The Ravencaw Knight - Part One

The bone pale arm received the needle of the tattooists instrument with all the calm of a forgotten grave. It's gauntly owner, sitting motionless without a single gesture of pain, looked over the tattooists work beneath a crown of hair as dark as a starless midnight sky. His eyes, though veiled by shadows cast by his brow, seemed like dark burning coals glowing slightly with a pale green color. While the face that held such craven windows to the soul expressed in it all the stillness of the dearly departed. The light of the hearth made his flaxen shirt, a humble garment the color of pine leaves, seem as though it were matte black. While the color of his onyx riding pants endured the projecting dance of the hearthfire. All the regalia of a common man. Yet this was not a creature native to the grave. At least, not as the living or even the dying can understand.

The narrow room was well lit by the glow of the fire crackling on in the hearth of the back wall. The fires glow swaying against the retreating shadows that danced on every surface with the light being cast from the hearth. Amid the company of boxes of spare needles thin as strands of hair, jars of inks in many colors and hues, windowed cabinets of trinkets and produce. With the only avenues to the outside being the worn oak door, and a ripple glass window. They sat close to the fire, the tattooist and her gauntly patron. Situated well for the artist to relly on the hearth light to see her work.

"My best patron." The Askan tattooist declared with a voice reflecting the patience of a thousand years despite her enduring youth. "The others squirm, twitch, or fidgit. Not you Veornon. Never you. As still as the pure streams of the Aenu and the Reia rivers of my homeland. Calm, quiet, and ever patient." Her words flowed complimentary to her analogy. A masterful concentration disguising the rigors of her task in all the regalia of simplicity and ease as she diligently applied her needle to her patrons forearm. Applying all her skill to instilling the ink into skin to form the image of a skeletal monk holding a thick book. She wore a loose fitting embroidered red shirt without sleeves, with embroidered paterns running along the openings and down the middle of the garment. Her forearms were wrapped in linen and leather bands the color of oak. Yet her own tattoos stood out more noticably than her clothes. The fine and intricate lines that circled, interlocked, and intersected on her arms, hands, and lower legs were beautiful and expressive of the same care she now gave to the tattoo commissioned by her patron.

The deathly figure motioned his head towards the Askan tattooist, almost independently from the rest of his body. "Are you sure you're not describing yourself Yana?" Veornon asked the tattooist. His voice resembling a sound originating from somewhere between composed and troubled.

The tattooist softly laughed behind a relaxed smile beneath a mane of long beaded blonde dreadlocks. "My calm is necessary to my trade. Yours is merely the mantle you bear. That unspoken nature that shadows you with all the obsession of past mistakes." She said as she dipped her needle in the wide jar of ink as dark as Veornons hair. Her nimble tattooed fingers carefully holding her instrument. She let out a sharp whistle and a small boy, who'd kept quiet as he drew on parchment at the dining table, darted his gaze towards the tattooist. With a gesture of her finger, marked with the tattoo of a weaving spiral, she signaled the child to pry himself from his drawings and come to attention. "Bring me the wide jar from the lower shelf. One of the darker inks." She said in a soft open tone, and the boy happily ran to the back of the dwelling. "Walk. Don't trip and fall." She exclaimed only loud enough for the boy to hear her, and the boy with an identical face to the tattooist slowed down as he returned to the main room with a jar of black ink. The boy replaced the empty jar for the full one and met Veornons gaze with pure curiosity.

Veornon turned to the Askan boy with an expressionless face at first. Before long he let a reassuring smile cut across his face. The boy couldn't stop staring at Veornons eyes, entranced as he was by the pale green emanation of his irises. Nearly like a cats eyes in the dark.

"Thank you. You can go back to drawing if you want." The tattooist said to the diamond eyed boy. He nodded before running back to his drawings. Having to sweep back his short brown dreadlocks which had come unbound in his hastened movement. "That's one that needs to find his calm. If he's to take up my trade one day." She said without betraying her masterful focus on her task. "He is skillful with the drawing of the markings. Yet he must become wise in the meanings of the Marcanna if he is to mark them in the skin of others. And there are many ways to draw the Marcanna. As the Wood Elves of Tyr'na Amran taught me, I must teach him."

"He'll find that wisdom. With you as his mother, how could he not?" Veornon said with a supportive smile as the tattooist continued to stab at his skin with her needle and ink without a sign of pain from him.

The tattooist gave a light chuckle while retaining her focus. "Youth is as much a trial by distraction as it is the beginning of a journey. When one is new to the world, the world is mesmerizing. But unless the young have the guidance of elders, they'll always find themselves lost in their wanderlust. With all dooms and devils lying in wait for them." She said as she continued to apply ink to the midnight lines in Veornons skin. "And do you know why the young should listen to elders?" Veornon said nothing, but asked for an answer with a meaningful expression. "Because we made our mistakes before they had a chance to make theirs. And there's always a chance that we all may make the same mistakes others after us would. Humans know this well. It's why we have so many children."

"I thought it was to build a legacy." Veornon responded with a reminiscent weariness in his tone. "Something to outlast us once our days were done."

"Is that what your parents told you when they explained the nature of family? Or of having children?" The tattooist asked. Her hand and needle never betraying her work.

A long pause crept into the moment. Long enough to lose an entire lifetime despite it only lasting a few moments. "I can't remember anymore." Veornon replied at last. The music of sadness played by the bitter hands of old memories slipping further and further away sitting in the depth of each word. "Perhaps I've been an elder of sorts for too long." He lamented subtly. His pale green irises peering into the distant fathoms that summoned only the most forlorn sensations for him. His face couldn't express his feelings. Not as he once could. But the eyes declared the weather of his heart like the annunciation of a truth too bitter to accept. All despite the craven stillness that his eyes maintained.

The tattooist halted for but a single moment. Her diamond eyes glancing concerningly to Veornon through her fine glass spectacles in a moment that passed like the flash of lightning. In no less immediacy, she returned to the task of her trade. "Turn your arm." She said with care, urging him to turn his arm to where the wrist had been facing up. Concluding the discussion with the implicative tone a mother knows. The hour came and went as she jabbed Veornons pale skin again and again. All amid Veornons grave silence and the soft frenzy of the dance of hearth light and flickering shadows.