Solo The Space Between the Stars

[Taurina]

3rd bell of the 16th of Fall 516

Daunting blank pages stared up at the Ethaefal. It was hot and uncomfortable out, even without Syna’s rays bearing down on everything. Leth’s light did not bring cooling air or relief from the seemingly never ending heat. Taurina wasn’t quite tired of it, but she had begun to wonder when it was going to end. Surely the heat could not last forever and it would eventually give up, right? Taurina was unsure and was left uncomfortable body and soul as a result.

A groan formed in the Eth’s throat as she ran fingers through crimson hair a over golden horns, trying to bring herself some relief. The humid air stuck to her body like a glove that could not be taken off. She had tried not many days ago to find relief in a spot of water not too far away, it had worked well enough, but there was no way she was going out into the Sea of Grass alone again. Let alone at night. It was just too risky. It felt much safer among the pavilions full of Drykas who knew what they were doing. Taurina braided her hair sloppily around her head, getting it up off her neck. It wasn’t a great job and the horns (despite her love of them) made it harder to get the result she wanted, but it did the job well enough.

“That’s a little better,” Taurina muttered to herself, trying to remember to use her pavi even when just talking to herself. She needed to practice that and get out of the habit of slipping into common so often. The language of these people had come naturally to her right after her fall, but after three years it felt foreign and clumsy on her lips. Somewhat like the name she would never be able to say in this form. Her tongue just wouldn’t create the right shapes and her vocal chords refused to make those sounds. It was frustrating at time to not be able to say her true name, to not be able to speak the language she’d learned in Leth’s realm. Taurina forced those unhelpful and useless thoughts away as she picked up her stick of charcoal.

The night was Taurina’s time to herself. The city was more peaceful and quiet than it was during Syna’s reign, most asleep and dreaming. Taurina was one of the few who spent her nights awake and active, finding it to be a good time to become acquainted with her surroundings as well as practice.

Taurina pulled at a blade of grass, pulling it between her fingers and twisting it gently around her charcoal as she thought about what to create next. The blade of grass was quick to break which caused the Eth to abandon it as she pulled her journal into her lap. She had been practicing her work, taking tips from Jarrora when she could get them and studying the various works in the Lilacwind Pavillion when she had the time.

The blade of grass Taurina learned to create not long ago had been honed more and she had gotten to the point where she no longer needed to trace to get her lines the way she wanted them. She had grown more creative with it, using varying shapes to give her different effect. She found if she bent her lines in certain ways than the grass would look like it was being blown in that direction. If she created multiple blades of grass next to each other in varying directions it looked as though there was a patch of grass. When that patch was put under the stem of a flower -even a poorly drawn one- it made it look like more of scene rather than just one object or the other stuck on a page for no obvious reason.

Taurina was proud of the progress she had been able to make and was excited that she now got to learn from others. She assumed that she could only grow from where she was at and she was determined to do just that. The sketches she had drawn were important to her and she wished to make them better, to eventually get to the level the others were at. The art was also way to express herself and something to do in the dead hours of the night when no one was around. It was good for her and better yet, she enjoyed it enough to keep doing it.

[Taurina]

The stars were always so bright up there in the night sky beside Leth. Taurina did not know much about them, just some basic knowledge along with the fact that she liked them and they were lights amongst the darkness of the sky. While it had been cloudy during the day, there were only a few clouds now and they were the thin kind that didn’t block the view of the sky. Taurina could get a clear view as she lay down in the grass which was something that pleased her. She enjoyed being able to look and get lost amongst the stars. Especially when it was so hot that moving was practically entirely out of the question.

Taurina’s charcoal and journal had been discarded to the grass beside her, the ideas that had come to her mind not being ones she was pleased with. Stargazing felt like a much better use of time, even if it was more of a waste of time than anything else. The humid air made her not mind wasting time so much. Did it really matter anyway?

The Eth raised a hand in front of her face and decided to try something to cool herself off. She still wasn’t great at it, even with the stranger who had tried to help her not many days ago. Taurina focused to draw out some of her slightly luminescent, somewhat moon colored res. It was never much for she was terrified of overgiving. The one who initiated her had not been a very good teacher, in fact she did not really teach Taurina anything at all. Taurina had been warned that overgiving was unpleasant and a common ailment of magic usage when one tried to do too much before they were ready. Never having it properly explained to her, Taurina rarely dared to go past little miza sized spheres when it came to playing with her magic. Never too many at a time either, she had no idea how much or how little it would take to start feeling the effects of the overgiving.

The little sphere with some concentration turned into a wobbling ball of water. It didn’t last long before it slipped from her grasp. The small droplet of water fell down until it hit her face and broke across her cheek. Taurina tried not to grow frustrated as she reached up and brushed the liquid away, feeling just the slightest bit of relief from the humidity in that one spot. The Eth sighed before grabbing up her journal and deciding it best to just focus on that. Reimancy was too frustrating to focus on for the time being.

Taurina flipped through the pages of her journal. Lately most of her sketches were poor imitations of the art she had seen at the Lilacwind Pavillion. Her work had given her an almost unlimited access to beautiful art and endless ideas. People came in wanting many different things for their Windmarks. The only thing that was consistent among most everyone is that the marks represented them in some way. A piece of them was taken out of hiding and inked upon their skin. Taurina found the process immensely interesting and was glad to get to be apart of it.

The Eth stopped on a particular page in her book. It was a sketch done of her own Windmarks. She had taken two mirrors and struggled to angle them just right so she could get the best view of the marks winding up her back. The imitation she had drawn was poor, but she had felt it important. These marks were apart of a life she only had glimpses of and a life she wanted to know more about. As she was learning about the marks, the importance they carried and the way they represented the people who bore them, she began to wonder of herself. Who had she been in that life? Did her marks reflect that person and the bond she had had with the strider she had seen in her earthbound form’s memories?

[Taurina]

The sketch of her Windmarks reminded Taurina of the wind. They were swirled and moved up the curves of her back. The sketch hardly did the work justice. While they could do with a touch up, they were still bold and fairly clear. The work had been done well and the artist had been knowledgeable. Taurina felt her two dimensional sketch of the work inked upon her other form fell flat, but it had been the best she could do. Mostly she had had to sketch from memory of what she’d seen in the mirrors. There was enough missing that the puzzle pieces she had wished to fit together weren’t matching up. There had to be more than just curls of wind. There had to be a purpose, a shape to it, a reason for the design of her Windmarks. She didn’t believe that in that life she had not brought importance and meaning into the marks tattooed upon her skin.

Taurina further studied her sketch, but found it to be too poor of a representation to trust. There had to be something missing and since she couldn’t find it, it would have to wait till a later date. Perhaps when another set of eyes could help her get it right. Taurina flipped once more through the pages, looking for a blank one. It did not take long for there to be blank page staring up at her and the Eth sighed. She folded the binding of her book over so there was only one page before her and then she turned it on its side so she had more room.

The Eth ran her teeth over her bottom lip, thinking of what to draw. What would not be too hard, but more challenging than the blade of grass had been? Once more Taurina looked around her for inspiration. Her gaze landed on the sky once more. It was dark, the light of the stars and moon the only sign of color on it. Without those things, Mizahar would truly be thrown into darkness when Syna fell beneath the horizon. Taurina’s gaze fell to the moon, Leth, her god. A beckon of light amongst the darkness.

The discarded charcoal was picked up once more and Taurina began, trying to figure out exactly how to make this work. She wanted a dark backdrop with spots of light like the stars and the moon in the sky. “Hmm..” was her outward sound of thought as she began at one side of the blank page. Carefully, she shaded the top of the page so it turned a light grey color. The band of light grey ended about one fifth of the way down. With a feather light touch, Taurina began adding in where she was going to want her lighter colors to be. First she began with the moon which she thought was going to be the easiest.

What Taurina did not account for was that circles are harder to form perfectly than most anything else. Just one side into it and she was already unsatisfied. If she had continued with her line it would have ended up in a more lopsided oval shape which was not what she had been going for. Instead of continuing her line, Taurina changed course. The moon did not have to be a full one. The Ethaefal solved her problem by shaping the phase of the moon known as the gibbous phase, where it was almost full but not quite yet and it had that sort of oval shape rather than being a perfect circle. Taurina gave the lower side of her moon a less defined line so that it would more easily faded in with the the background rather than stand out or collide with it.

Satisfied with the outcome, Taurina moved onto where she wanted her stars to be. She still used a feather light touch as she applied her charcoal, only wanted to put down a vague template to follow rather than very defined lines. As she learned with the grass, one could always add later, but it was harder to take away something once it was already done.

[Taurina]

Taurina struggled with the stars. She wanted the shapes to be accurate, but when she looked at the sky all she could see was the beauty rather than the shapes she was looking for. The balls of light sparkled and sometimes flickered, looking sometimes like bursts of light and other times just like spheres. Some were bigger, some were smaller, and some were brighter while others were more dull. They were all different which made representing them hard. Taurina was also not satisfied with the sharpness of her charcoal, it was not getting things as precise as she wanted them to be. Like with the grass again, things were not as simple as they appeared.

Taurina did her best to create scattered shapes across her page. She did her best to mimic the bursts of light bringing life to the sky. She created circle like shapes that dented in various times so that they looked more like bursts rather than circles. It was time consuming because she wanted things just so and she didn’t want to have to start over. This creation was more of a mural than just a simple sketch. It would be too bothersome to start over again if she messed up. So Taurina made sure she was satisfied with her work before moving on to the next thing.

Once the shapes of her stars looked good enough, Taurina began shading in the rest of her space. It was once again just light grey in color for the time being. When she got near her moon or any of the stars, Taurina was especially careful. She kept her charcoal tilted to the side rather than on the tip of the point, using the shading technique she had discovered not long ago. Around the less defined side of the moon she blended it some with the background. It gave the effect of that side of the moon not being there and being part of the background, but there was no sharpness about it so it felt more natural instead of fake.

Taurina used the tip of her charcoal to touch up her stars, bringing them out and adding definition to them. She wanted to add dimension and realism to them, but she wasn’t quite sure how to do that. Her stars were not going to shine like the real ones in the sky. They were not going to sparkle or fade in and out. They would remain stationary, unmoving, not flickering. The price of a sketch rather than the real thing. Taurina sighed at the thought as she went back in to make the grey area darker.

The Eth continued this process of making the grey area darker and trying to make the stars stand out more. She outlined them all with careful lines, taking so much time that the stars in the sky were beginning to disappear. Syna would rise soon and she’d have to work from memory if she wished to finish before the following night. Another sigh escaped Taurina as she looked down at her work. The stars did not look right, they were not bright enough. The dark outlines surrounding them had not added to their brightness like she wanted, but instead took away from it. She realized too late that despite being careful, she had overwhelmed her little white stars. There was only hope left for her moon.

Discouraged, Taurina shaded her moon to be a light grey. Since the moon wasn’t truly white, but more of a grey white that seemed like it would work. Her background now was dark, her stars looking like little specks of white amongst the overwhelming darkness. She had successfully blended in the lower side of the moon which was one thing to be proud of. The only thing Taurina was proud of in this sketch. The Eth used her light touch to bring some more shading to the moon and draw out some shapes that were on it. After all, the moon wasn’t just flat or perfect, it had crevices and flaws on it too.

Syna was too near, Taurina knew she would not be able to finish it. She did not want to see the sketch in the sun’s light either. It would probably look worse under Syna’s bright rays of golden heat. Taurina sighed and closed her journal, the charcoal stick carefully placed between the pages. There would be things to do when morning came and Endrykas woke, she could not just sit here and focus on this all day. So the Ethaefal got up and moved towards her tent that she had not strayed far from. Once inside, she placed her journal with her other things to be returned to at a later date. The stars would come back and so would Leth and when they did, Taurina was determined to get it right.

[Khida]

Taurina

Skill	Points
Cosmetology	+1
Observation	+2
Reimancy	+1
Sketching	+5

• Cosmetology: a simple braid
• Overgiving: mysterious but surely unpleasant
• Reimancy: cooling droplets of water
• Reimancy: producing small spheres of res
• Sketching: blending a gradient of shades
• Sketching: captures a fixed moment
• Sketching: curves imply motion
• Sketching: an imperfect circle
• Sketching: leaving negative space
• Sketching: light touch for light shades
• Sketching: multiple shapes make a scene
• Sketching: strong outlines stand out

Notes

A neat little exercise in drawing something more complicated than it might seem. I definitely empathize with the difficulty in deciding what to draw... and circles, too.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade. Also, please edit your request to show this thread has been graded.