Welcome to Gaia! ::

The air smelled of early Spring that Saturday morning, and the salon was open for business at ten o'clock sharp. As with every weekend, many young men and women had appointments with the Desrosiers family. The youngest daughter ran the front end of the salon, with the eldest sister, mother and Caleb (the only male) being the main stylists. Caleb had finished stocking the shelves and was busying himself by sweeping out in front of the salon's entrance.

The salon itself was situated on one of Destiny City's main thoroughfares downtown, enabling the family to have a steady stream of foot traffic. Garnering business since the children were young, the salon had enjoyed a modest success thanks to word-of-mouth and social media. Not that Caleb really had any opinion on it either way - he was more than happy to have steady, gainful employment.

His charm and good looks certainly brought in their fair share of customers, as well.

The redhead looked up as the younger lady approached him, marveling at the amount of hair on her head. He preferred working with longer hair himself, seeing as there was so much more volume to play with. With a jovial smile, Caleb rested the broom on the salon’s doorframe and gave Connie a slight bow, bending at the waist. “That would be me, darling. You’re Connie, right? I remember seeing your name on our books. Welcome! Please, come inside. Would you like some tea?”

Just inside the salon was a small, clean and modern waiting area with several shelves of hair products and chairs for people to sit and read magazines. The side of the salon facing the street was most windows, allowing both people inside and people walking past to easily view each other. Caleb appreciated it mostly for the amount of natural sunlight the windows let in. Everything was so much easier with natural sunlight.

Behind the desk was another redhead, Calen’s younger sister. She was busy working on something on her small computer. She stuck her tongue out at Caleb playfully as he passed. “Lucia, this is Connie. You can mark her off the list.”

To the younger woman, Caleb whispered. “Don’t mind her, she’s always been a troublemaker.” Walking to an open chair at his preferred station, Caleb pulled out a smock for Connie to wear. “Now, I believe we’re adding tips to your hair today? What color would you like~?”

Caleb tried to contain his glee - dyeing hair was ridiculously fun for him, almost as much fun as elaborate up-dos for weddings and galas. "I'll have to lighten the ends to have it take the color you're looking for. Is that alright? If I dye it while it's still this natural color, it wouldn't look nearly as vibrant. It will also take some time, depending on how quickly your hair will lift..."

He patted the barber's chair and waited for her to sit before examining the ends of her hair. "Since I've not worked with you before, dear, I'm not sure how quickly we'll be able to lighten the ends, so... I hope you don't have anything planned for the next few hours? But your ends look healthy. No severe breakage or anything..." Connie may have even had virgin hair, great genes, an excellent hair care routine, or a combination of all three. Caleb had worked in the salon for quite a few years and had seen quite a few... distressed heads come through.

"How does that sound?"

"Ah, new in town? Where did you come from, dear? Are you liking the city thus far?" Funky hair colors were definitely trendy in Destiny City, which was a twofold boon to the salon - it kept everyone gainfully employed and allowed the family to continue to practice with new and exciting color combinations. "I'll mix up some of the bleach and we'll get started."

The product itself was somewhat blue in color, and whipped in texture. Caleb placed this mixture in a bowl on a rolling cart he'd rolled next to Connie from the back of the salon. "To keep the color vibrant, you'll want to use shampoo and conditioner made for color-treated hair. There will always be a little fading, but with proper care, the color will last a good amount of time. We have some products here I could recommend, but you're not obligated to buy what we have here..."

Caleb then went to work, sectioning Connie's thick locks into more manageable pieces using hair clips. Several pieces of tinfoil were cut and ready to keep the hair sections from sticking to one another. Applying the bleaching agent starting from the back and working forward, Caleb was efficient due to experience but the amount of hair Connie had would still take a great deal of time.

"Lucia, could you bring Connie some tea, please?" he asked, and his sister got up from the front desk to oblige. "When I'm all done painting this onto your hair to lift the color, I'll bring you a book of reds to choose from. I want to make sure it's perfect~." The hairstylist seemed quite happy, jovial even, to be working this early in the morning. One couldn't be a hairstylist without a love of hair!

The young man beamed with pride at the compliment to the salon. "Thank you! Mother worked very hard to get the money to buy the place and fix it up. We've been here for a good ten years, maybe more than that." With a nod, he returned to his work.

"What does your father do, Connie?" he had to ask. Caleb assumed something having to do with the military, but he wasn't positive that was correct. Working swiftly through her hair, most of the ends and about one third of the way up her hair was now processing in sections, covered in tin foil to keep the pieces from sticking together.

Standing back and surveying his work, Caleb seemed pleased. He had to return to the back of the salon for two more bowls of product (Connie had a lot of hair!), but three bowls total seemed to be enough. "Now we wait about twenty minutes and we'll rinse and take a look at the results..."

Twenty or so minutes later, Caleb brought Connie back to the hair washing sinks to clean her up and check the color. It was perfection. He towel-dried her hair to keep it damp, but not dripping, and walked her back to the chair to take a look at a book of hair dye samples. "Do any of these look like the coral you're looking for?"

Caleb held the book up to compare the swatch to Connie’s eyes, and indeed they were an excellent match. “Yes, yes it does. The dyeing process won’t take as long as the lifting, but I’ll still have to piece everything out. Your hair is so thick and I’d rather not have it all stick together…” With a chuckle, Caleb motioned for Connie to return to her seat so he could finish the job. He disappeared into the back of the salon to mix up some of the color he would need into the bowl. While Connie waited, people were coming into the salon for cuts and colors themselves. Caleb and his sisters weren’t the only stylists who worked here, but they’d been working there the longest.

Repeating the process of sectioning Connie’s long and thick hair, Caleb began the dye process. Painting the blonde ends first, he worked up into the natural hair color to give it a more gradiated look, rather than a stark line from one color to the next. “Ah, so your father does a little bit of everything? Changing what you do every so often really helps keep work from getting stale and boring. That’s why I like hair so much - everyone is different. Even two people from the same family don’t have the same kind of hair.”

Finishing up with the ends and wrapping each small section in tinfoil, Caleb stepped back to observe his handiwork. “Okay, this will only take a little while, then we’ll rinse out the excess and blow dry, so you can see the actual color.”

Caleb was busy either keeping Connie occupied or sweeping while they had to wait the obligatory time for the dye to set. He had a small egg timer on the counter of his station, and when it went off, he leaned the broom against the wall. They had talked about his own family, growing up with two sisters and being the middle child, learning to cut and color and style hair from an early age, Connie's schooling and her life's aspirations... the important things people talk to their hairstylists about!

Washing and rinsing the excess color was a simple process, Caleb explaining just why it was important to use shampoos and conditioners for color-treated hair to keep the color vibrant. The salon did made money from selling products on its shelves, but it was more important, he thought, to let the clientele know how to keep their hair looking its best, even if it wasn't through the use of products the salon itself sold. "Now remember, regular shampoos are fine for untreated hair because they can't strip the color. Shampoos specifically for color-treated hair are much gentler and less likely to dull your color over time. Be sure to condition the ends specifically, because the bleaching process can leave them a little dry, okay?"

He spent a good few minutes brushing and blow-drying Connie's hair so the color would be in its truest form for comparison. Spinning Connie around in the chair, he handed her a small hand mirror so she could see her reflection in the mirror behind her. "There you are! How does that look?"