Season of Summer, Day 85, 513 AV
Eighteenth Bell
Purity.
The word meant ... free from adulteration or contamination. Something that was pure did not have anything else. It did not necessarily mean good things. Some things were. Pure love. Pure sugar. Pure water. But there was also other things, like pure hate, pure salt, pure acid. And of course, there was the matter of art. What was pure art?
Jorin contemplated this as he walked slowly to the Aquarium. He had, of course, been there once before. It was the second time he'd met Rinya, the Kelvic he was bondmate to. Jorin rarely re-visited places he'd gone before, mainly because he felt that doing so rarely ever provided any new inspiration. But recently, he'd had an urge to visit old haunts. Perhaps they'd changed in the time since he'd last been there.
Looking down, Jorin sighed as he hefted his backpack a bit. The book inside shifted, along with the quills and ink. Jorin was reluctant to bring the book out very often nowadays. There was a time in the past when the book never left his side. He'd take it everywhere, writing down every poem that he thought was worthy of preserving, drawing everything he thought looked interesting.
One day was all it took.
Years of poems, and drawings, washed out with the rain. One downpour to destroy everything.
So now he was much more cautious. But the day had been good, not a cloud in the sky. Jorin had spent the morning rehersing in the Amphitheater, going over and over and over the same line. It wasn't that he was not capable of delivering a line with passion, it was just that they demanded more subtlety of emotion.
For Jorin, subtlety was all well and good but it was often too subtle for most audiences to pick up. They were too far away from the stage, those minor details such as changes in expressions too difficult to discern if not impossible. Jorin sighed. Perhaps that was the difference his stage master meant. Even if the audience did not see the emotions, didn't mean he didn't still have to portray them.
So he had practiced and practiced. It was, apparently, all about body language. The tension in the arms, the shuffling of the feet. Emotion on the stage involved the entire body, not just the face. And in order to convince, one had to believe, even if just for a chime, what one was saying.
In the end, Jorin didn't think he'd gotten it down, but it didn't matter. He'd go back tomorrow, and the day after, until he had. For now, to inspiration.
Jorin had spent all day yesterday, painstakingly taking the ruined book of poems and copying what he could, searching for any poems that might have survived the encounter with the rain. His harvest was meager, leaving only a handful of poems and none of his drawings. Still, it was better than nothing.
Today, he would find new inspiration. He'd heard that there might be new exhibits in the Aquarium that day. Even if it were not true, he'd still like to see the creatures there, and perhaps see if anything there might strike his artistic nerve again. Thinking of the book in his backpack, with its many empty pages, Jorin's face took on a grim, determined expression.
The old book was gone. The new book would be better. He'd make sure of it. With that, he strode into the aquarium.
. If there are any skills you want Nyael to gain points in such as Coral Manipulation, I'm sure Jorin would be fascinated to watch, though! And maybe jot down a poem or two while doing it.