Flashback A Meeting at Midnight

[Levon]

Levon, 38th of Summer 512 AV

On an otherwise warm and pleasant day, Levon found himself uncovering an old grave. His client, a wealthy merchant whom Levon had never heard of, claimed it was the grave of one of his ancestors who was a founding member of Zeltiva, but Levon highly doubted it. It was surprisingly common for people to ransack old, valuable looking graves, and the gravestone on this one had caught Levon's eye before. Normally, Levon wouldn't have even considered a job like this, but he was in desperate need of money and the merchant had offered to pay 25% up front. Plus, the man had been able to provide the proper documents, so there was always a chance there was some legitimacy to his claims after all.

The excavation process was particularly slow for this one, as the dirt around the grave had solidified considerably since the grave had been set. Certainly it was old, though Levon could tell at a glance it was post-Valterrain simply by the relatively light weather damage and crude cut of the otherwise fine gravestone. In the pre-Valterrain world, a cut like this would be considered the work of a novice at best, and never would have been allowed access to a rarer stone such as the granite used in this one.

As Levon took one last massive scoop of dirt off, finally feeling the solid stone beneath his shovel. It had been dug surprisingly shallow, only about two and a half feet, much to Levon's pleasure. Uncovering the remaining dirt around the coffin, Levon quickly realized why; it wasn't a coffin at all. They had made a burial vault for the man; he must have been even more important that Levon had realized. Six feet wide and eight feet long, it could take an additional day or two at least for Levon to complete this task. Throwing down his shovel, Levon crawled out of the small hole he had dug with a feeling of despair.

Ever since the disappearance of his father, Lionel, during the Djed storm last spring, Levon just hadn't felt the same. He wasn't sure if it was quite so sever as depression, but he had definitely felt more lethargic and unsociable, and he felt every ache and pain far more acutely. Even now he could feel his heartbeat in the thrumming in his arms from the exertion of digging earlier.

Deciding it was time for a break, Levon grabbed his drawing journal, a piece of charcoal, his canteen and a few dried biscuits from his rucksack and headed into the woods. It had been a long time since he had just relaxed and drew some random wildlife. Finding a good place to sit down and relax, Levon took a bite out of his biscuit and opened his drawing journal. Looking around, a nearby bird caught his eye. Studying it carefully, Levon quickly through down a rough sketch of the bird before it flew away. Now to see how well his memory would serve him.

In his initial rough sketch, Levon had got all the general body parts in the right places, including the branch the bird had been resting on. Levon began by adding onto and refining the shape of the eyes, which he remembered most vividly and were the darkest part of the bird. The feathers themselves he remember as being somewhat fluffy, something he had always struggled with drawing in the past, but as he carefully added in darker shadows and highlights he felt that he was doing at least something right today.

Levon looked upon his rendition of the bird, impressed. It was by far the best he had drawn in some time; he was particularly impressed with the detail of the talons, eyes and beak, parts he had traditionally struggled with, though he felt he had done a rather poor job catching the vibrancy of the tail and he hadn't really gotten the perspective he had been going for.

Feeling somewhat better about himself all the same, Levon glanced around for another specimen to attempt to draw. He caught site of one that looked relatively similar, though lacking the darker bands the previous one has had around the eyes. It was perched in an unusual position, and Levon quickly grabbed an outline as before.

This time, Levon put more thought into the drawing, pinpointing his light source from the top left and using his finger to carefully smudge the shading where necessary, sucking on it to clean it despite the awful taste. The angle of the wings felt awkward to him, and they were perhaps a bit too small, but it was too late to fix that now. With a final smudging on the back in an attempt to make it feel more streamlined, Levon sat back to get a proper look at his drawing.

Not as good as the first, Levon surmised. Somehow his shading always seemed to get worse with consecutive drawings; he wasn't quite sure why that was, but it was definitely something he needed to improve upon. Especially on the head and back he felt he had done poorly; the circular motions he had done to add in the shadows had left the back looking splotchy rather than streamlined, and the eyes simply looked off.

With a glance up at the sky, Levon realized it was well past time to get back to work. Packing up his supplies, careful to lay another sheet of paper over his sketches to avoid smudging, Levon headed back towards to the graveyard.