds cast it out. It seemed to shimmer, but only for a moment before it dissolved. What replaced it was much less enthralling. There was a sharp pain in her temples followed by a flash of yellow light. The taste of something sweet mixed with something luxurious like berries dipped in cocoa butter- it filled her mouth, bringing her happiness, excitement… enthusiasm.

This woman was thrilled to be here, which made Zuhre beam.

She tuned out as Matthew began to discuss the tattoo prices with the new client. She started to think, reaching into her abstract reasoning for questions rather than answers. Philosophically speaking, she believed that people had emotions and reactions towards things if their experiences were either negative or positive. She related this to the dreams she had recently started to have, how she dreamed she was falling towards the earth. This dream was based off the experience she had of actually having fallen from the heavens. This fall had created much trauma, which was a negative component of her experience, hence why she must be having these dreams. She tried to expand this idea to the woman, wondering if she had some previous experience with tattoos that issued a positive reaction, and maybe, just maybe, that was why she was happy to be here.

Zuhre let her mind wander away from her deep contemplation. She took a piece of paper out from the drawer beside her. While she was improving her skill level at tattooing, she still had much to desire in the way of drawing the designs she wished to tattoo. She placed a stick of charcoal in between her first finger and her thumb and rested the side of her hand against the paper. Curling her lips in just the right way, she blew a strand of her hair out from her eyes.

Zuhre took a deep breath, trying to focus her thoughts so that they weren’t everywhere when she was trying to draw. She listened to her intake and outtake of breath, drowning out the noise of the two chatting, the sound of the wind howling against the windows, and the faint, yet noticeable clink of Matthew’s shoes as he took a small step backward and another small step forward as he talked.

With her attention focused and her head clear, she began to picture what she wanted to draw in her mind. There was a meager stretch of green that seemed attenuated by the enlarged head of the object. The head consisted of enormous petals, all enveloping an even larger circle. She couldn’t quite recall the name of the flower, but she did know that it had strong ties with the Goddess of the sun, Syna.

She felt her elbow make a small revolution as her hand reflected the movement by creating a circle on the paper underneath her hand. The different “sides of the circle were uneven and the continuous line she had drawn was in no way smooth, but jagged. She wondered if holding her breath next time would improve the fluidity of the circle.

She also wondered if being more well-rounded as an individual would help improve her fluidity at adjusting to this newfound life of hers.

[Zuhre]

After having drawn the first shape, to which she had positioned in the centre of the paper in order to give herself more room for the petals that surrounded it, she began work on the petals. She knew that most flower petals weren’t completely circular. She knew that they had a curvature to them that made one side more oblong than the other, so she tried to draw the first. She placed her stick of charcoal directly above the middle circle and pressed down, dragging her hand lightly so that it made some version of a curve. She stopped, picked up the piece of charcoal and moved back down to the circle. Zuhre then repeated what she had done on the one side, only on the other. The end result looked less of an ellipse and more of a lopsided circle.

Frowning, she placed the piece of paper and the drawing utensil behind her. As she swiveled back around in her chair, she was faced with the new client who was looking at her with such curiosity in her eyes.

“I could see where you were going with that,” she said softly.

The Ethaefal smiled, adjusting her posture so her back was flattened against the back of her chair. “Did he explain everything to you alright?” she asked, watching the woman’s eyes vibrate as they looked back and forth into Zuhre’s eyes.

“He did,” she replied. “And I would like to get a small tattoo of a flower.”

Zuhre’s smile grew twofold at the woman’s request. “Then I will be right back,” she said, pushing her chair back in order to stand.

She had just turned around to find Matthew so that he could draw her up a template for the woman’s tattoo design, when she was brought to a halt.

“Where are you going?”

Zuhre pivoted on the ball of her foot. “I’m going to find Matthew so that he can draw a stencil of a flower for me.” She explained with a cock of her head.

“But I’d like for you to draw one for me.” Initially, Zuhre wasn’t sure she was serious, but the look in the woman’s eyes said differently.

“Are you sure?” she asked, taking a seat again. “I don’t have much, if any, experience with sketching designs as templates for my tattoo. That’s why I have Matthew.”

The woman leant forward in her seat, nodding her head. Her smile never faltered, those thin lips plastered in place as if by some form cement Zuhre couldn’t see.

She couldn’t tell whether someone was lying or not, for her sense of observation could only tell her so much. Even her novice abilities at auristsics told very little, yet she decided to give it another shot. She wanted to see if she saw the same thing in this woman as she had not that long ago. She wanted confirmation that her ability to see those glittering auras, those flashes of coloured light weren’t just complete and utter horse shyke.

Her breathing had started to become a useful tool in finding the balance in her concentration, but Zuhre wanted to try something else. In order to clear her mind, she wanted to simulate her feelings of peace by crafting an image in her mind that actually brought her peace. Peace is unlike happiness- this she knew. She didn’t want to try to cause herself to feel happiness for fear that her emotions would skew her findings.

But finding this peaceful setting was of more challenge than she had previously thought. She would rather not imagine a beach, with the waves crashing against the shore for obvious reasons, but neither did she want to imagine a group of people, a family, all connecting with one another. Zuhre didn’t have a family to spend time with or relate to. She hardly had any friends, and none of which she would consider close.

Sometimes staring up at the night sky and looking at the stars gave her heart break, because while that had once been her home, it was a home no longer. That sense of longing was located far away from peacefulness on the spectrum of feeling and she wanted to avoid feeling such an emotion at all costs for this exercise. So what did her heart find peaceful?

Then it came to her. A sense of calm blanketed her the way snow does over a grass plain. She began to envision the rain falling, the grass flowing freely in the wind, the sun kissing the sand until it was solely warmth that filtered through one’s fingers. She smelt freshly baked bread, morning dew, and paint oil. Strange, how all these things could make someone calm- could make Zuhre feel calm.

She felt more relaxed, like the tension in her neck and shoulders had melted away. It was easier for her to control the Djed inside of her, to help her truly see. She felt its concentration highest near her eyes, allowing her to view a small fluid orb emanating from directly in front of the woman. It was strange how every time she saw this object, it was always in a slightly different place than the last.

She watched the element distort its shape and shimmer, like little particles of light floating in the air. Zuhre gazed harder, deeper into the aura until her eyes began sprouting pinpricks of water. Then there was a flash of yellow, just as she had experienced before, followed by the taste of honey coupled with cinnamon and some form of candied treat- something sweet.

She was still as enthusiastic and high spirited as she had been the moment she walked into the store.

“Alright then,” Zuhre spoke, clearing her throat. She reached out and grabbed the piece of paper with the flower she had been working on. She snatched the stick of charcoal and pressed it firmly to the paper once she had set it on the table.

“And you’re sure about this? I can try to make this flower look as much like a flower as I possibly can, but I am in no way a master at this.” She wrapped a strand of her hair around her ear and pushed the remaining dread behind her shoulder.

The woman nodded, so Zuhre continued.

She started at a different point on the circle; close enough to the ellipse so it would seem connective, but not too close so as to interfere. She positioned her hand so that it was hovering gently over the paper and started to move her hand upward in an arc-like fashion. Accidentally, however, had Zuhre pushed a little too firmly on the charcoal stick, causing it to snap in half.

She cursed under her breath, feeling mortification for having done what she did. The noise in the background was pure laughter. It wasn’t laughter in the sense of someone being impolite or mean, but more like someone having fun, like they realised that they weren’t the only one who was prone to creating blunders.

“Sorry,” Zuhre blushed, grabbing a new stick of charcoal. She would save the two new sticks she had made for a time when she wasn’t slowly drenching herself in sweat due to nerves and a sense of necessary perfectionism.

She tried again, pressing more lightly this time until she had drawn an arc, one side of an ellipse. This time, instead of picking up the charcoal piece and going back to the bottom to draw an arc on the other side, she continued from her current position and made the arc by drawing her arm downwards until it connected with the circle in the middle. This arc, she found, looked much better than the first one she had made. It was more symmetrical. The lines were still slightly jagged like the lines of the circle had been, but they weren’t nearly as horrendous as other lines.

“Isn’t it weird how people view time differently?” Zuhre suddenly said as she repeated this process at different points all around the circle.

“How do you mean?” the woman responded, bewildered by the randomness of her comment.

“I mean, one person says it felt like forever before they were finally at the front of the line, and another person says time flew by too fast after spending time with someone they like spending time with.”

The woman shrugged her shoulders, examining the strategy Zuhre was utilizing in going about designing the flower.

“I mean, maybe time is just something we thought up, you know? Like, an extension of our thoughts, our mind? We all experience it differently, so maybe we’re all just thinking of it in our own individual ways?”

The woman stared at her. Her green eyes tried to look passed Zuhre’s cerulean ones, to try to figure out what it was she was thinking of to have made her start talking this deeply about a topic no one really cared about a whole lot.

“You have a lot of ideas,” she finally said, once Zuhre looked up to find her staring at her.

“Yes,” Zuhre murmured. “I guess I do.”

“Do you ever keep a journal of all your cool ideas?” The woman suggested, looking down to observe how her new tattoo was coming along.

Zuhre thought about it for a little longer than she needed to. She knew she had been trying to write in the book she had purchased not that long ago. So why did she feel like sharing this with this stranger was not the right thing to do? Why did it feel uncomfortable? Because it felt like she was giving a part of herself away.

Eager to drop the subject, Zuhre nodded sharply. “Sure.”

[Zuhre]

She had finally finished the drawing of the sunflower and had given it off to Matthew in order for him to perform his magic to produce a proper stencil. She had placed the stencil on the woman’s shoulder blade as per request and had had just retaken inventory of her materials.

Zuhre had counted six different sizes of needles and procured two from the set of six to use for this tattoo: a thick and thin one. The woman had requested the design be without colour, which was helpful for Zuhre considering her status as a novice tattoo artist. Colour added complexity, as it often involved a different texture and consistency from black ink.

“So why did you bring up time back there?” asked the woman.

The Ethaefal had just positioned the wooden handle in the palm of her hand. She wrapped her fingers around the course striations in the wood, and made sure the thicker of the two needles was held securely within the handle’s hold. She reached across the table and grabbed the rod before she flipped her hair away from her face with the flick of her head.

“I suppose I was just thinking about how time will assuredly feel as though it is crawling by at a very slow pace today. Tattoos tend to do that to people. Pain isn’t something often sought out by common folk.”

Zuhre raised her arm so that it was hovering just above the woman’s exposed back. She had asked her to take her shirt off so that the shoulder blade could be more easily accessible, and she had done so willingly, leaning over the table so as to hide her bosoms.

Having already dipped the needle into the vial of black ink, she placed it gently onto the position of the woman’s back marked by the centre circle. Taking the rod, she quickly and firmly tapped it against the back of the handle that held the needle in its place. She felt the resistance, and final acceptance, of the woman’s bare skin breaking open and resealing as the needle slipped in and out. She continued this process, tapping the rod against the handle, feeling the pressure that built up, then dissipate as the needle forced the ink into the dermal layer of the skin.

“Though some people do seek out pain,” Zuhre spoke in a hushed tone. “I can’t imagine you are here against your own will from how happy you seemed walking through those doors.”

Hardly moving her arm, the needle adjusted its position on the woman’s flesh, spreading the accumulating dark stain so that it filled the centre circle. Zuhre didn’t know what the middle part of the flower was, for all she could recall was that the petals surrounded it. What she did know was that she was making progress tattooing that part of the flower onto the woman’s shoulder blade.

“You know pain can also be thought in the way of time. If you think about, people have different tolerances of pain, right? So maybe pain, like time, is a personal thing. Maybe time does exist, but it’s just the way we experience it that differs from person to person, making it seem like it doesn’t.”

Sometimes I’m not even sure I understand what I’m talking about. It’s as though the moment she says what she’s thinking, her understanding of the thoughts and the concepts get jumbled up in the process of transforming into audible words. It’s as though someone staring at a problem, coming up with a solution, but having their mind move too fast for themselves to keep up, therefore resulting in a loss of that solution to the problem.

“I wonder though-” Zuhre had started talking to herself by this point, mulling over ideas in her head, but needing some way of expressing herself, opting to speak her thoughts- “if some people actively seek out experiencing pain.”

She left her work for a moment to retrieve a piece of fabric. Returning, she wiped lightly at the excess ink that had not made it past the first layer of the skin. Observing her work, she noticed that she was almost finished with the middle part of the flower. While the woman had requested the petals not be filled in with black ink, it didn’t make that part any easier for Zuhre. She still had to tattoo the lines using an appropriate thickness so that all parts of all petals were identical, or near enough.

“I know I don’t really like having to deal with pain, but I wonder if other people like the sensation. Maybe it reminds them of something. Perhaps it ensures them that are in fact alive. Is that not what people do when they take part in dangerous activities? Is that not why some people drink to excess or-” Zuhre recognized her previous habit of smoking blue vision in order to not only dampen the pain of her knee, but also to experience something other than the longing she had from having fallen from the skies.

“Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe people take risks and undergo dangerous activities because they want to feel something other than that of being alive.”

Lost in her own thoughts, she had stopped tattooing in order to concentrate on what it was she was thinking about. Her client cleared her throat and shot her eyebrow up in curiosity.

“I apologise,” mumbled Zuhre, wiping at the tattoo with the cloth. “Sometimes I tend to find my own version of reality.”

[Zuhre]

The Ethaefal had just accomplished the first part of the floral tattoo. Pride blossomed inside her like the petals she had yet to tackle. She had dabbed at the excess ink on her client’s shoulder and had cleaned the thick needle, removing it from the wooden handle and setting it back on the table next to the other needles. She adjusted it so that it lay in on the end, denoting it the thickest of the needles when it came to size. She replaced her old needle with the one of the thinner ones, attaching it to the wooden handle with relative ease.

Removing the cap to the vial filled with black ink, Zuhre dipped the tip of the needle in and turned to resume her work. She dutifully and daintily placed the sharp tip of the needle to point that connected the stencilled petal to the rest of the shaded middle. With her trusty rod, she tapped it against the base of the handle, creating a small dot on the thin templated line. She held her breath and moved her arm cautiously in an upwards motion, tapping away at the handle and leaving behind small black dots. Those small black dots started to blend together to form a thin black streak, a remnant of the wake of the needle’s progress up the arc.

She was hesitant upon coming to the transition point at the top of the ellipse. She had finished with the first side, and was adjusting her grip on the handle so that she could continue down the rest of the petal.

The woman had been so patient with her as she occasionally made mistakes. But always had Zuhre been able to correct herself, whether that was widening the line so that it was more fluid with the rest of the piece or drawing the attention away from the mistake by creating a new, less noticeable one.

She dipped her needle back into the ink vial to recoat the metal surface. Planting the needle back onto the turning point in the ellipse, Zuhre continued to tap the handle, leaving numerous black congealing dots as remnants of her activity.

Zuhre took a moment’s pause to gather her thoughts carefully. What she was about to say next required planning. She wanted to discuss her tattoos and why she had gotten them and whether they were meaningful to her or received via impulse, but as her thoughts brewed, she was unable to explain these answers to herself.

She had been labelled a Svefra due to her outlandish appearance: her oceanic blue eyes, her multiple hairs, her muscular build, and of course, her nautical tattoos. What she could not remember, however, is what this earthbound form of hers had experienced in her past life. How had she acquired all these tattoos? And most importantly, why? This lack of understanding coerced something sinister, something vile so accumulate within the girl. She tried to locate the source of the feeling, an emotion such as... anxiety? Grief? Fear of the unknown?

Then her thoughts relocated, back to a previous time when she had inwardly discussed with herself the reason there were slaves in Ravok. It was plausible that they were slaves because the slavers that put them there feared them due to their differences in reference to the common folk.

Zuhre tried to formulate this relationship into some semblance that was familiar to her. Was she like these slavers? Did she fear the unknown? Was she afraid of the parts of herself of which she was not already intimate with?

She began to wonder if any one of her current emotions came under more of her control in proportion to how well it was known to her. Was she feeling these things solely out of instinct? Was there even any real logic to feeling these ways? It didn’t seem reasonable to her to fear the unknown. There was always going to be something she would not know and possibly never know. To fear the unknown was to fear life in her eyes. Life is the unknown. The purpose to her existence among everyone else’s had no way of being proven. There will always be individuals who assume their purpose, who believe in their purpose, but belief was hardly fact in her eyes. But what were facts if not first beliefs?

Zuhre tried to untangle the messy threads in her head. Her thinking had created some form of spider’s web, constricting her concentration so that it was at an all time low. She slowed her progress on her client’s tattoo, afraid to create any more errors if she continued in the mental state she was currently in. She really needed to practice her focus; to practice the meditation that could allow her thoughts to diffuse.

Taking a deep breath, she sucked in her lips. She took a look at the flower that was slowing blooming on the woman’s back. An image of a field of dandelions ensued, growing in her head like the flowers themselves when the sun was out and they were plenty watered. This pictorial representation of calm was in all sense of the term an abatement, knocking down the webs of silk in her head. Her breathing followed suit, lessening in pace as Zuhre found a rhythm of peace that helped centre her focus on the task that needed accomplishing.

She was almost done tattooing.

She dabbed at the tattoo, removing the excess ink as it slowly began to soak the cloth. She had been returning to the centre of the flower and placing the needle at a new point of origin for the next petal, following the template which had gradually started to smudge off the woman’s skin.

Zuhre began to wonder, as she adjusted her grip on the wooden handle, if this tattoo had any particular meaning for her client. She knew, as she glanced a peek at her own tattoos, that her tattoos must have meant something important for her in her previous life. Svefra, of the little she knew about them, often adorned their bodies in delineation of their oceanic connection and heritage. She admired the jellyfish scarred into her arm with reds and pinks and flesh tones, observing as the tentacles flowed and wrapped down near her elbow. She wondered, if tattoos symbolized personal connections, personal experiences, or memories individuals wished to retain in a form permanently infused into their skin.

Perhaps, Zuhre thought, this sunflower meant something to this woman, something so valuable or something of such intrinsic importance that only she knew of its explanation.

From what she had experienced in her life over the course of the last few days, Zuhre had rarely any other form of emotion aside from ones of negative connotation. But as she looked at this woman’s tattoo, she began to ponder, this tattoo certainly didn’t look like it held anything bad. She thought then, an emotion must only be bad if it hinders one’s ability to think, or think well. Zuhre knew from her own encounters that the tendrils of depression had wrapped around her with their unrelenting determination and caused her to think a lot. But they weren’t productive thoughts. They were just rampant, without any aim or goal.

Yet, maybe it depended on the person, the definition of what was considered productive. For all she knew, thinking deeply about any one topic tended to distract Zuhre from tattooing.

However, hadn’t been for naught, for the tattoo of the sunflower was finished. The Ethaefal had just finished wiping the tip of the needle. She disconnected it from the rest of the wooden handle and set it on the table amidst the other sized needles. The tattoo was bleeding slightly, so she wiped the woman’s shoulder until it was clean.

“There’s a mirror near the front of the store if you’d like to take a look at it,” Zuhre trilled, setting down the rest of her equipment before getting up from her chair to stretch. Her arm was sore from holding it above her client’s skin as she tattooed. She tried to rub the aches out as she watched the woman cross the room.

She watched her body contort as she looked over her shoulder into the mirror. A small smile started to extend across her face. “It’s perfect,” she said suddenly. “I think it has a lot of character.”

“You’re sure you like it? I admit I made a few mistakes throughout the process-”

The woman stopped her mid sentence by holding her hand up in the air. She put her shirt back on, pulling it up and over her head until it rested against her body, not without a small cringe. The tattoo was still fresh, ergo hurt upon any physical interaction.

“Life is full of mistakes,” she simpered, placing the money on table nearest to the front door. “That’s what keeps it interesting.”

And then she left.

[Zavya]

Grades!

 

Zuhre

Skills Earned:

Auristics +2
Drawing +2
Logic +2
Observation +2
Organization +1
Philosophy +3
Socialization +4
Tattooing +2

Lores:

Auristics: Enthusiasm tastes sweet
Drawing: Creating a stencil
Drawing: Pressing too hard on charcoal will make it break
Matthew: Good guy by nature
Organization: Organizing inky by color/shade
Philosophy: Emotions come from personal experience
Philosophy: Perceptions of what's good and bad
Philosophy: Time is a concept
Syna: Goddess of the sun
Tattooing: Inking a design using a template
Tattooing: Proper line thickness

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