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 Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 11:06 pm
 It had started with a clockwork peacock.
Weeks had passed since he'd received the request, yet Faris could still hardly believe anyone would desire such a flamboyant creature to be fashioned anew for the sole purpose of entertainment. Admittedly, it hadn't seemed like a bad idea from the outset, the sheer grace of the proposed bird far outweighing the fact that it would be ornamental, able to waddle and squawk and little else. His initial excitement for his first official commission had dwindled quickly from there, the task proving to be more trouble than the price he'd quoted was worth. It was all minute gears and sleekly arranged plating that fought to hold up the weight of ungainly, metallic feathers, suffocating under its own mass. Every inch of plumage had been painstakingly carved, designs scrolled into curved stretches that sliced like scimitars, a lesson he had learned early on when the palm of his hand unwittingly slipped along an edge. The wound had sealed nearly instantaneously, skin bridging the gap his carelessness had opened long before he would have thought to swaddle it in gauze; but the shallow scar still twinged whenever he was forced to reach for one of the monstrous pinions, even after he'd rounded their bladed sides to a dull finish.
All of that might have been forgiven, had the blasted thing held together like it was supposed to. Twice he had arranged it to near completion, and twice it had crumpled like a gilded circus tent, shivering and clinking to a halt. The third time was supposed to be the charm, but he knew before he had it fully assembled that it was doomed to failure. There was something off in his figures, in all his careful measurements, so slight and yet so damning. It had to have been obvious, but he couldn't see it, the one tiny flaw that rendered his clockwork masterpiece an inanimate heap.
Faris sat beside the clutter for a few moments longer, absently tracking the loose screws as they rolled across the tabletop. The bird's gemmed eyes were dim, its elegant neck twisted at an unnatural angle that had his stomach clenching as tightly as his fists. He felt the ever-simmering frustration at the base of his spine frothing upward into his chest, expression darkening by degrees. It was the beginnings of a terrible surrender, mere seconds separating this version of him from the one that would pitch the heavy clockwork figure against the nearest wall, effectively dismantling the whole construct. He knew the steps well, knew the sensations raking him in a sequence as familiar as breathing. The fit was already shaking in his hands by the time he snatched at his pelt, the musky scent of it rolling over him in a wave. He roughly settled the bone mask over his face, and the red lake swimming against his vision was muted by the eyeholes. It did not calm him immediately, but it allowed him the excuse to escape from his workshop, practically fleeing outdoors while tamping down on his temper. No, he instructed himself firmly. He would not be riled, not now, and certainly not over a bird with more bulk than structural sensibility.
His shoes tapped lightly against the cobblestones as he surged out into the alley, gaze sweeping the area out of habit. The fresh air helped when it flowed into strangely constricted lungs, the near empty state of the street soothing to agitated senses. He focused temporarily on the seams of the nearest building, on unfurling his fingers one by one in a countdown, pulling himself back from the precipice. Once he was certain that his control was in no danger of slipping, he calmly ducked out from beneath the eaves, stride brisk despite its aimlessness. The issue of the clockwork peacock did not fade from his thoughts, but it was wrapped in insulating layers, purposefully distancing himself from the failure it represented. If he could examine it without having it tear at him with its artificially shaped beak, he stood a better chance of finding where he kept going wrong.
Faris' hushed steps inevitably led him out into one of the busier intersections, narrowly avoiding a collision with a street vendor when a flicker of white laced over black appeared in the corner of his eye.  the vulture-headed Person snapped as he held out a feather-laden arm to defend his wares, the sharp spike of his script nearly illegible, though the sentiment was clear enough. Holding up his hands in a placating gesture, the Tiger murmured a distracted apology before vanishing around a corner, not about to engage if he could help it. Internally, he was already berating himself for being inattentive, picking one of the very few places where the bustle of beings prevented him from thinking and walking simultaneously. Coming to a decision, he slipped headlong into another alleyway, picking a particularly complicated network of interconnecting avenues for their bareness more than anything.
Night had officially fallen by the time he reemerged onto the main street, the deepening of the shadows as great an indicator as any, and he paused to take stock of his surroundings. He was still safely in Eyncastor, its relatively narrow walkways and the haphazardly strewn metal shavings between the cobblestones granting him his bearings in short order. The crowds had emptied back into their homes, only the mellow late night handful of starving artists and equally hungry metalworkers remaining. Flute music echoed solemnly from somewhere nearby, though the player was not immediately visible. Something in him relaxed microscopically, and the Child picked his way along the street, stare slanted toward the ground while his brain buzzed. When he found a café with outdoor seating, he sank into an iron wrought chair on the periphery, hoping the server would ignore him while he sorted through his contemplations without the danger of potentially walking into people. He couldn't afford to dine out just now, anyway, calloused fingers nudging the few scattered coppers occupying his pockets, the remainder of the month's rent and all he had to live on until that hateful little avian project panned out. He nearly had it, he was sure. He just needed to process everything with a cool head and no interruptions.
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Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 12:04 am
Unfortunately, interruptions were nearly Myopia's specialty. Nightfall meant it was time for the moth man's hour or so of regularly-paying work; it was difficult for anyone to notice when it actually started to happen, as the process was subtle and gradual, but Myopia had attuned himself to the dimming of the sky. Not to say he was never occasionally late, though surprisingly never by more than a minute or two. Punctuality was, after all, the happy (and less popular!) medium between "fashionably early" and "fashionably late". This evening found him engrossed in penning a rather impassioned article on the driver's cap, and how truly cheap those who wore it appeared. The sky had already darkened several shades before Myopia's fiery thoughts cooled to a point where he felt he could safely set his quill aside. He still had several more days anyway before the proposed deadline set by the fashion periodical who had expressed interest in the piece. Besides, wandering around Eyncastor in the evening was a perfect time to do further research, he reminded himself as he fetched his lamplighting pole, ignited the end in his fireplace, and set out to illuminate the plaza. Different people sort of rotated through the various establishments during the course of the day, and the man with moth antennae found many of the most agreeable sorts in the evenings. He could light his lamps and watch them all, and usually the street seating was sparsely populated enough by the time he was finished that Myopia had little trouble at all edging his way into the circle of whomever seemed the most interesting. Tall spiral horns rather stood out in the crowd; Myopia spotted the Book Child with the bone mask almost immediately when he entered the plaza, and watched carefully which restaurant he chose to patronize. He took care not to stare as he finished placing flames in each of the lamps, but, well, the fellow did seem decidedly lost in thought. And the fur he wore was almost impossible not to stare at. When the square was properly lit for public safety against the fully-fallen darkness, Myopia extinguished his tool and tucked it under one arm as he made his way back to where the Book Child he had spotted earlier was still seated. Still with only a menu and a glass of water, too, he noted, as he took a seat facing the stranger at an adjacent table. "  ", he inquired casually, wasting no time to strike up conversation. Myopia opened his own menu as he awaited the reply, but his attention remained on the Book Child.
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Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 12:07 am
He had all but missed the waitress coming by, the glass and the menu both sitting untouched and unacknowledged while his gaze firmly situated itself somewhere in the middle distance. The Book Child traced numbers and calculations into the air with his fingers, the abstracted motions thankfully hidden under the tabletop as he picked them apart and rearranged them in a steady sequence, half-heartedly hoping that a simple transcribing issue was the core of his problem. It wasn't unheard of, and he was hardly so proud as to deny that he occasionally got a bit ahead of himself when working late into the night, forsaking sleep to meet the deadlines he'd set ahead of time. Shadowed lips moved slightly beneath the protrusion of his mask's tusks, silently reciting alongside the imaginary formulas. A faint shake of his head confirmed nothing had been found yet, blind to the way his internal absorption guided his body. Still, he lingered longer on the details with a stubborn certainty, knowing the devil was in them somewhere, hiding out and waiting to be found.
Black lettering flowed directly into his line of sight, the loose saunter of it practically winding around his face, forcing his focus outward. The disruption wrecked the consistency of the numbers he’d been keeping track of, and a spike of irritation pierced his hard palate and flooded his brain, gestures stilling as his hand curled into claws. Apparently, someone was trying to get his attention at the cost of his work, unwittingly or otherwise. Faris glanced up sharply to find the speaker, dark sockets partially obscuring where his gaze landed. A few confused seconds passed while he skimmed the faces of those nearby, alighting finally on the antennae-bearing Person, partially because of the expectant look he was aiming his way. The Tiger sat straighter in his chair, burning off the annoyance before it could fully take hold, shunting the remainder elsewhere for a time. This was no one he knew, just a passerby friendly or bored enough for idle chatter, someone who had selected the least practical partner for the exercise.
But the question seemed innocuous enough, even when he had to pull together his scattered recollections to answer. Was the service slow? He didn't know how long he'd been sitting, taking in the water that had materialized at his elbow with a measure of surprise. A while, it seemed. "Somewhat," he answered quietly, shifting his feet under the chair and resettling his hands above the table, examining them more closely than he did the Person. Part of him was strongly inclined to return to his previous line of thought, continuing to crunch numbers and consider the efficacy of alloys, judging necessities versus flourishes. The other half warned that it was impolite to dismiss someone who had opened up a potential dialogue, and that he'd been naïve to assume he might be left to his own devices for long, especially in such a crowded area. That didn't mean he had anything prepared to follow up on the remark, gaze scouring the other for hints. His face was more or less youthful, but that meant little in Library City, and wasn't much to go on, anyway. Faris' gaze slipped across his clothing without grasping much, dubiously deciding it appeared well-cared for as he absently noted the tailcoat, the billowing sleeves and the riot of pinstripes. He stopped when he spied the pole leaning against the other's table, and it took only a second to recognize it as a lamplighter's livelihood, still breathing traceries of fine smoke into the air.
"You're a lamplighter, then," he offered lamely, not quite framing it as a question. It didn't help that the cadence of the words was too slow to indicate proper interest, and he winced beneath his mask when he heard it; an admirable try, if not exactly passable. He'd been cooped up with that confounded bird too long to remember the protocol here. Did he thank him for his commitment to civic duty? From what he understood, it was a paid post, but only by a small margin.
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Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:24 pm
"I am," Myopia replied with pride, lifting the instrument of his craft and extinguishing the threads of smoke from the business end with a few more hand flourishes than were strictly required for the magic. He had, truthfully, forgotten to put the thing out, but decided he may as well look like he had been saving the task just for now on purpose.
He studied the stranger's features with curiosity that might have bordered on rude, though the City Man was merely interested in the artistic merit of the Child's attire. All of the Book Children fascinated him, with their rare colors - novelties, each and every one, who, in Myopia's mind, would never go out of style so long as the rest of the City Folk remained their shadowy selves.
The quiet following his reply stretched on to the point of awkwardness, perhaps augmented by the lamplighter's antennae indicating his full attention on the Book Child. He wanted to inquire about materials (was the mask true bone, could he touch the fur on his shoulders, had he done the embroidery on the silks himself, and so on), but it still seemed a bit premature in the conversation. The topic for now was professions, and Myopia decided then to follow that thread a bit further:
"And what is it you do, sir? If you have found your niche yet here in the City?" His stance then became more relaxed, and he leaned back in his outdoor chair of curling wrought iron - lacking in weathering as there was no weather here to age the metal - and rested one arm on the table.
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