The Ravencaw Knight - Part Two

Hours passed without a single twitch of pain or tension from Veornon. The Askan tattooist had nearly completed her work on her gauntly patrons arm. The image of a skeletal monk in a dark frock clutching a thick book. The final effort was on the face of the image. The skull peering out from pale skin. Alive only in the tattooists ink and the movements of Veornons arm.

"What was it that prompted you to anoint yourself with such an image? I can't recall if you ever said." Yana asked as her tattooists needle sewed ink into Veornons pale skin as the farmer sews their wheat for the spring season.

"I haven't yet. I hadn't given it as much thought as I should in truth. It's a kind of tribute, I suppose." Veornon answered with words carved from a glacier. Taken straight from a place in his mind that he'd rather leave abandoned by all consideration.

"To what? Or who?" Yana asked calmly. Her primary attention ever and always on the task set by her trade.

"To the one that made me as I am now. The one that came as a monk offering succor to a well meaning madman. But only gave the madman death." Veornons words carried a tone of contempt on the breath that set them forth. Whereas before, his tone had only ever been neutral and mirthless.

"How do you know it was only death this man gave?" Yana asked with a reserved curiosity. "Nearly finished."

"Because death is all I became." Veornon answered as she completed the skull monks image. Declaring the mood by which it would live on his skin forever. The icon of contempt in Veornons mind. The thing of death that took a man, and made him something else forever.

"That's funny." Yana smirked as she wiped the excess ink and light flowing blood from Veornons arm.

"How?" Veornon asked with a curiosity dressed in a tone as welcoming as winter kissed stone.

"Because I see you for more than just what many would call your... Otherness." Yana said as she placed her instruments on a pinewood tray crafted with slots and stocks to hold her needles, the needles holder, and the ink jar with a near ceremonious routine. "I see the well meaning madman. Though the madness is clearly not as present as the man himself."

"Lucky you then. In those days, it was all anyone could see. Understandably." Veornon said. Teetering towards the melancholic with a pessimistic familiarity.

Yana gave Veornons pale nose a gentle flick with her nimble finger dressed with black ink on the digit that met the knuckle. "Wrong." She said matter-of-factly. "Not understandably. Unimaginatively. The natural mistake of weak minds."

"Weak minds?" Veornon sought clarity with a neutral tone, but with a face dressed in perplexity.

"Yes. Weak minds." Yana sat upright on her cushion as the hearth light drew all focus in the room to her. "It's the fault of the weak mind to imagine nothing of anything or anyone. To simply look at things through the lenses of perspective handed to us by appealing hands without truly seeing them. They saw a madman and believed him to be less than they were. But I have known you for some time now. Since first you had me write words into your back and draw snakes along your collar bone. I know the man. I see through the madness."

"The madness was both a boon and bane to my family. Our peers argued that it was what made us." Veornon reminisced with the slightest hint of fondness.

"We are not bound by the qualities of our blood. We are bound by the choices we make. Good or ill." Yana said with confidence.

"It was blood that I chose when he found me." Veornon said as he looked on the completed tattoo. "My Otherness cleared my mind. But damned my soul. Drowned it. Deeply and ever in blood and endless nights."

"Perhaps you should learn to swim rather than drown." Yana retorted with a wry smile.

Veornon looked to the Askan tattooist. Amused as well as puzzled. The philosophical back and forth had brought them to the mood of contemplative levity. "Funny." His voice was ever monotonal. Yet smirked with gratitude. To which she smiled back, the feeling of accomplishment evident in her expression. Having rescued her patron from the ravages that were the tides of forlorn memories that he struggled to sail away from.

Both Veornon and Yana rose from their places on the floor. Leaving the cushions, the hearth, and the tattooists instruments. He held his arm out without prompting as she coated it in a salve of mixed herbs and spring water before wrapping his arm in a linen bandage. Again, without prompting. Veornon found his coin purse in the inner pocket of his oak brown longcoat darkened by time as it hung on the wall. Retrieving a gold coin, specifically, a Dekmirian Derem. "You always over pay." Yana protested at the sight of it.

"And the results always exceed my expectations." Veornon retorted through a well meaning grin.

Yana stood in silence for a moment, before sighing and holding out her hand with a reluctant acceptance. As it put a burden on her fair and professional mentality to her trade.

As the gold coin found its way into her palm. Veornon closed her hand and said "The Derem is strong right now. You'll be able to restock and have a good amount to tuck away."

"Yet this session was only worth twenty-six silver Derems." Yana protested.

"Then we'll say it's to cover the next time." Veornon attempted to put her fair mind at ease.

"Which is what you said last time." Yana protested further.

"Then I'll hold myself to this for sure when I come to you for the next tattoo." Veornon promised. To which Yana raised an eyebrow. All Veornon could give in return was an innocent smile that failed to fool Yana. "You're the only tattooist I can trust. How about we say that I'm also paying for your discretion?" Yanas eyebrow didn't budge to Veornons suggestion. A moment passed between the tattooist and her gauntly patron. Veornon, confident in his attempt to convince Yana to keep the gold coin, allowed for the silence to prompt her to think it over.

Yanas diamond eyes looked down at the coin in her hand. And after a moment of reluctant contemplation. Her eyebrow finally lowered. "Fine." She yielded as she went to the windowed cabinet near to the door to deposit the coin. "But don't have me set my professionalism aside again." She said with a turn followed by an accusatory finger pointed at Veornon. Who could do little in response by raise his hands in acceptance of her ultimatum. After seeing the desired reaction, the professional tattooist deposited the coin in a strongbox hidden in the baseboard of the cabinet. Inobvious to anyone who hadn't been informed of the strongbox' location beforehand. With a gesture the false board lifted and she surrendered the coin to a hidden hoard that would make even the treasure hungry dragons of local fables blush.

"Masterwork. As always Yana." Veornon expressed his gratitude despite the neutrality of his tone.

"Thank you." Yana gave equal gratitude before tossing her patron a palm sized jar of the same salve she applied to Veornons arm. The gauntly patron caught the free flying jar as swiftly as a high mountain wind without moving more than his arm and hand to catch it. Yana suddenly stopped in thought after she tossed the jar. "I keep forgetting. You don't need the salve more than just the once."

Veornon smiled. "It's alright. You would've had it right. Once..." Behind his pale green eyes were elusive melancholies felt for a life he now can only remember. A life left behind in the craven sweep of something other than natural. A life without living.

"You can still live Veornon. If you'd only let yourself." Yana framed her concern for her patron with words spoken in a motherly tone.

"I would think one should be of the living... in order to live a life." Veornon lamented over his circumstance with every word. Each one holding a cache of regret and contempt for the wicked will that brought this fate upon him.

"And what would you call this now? What are you doing now if not living? What can you be if not living a life?" Yana protested Veornons lamentation.

"I'd call it being Other... than living." Veornon ended the debate with the sanguine truth he'd accepted long ago. Yet had always despised. The contempt for his own existance as it was could not be seen by expression. No, to express feeling had been taken from him. In stead, it came out in the eyes. And before he could leave, Yanas son met Veornons pale green eyes with his own diamond eyes. And in the throws of the shadows kept at bay by the hearth light. Yanas son saw Veornons eyes turn from pale green, to a dark craven red shimmering from blackened pools where once had been the whites of his eyes.

In a blink, the unnatural red within black returned to pale green within white. The eyes of the man returned, where the eyes of something Other than a man had made a disheartening appearance. The Askan boy was frozen in place as though he'd suddenly become a statue. Veornon collected himself appoligetically. "All-Father watch over you Yana. And your son." Veornon expressed his regret in the tone of his farewell.

And as the tired Birchwood door creaked shut behind Veornon. Yana walked over to her son, reassuring him with a loving hand on his shoulder. As she wrestled with the unsettled feeling she had with Veornon that she often has to set aside in her own mind. A primal feeling. The sensation of danger, when in the proximity of predators. A sensation not many humans remember anymore. But would often give all they have and more to obtain, when faced with the fearful contemplation of what else waits in the dark beside shadows and cold winds.