In the beginning Yrmellyn Cole thought the dizziness and general weakness she felt was just common tiredness. It was Ashan, and the return of the daylight always made her feel a bit tired. During Cylus her late evenings out in the taverns of Andaris had been followed by dark mornings and the painter had been able to sleep as long as she needed. But now the mornings were light and she woke up early. It was logical to her to assume this was the reason for not feeling well.
When she woke up this morning she just wanted to stay in the bed, but she was low on money and knew she needed to finalize a painting of a rich merchant’s favorite horse in order to bring in some nels. Despite not feeling well, Yrmellyn forced herself to get up, dress and gather the things she needed for the job. Her limbs felt heavy and she dressed slowly, feeling slightly dizzy all the time.
Well, Cole, no more nights out for you for a while she thought to herself. Stay at home. Save your nels. Paint your pictures and read up about the alchemy to find out more ... isn't this what you should do instead of singing and drinking wine in taverns?
Yrmellyn looked at the bread and fruit on the table. Normally she would have eaten it as breakfast, but she didn't feel hungry at all this trial. The mere thought of making a fire to roast bread and boil water to make tea actually made her feel a bit ... reluctant to even think of it.
I'll eat later. Water ... water is enough right now. I'll get that horse painted and afterwards I'll eat something somewhere. This thought felt so right. She was relieved that she had solved the issue and managed to avoid the imagined feeling of yesterday's bread growing in her mouth, impossible to swallow.
The painting kit with the brushes, the pigments and all the other essentials for painting were spread out on part of the table and also on the chairs, as Yrmellyn had tried out some interesting new ideas yesterday evening before going to bed. She had left everything laying around, as she had all of a sudden felt so tired that she must go to bed at once.
She just stared at the mess for a moment before she started to put everything in the right places in the kit. It felt like it took painfully long time, but she had to do it. When she finally was done, she put the kit in the backpack and folded the easel. For a moment she thought of strapping the easel to the backpack, but it struck her that it could be nice to use the easel as a walking stick this day. She felt more stable when she held on to the easel and leaned on it a little bit.
She was ready to go. Walking slowly in order to counter the feeling of being dizzy she went out and headed to the paddock where her motif was kept.
Last edited by Yrmellyn Cole on Mon Oct 15, 2018 9:39 am, edited 6 times in total. word count: 532
When Yrmellyn came to the paddock after a slow walk through Andaris, she was sweating and breathed as if she had run a long distance. She took off the backpack, settled down on a large rock and watched the flock of horses inside the steady fence of grey wood. The large paddock was adjacent with the stable on one side. As it early was in Ashan, the grass had not begun to grow yet and the animals were gathered around a few hay bales under a simple shelter that consisted only of corners and a roof. The atmosphere was peaceful.
There was a tree next to the stone she sat on. Yrmellyn took off the jacket and hung it over a branch. Immediately she started to freeze a bit, but it felt better to be somewhat too cold than to be a little too hot. She had no idea which of the horses was her motive for the day, but she had been told that a servant would come and help her with the horse. The client would also provide her with a prepared paint canvas tucked on a thin and light frame of wood. Yrmellyn used to make it a condition that the customer would stand for the material, to ensure that she wouldn’t suffer any financial loss if the customer would withdraw from the agreement. In return, she would work with the painting until the customer was satisfied.
After waiting for a while, it struck her that the canvas might already be in the stables and that a stable hand might be waiting for her to announce her arrival. She stood reluctantly from the stone and went to investigate the matter. On the short side of the sturdy half-timbered building, she found a door. She pulled it up, but the intense smell of horse and dung that struck her made her feel sick, so she did not go in."Greetings," she shouted. "Is anyone there?" Nobody answered. The stable seemed empty.
Yrmellyn went back to the big stone and sat down again. She felt a bit annoyed by having to wait, but as an artist she was used to it. Wealthy people who could afford to buy paintings used to see her as a sort of servant or craftsman who had to wait until it suited them to show up. Sometimes they did not come at all, but skipped appointments without regard to how they wasted Yrmellyn's time. It could even be almost impossible to meet some people, for example as it had been with the university professor she had painted a portrait of in Vhalar last year. Doran Thethys. As always, when she thought of that man, it was impossible not to think of how they had ran into each other on the street in Cylus and went to the alchemy laboratory in the university to analyze a potion she had bought.
It had seemed like a wonderful stroke of luck and eventually, in the lab, the extraordinarily attractive man had even been a hairsbreadth from kissing her. Then, right before their lips would have met, her inner spark of magic had flared up and given her a creepy vision of how his eyes changed color and became orange red like burning fire. Yrmellyn assumed that she had been affected by the vapors from the alchemy prints they had attempted to analyze. It was the logical explanation, but the intuition and magic whispered in her interior and told her that everything was not as it seemed to be and for a moment she had spanned a deeper layer of reality and seen something monstrous hiding behind the professor's seemingly perfect persona. She had left the lab and never seen the man again. As far as she knew he had left the city.
Auntie Vilda, who had given Yrmellyn a poor education in the Rharne's poor quarter had not had any formal knowledge to offer beyond the basics of reading, writing and simple everyday maths. The woman had in return possessed a huge amount of street wisdom and an impressive experience of a lifetime in the city's poorer social layers. "To be completely without flaws and above all reproach isn’t human" Vilda had taught the young girl. "Everyone has unpleasant sides as well as pleasant. Be careful, therefore, with overly perfect people who only show you a continually flawless surface, because perfection is always a lie by default. A constantly smiling face can even evil hiding under a beautiful mask. Think carefully when you are dealing with those who call themselves perfected..."
Yrmellyn had her shut her eyes and lost herself in thoughts, but now the sound of horse hooves and wagon wheels made her turned halfway around where she sat on the stone, and look towards the entrance of the stable to see what was happening.
Last edited by Yrmellyn Cole on Wed Nov 01, 2017 9:40 pm, edited 6 times in total. word count: 816
It took a surprising amount of effort for Yrmellyn to compose herself and get to her feet, when a man who was modestly dressed in dark grey stepped down from an open hackney-coach and shouted out at her “Yrmellyn Cole? The painter?”
“It’s me” she shouted back to him. “Greetings!”
The man turned around, reached into the coach and pulled out a rectangular object the size of a medium big painting. As the man was obviously there to meet her she assumed the object was the prepared canvas on a wooden frame she had requested that her client must provide. The man held in front of him as carefully as a mother carries a newborn baby, and walked over to her at slow pace. When he stopped in front of her she noted that all his garments, boots and jacket as well as shirt and trousers were made of the kind of “upper common quality” often used by servants who needed to look proper but not too flashy.
“This is for the painting” he said, handing the canvas to her very carefully.
“Thanks.”
The canvas was wrapped in a piece of cheap cloth, which Yrmellyn promptly started to remove. Feeling dizzy, but determined, she put the canvas on the easel. “And you are ...?” she asked while she adjusted the easel so she would be able to sit down on the big stone while she was painting.
“Jim Beck.”
The man gave her a faint smile which didn’t seem to come easily to him. He didn’t offer any information about who had sent him here or his own position. Yrmellyn hesitated a little bit, but decided to ask him.
“I guess you were sent here by my client? Do you know who’s going to help out with the horse? I went to the stable to see if I could find someone but it seems empty.”
“What?” The man’s voice took on an annoyed tone. “Empty? A stable hand should always be working there!”
“I couldn’t find anybody.”
The painter spoke softly, as she didn’t want to be pulled into the angry rant the man seemed about to launch. She sat down on the stone, because she felt like she was going to start to shiver. She was actually freezing.
“I’ll’ go and have a look!”
Jim Beck walked over to the stable. Yrmellyn watched him enter and heard him shout inside the building. Then he came out again and walked back to her, his hands fisted and his steps brisk. The expression on his face was controlled but for painter with a lot of experience of reading faces Yrmellyn could easily see that he was angry.
No need to ask, he hadn’t found anybody in there.
“So.” The calm in his voice sounded strained. “I guess I will have to help out with the horse myself.”
Yrmellyn nodded and waited. She didn’t know what to say so she busied herself with opening her painting kit and making preparations as she had a feeling that it was best to look like she was working even if she hadn’t really been able to start yet. She took her time. Hopefully her angry temporary company would just get into the paddock and fetch the animal so she could start at her task. He did however just stand there like he was waiting too.
“I’m ready to begin to paint as soon as the horse is brought here” she said, still speaking softly in order to not sound demanding.
“Oh yeah. The horse.”
Jim Beck didn’t seem eager to fetch the horse, but Yrmellyn abstained from telling him to get on with it. He represented her client. She would leave it to him to decide what he would do, fetch the motif so she could paint it, or postpone the job to another day. If the job would be postponed and the client would get angry she didn’t want to be accused for breaking a contract.
If the conditions would be changed it wouldn’t be her doing. Let the right man be blamed.
A few trills passed in silence and then Jim Beck walked over to the paddock without comments, grabbed a halter hanging on a hook on the fence, opened the gate and went in. The grazing horses ignored him as he approached them. Yrmellyn saw him single out a dapple-grey horse and start to put the halter on it. For a moment everything seemed to work out just fine, but then the horse suddenly reared and moved away from the man. An odd dance of man and skittish horse followed, when Beck went after the rearing and dodging animal who seemed bent on not getting caught. Soon enough the horses upset neighs were accompanied by an onslaught of shouted threats and swearing from the unsuccessful man.
Yrmellyn got to her feet and went to lean on the fence.
“Don’t just stand there! Come in and help me catch it!”
There. Two could play the game of blame. Now the fault would be hers if she refused to help out and this made it impossible for her to fulfill her part of the contract. Yrmellyn needed the money so she did as Jim Beck told her. The client, or their representative, was always right, even when they were wrong. Though the painter wasn’t formally running a business but just freelancing, she still needed to think the business way, if she wanted commissions.
“Coming” she shouted back, as she entered the paddock.
She was freezing and a shiver went up her spine. Suddenly it occurred to her that she had a fever. Come to think of it, some of the children at the orphanage event the other day had seemed unwell.
Last edited by Yrmellyn Cole on Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:23 pm, edited 2 times in total. word count: 975
The horse seemed bent on avoiding Jim Beck and Yrmellyn Cole at all cost. At one point when Beck nearly managed to catch it, the animal reared and tried to stomp at him. After chasing the animal in vain for while the painter and the servant were tired and angry. Jim Beck started to rant about how this failure could very well cost him his job, for the sake of a bloody horse. There was nothing special with the horse, in his opinion, except for being a particularly stubborn animal.
“It would be better to make sausages of it!” Beck was working himself up to rage. “Any of the horses here in the paddock could be used for a painting, but he must choose that one!”
The horse kept a vary eye at them from a distance.
Shivering with fever now, the painter felt it was time to strike a deal. Now or never. She needed to make the painting while she was still able to do it. Yrmellyn knew she must take charge of the situation. Beck had seemed to feel like the leader of their little team when they were in the paddock, but she she figured he would be happy to let someone else take over now when everything had derailed. Typical. But she could exploit it by taking lead, and so she did.
“You don’t want to have to explain yourself and perhaps lose your job. I don’t want to lose the money for his commission. If we collaborate ... who would know if we use another horse as the motif, and I just paint it in that silver speckled color of that oh so very special horse over there?”
Silence descended over the paddock. The painter waited, worried that she had said too much, but then Jim Beck pointed at a docile brown mare who stayed on the same spot all the time while they had been chasing after the energetic stallion. “That horse is actually special” he said, grim resolution in his voice. “It’s the most special horse in this paddock, in terms of being collaborative. An intelligent horse. It should be better with a painting of an intelligent horse than a painting of a ... monster.”
“Yes. You are right. A servant can be more intelligent than their employer.”
“Yeah. It's not forgery. Not really, as it will be a horse on the picture. You have seen the right one and that's the one you will paint. This one is just a model.” Beck straightened up a bit. “Let’s do this. You paint the nice mare here, and color it like the evil stallion, my employer get a special portrait, I keep my job and you get your money. We both keep our mouths shot and everybody are happy.”
“Deal.” Yrmellyn was immensely relieved that they had found a solution.
Beck led the brown mare to the place Yrmellyn pointed out. She sat down on the big stone again, and painted a horse looking just like ... a horse. It was the mare, just dapple gray instead of brown and perhaps a bit exaggerated in size in order to look as impressive as the customer was likely to want it to look. She worked with oil crayons instead of wet paint, as this was a job she must get finished here and now. Coming back to the place of this small scale crime wasn’t an option.
She finished the painting and wrapped it in the cloth the prepared canvas had come in, while Beck happily let the mare back into the paddock, made a rude gesture towards the silver shimmering stallion and returned to Yrmellyn to pay her and pick up the paining. Yrmellyn took the wages, grateful for being done with the commission. Then she packed up her things, said her farewells and left Beck to wait for his employer’s carriage to return.
You dodged a bullet with Doran. I'm not even talking about the Sesser; the post-makeout beard burn would have been an absolute bitch to deal with. Anyway, not much else to talk about. Standard job thread (minus the whole 'let's paint another horse entirely bit', nice bits of insight into Cole sprinked about. I enjoyed it.
Points
XP: 10/10 (Cannot be used for Magic)
Fame:
N/A
Loot/Injuries/Overstepping
N/A
Knowledge
Skill Knowledge
Discipline: Force yourself to get up and work despite being ill
Discipline: Complete a job despite having fever
Leadership: Take lead when a situation derails and others give up
Persuasion: Persuade someone to participate in a pragmatic solution
Painting: To use a "look alike" as model for a motif that is harder to get access to
Painting: To paint a horse
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