i know it's just a number but you're the eighth wonder [ OPEN MINGLE ]

[postictal]

Who: Tim and EVERYBODY WHO WANTS IN ON THIS CAUSE IT A MINGLE
What: Nail-painting. Destressing. We have earned something Nice for ourselves.
When: February 12th
Where: Just outside the Storyteller's Temple
Warnings: Probably nothing of note? Will add if needed.



There's a man sitting cross-legged outside the Storyteller's Temple, general hub of interaction that it seems to be turning into. He still looks like shit, granted, his face a colorful patchwork of bruising and a fresh bandage slapped around his middle, but that hasn't stopped him from making the best of things. A few vials of some various colorful fluids might not be familiar to everyone here, but after everything? Screw it, thinks Tim. They've deserved a break. He deserves a break. The kids here, especially, deserve a break. It's time to celebrate the fact that they are no longer in danger of freezing in the dark and living out the remainder of their days in a bleak, sunless existence.

And he liked colors, as a kid. In the blank white walls of a hospital, where everything was drained of variation and bleached white and left bone-blank, the occasional bursts of color allowed in packages of crayons and colored pencils at art time were treasures. They stopped giving him crayons after he drew the man in his room one too many times, a tall black shadow in the back of every drawing that had the doctors exchanging looks with tightened jaws and the clearing of throats that too clearly spoke to their disapproval.

It dogged him, even once he stepped out of those empty walls, his wardrobe as consistently drab and dull and monochrome as his life. It dogged him with featureless rooms and

Fuck that.

Fuck that especially, because it means that kids like Ren grew up without colors in their lives, and it means that they've had precious few simple little pleasures in the past month, and it means that they are all owed a goddamn break. And if he's bound to be a freak no matter what he does, he may as well be one with a spot of color or two.

So today, to celebrate? We're painting nails.

Fuck it. We're painting nails.

It's safe to say that Tim's new at this, particularly when he only has one good hand at the moment, but he'll still seem quite open to sharing with whoever happens along - especially if you're a kid.

[ooc: yes this is a mingle for painting some nails feel free to top-level all over]

Comments

[alittleditty]

"I'll admit I'm not an expert," she grins a bit sheepishly, holding out her hands. She's gotten alternating colors - purples and pinks, mainly, as nice as she could get to actually going with her clothes, and complementary color schemes weren't really her style. "This sort of thing was something of a novelty back home, though it did exist."

She might have worn some when she was small, and her family still respectably wealthy merchants, but then she'd been poor, and a crafter, then she'd been a member of the Path of the Twelve and later the Scions (where cosmetics weren't really in the budget), and now she' back to being a crafter again.

[ohshitsweetflips]

Taako dutifully inspects the proffered nails with a little hum, does not immediately voice any judgment. The colour choices endears this small earnest person to him if nothing else, but she's right, an expert she is not. Good thing most of her competition in this venue are literal children.

"Good palette," he says, trying for the ol' two compliments and one criticism strategy of evaluation (from Taako, it's usually more a one to one ratio if that). "Really just needs some detail work to pop. Aaand a little clean up, some shaping, but it's too late for that this time around." Not too late for some moisturizing though. Whatever, he could use some kind of light activity while his nails dry anyway. "How do you feel about gold?" he asks, bright eyes belying a lazy grin.

[alittleditty]

"It feels like something much fancier than I'd be used to seeing at my fingertips, unless I was making it," she admits, part of her still delighted at the idea. Even if you weren't actually all that wealthy or grand a person, it always felt nice to feel like one, for a little bit. Not that she was making nail polish, but more jewelry. Goldsmithing, her primary trade before she'd been an accountant.

But so far as cosmetics and even dyes went, metallics were definitely an upper-class color.

[ohshitsweetflips]

In that case, gold sounds like just the thing. She sounds into it, but in like a wistful way? This isn't really Make-A-Wish quality but Taako's here to demonstrate that fancy can be a state of mind. Or something. The opposite, actually? Whatever, it's achievable, is the point.

"Right on," he says, like she'd agreed wholeheartedly to his suggestion; he's already uncapping the little bottle with a business-like air. "Making what? Gold?" That's some kinda transmutational somethin, alright. Would be a neat kinda shop to get to talk, for once.

[alittleditty]

"Goldsmithing," she explains, "So... rarely working gold, but more often copper, brass, silver, or mythril, sometimes electrum. It was my trade when I was younger."

She tries not to be a bit... too visibly eager as she watches him work. Talking is a decent cover? Or maybe she's just chatty. "I haven't found as much use for it here, though really goldsmiths are used to doing all kinds of detailed metalwork, not just jewelry. Weaving on the other hand, there's been plenty of use for."

[ohshitsweetflips]

He makes a polite noise of interest as he works on a little gold star, exercising extreme care. It's not insincere, weirdly enough. These are such...real jobs? Not about fighting or adventuring or anything big and dramatic? Maybe it only seems novel to him since he himself has been so hard at work on this island. He hasn't really done any real accounting of who all has washed up on the beach, here. Maybe that's unfortunate.

"Yeah, we're not really out of the stone age around here. Which is a damn shame. If I could just transmute up some gold, and you could do the detail work? We'd really be in business," he says, with a kind of aggravated wistfulness. They absolutely would not be in business. But Taako would look fantastic and that's what's important. And on that note, "What kind of weaving? Did you build like, a loom? How's that work?" He sounds mildly incredulous, though he knows logically that people build shit without resorting to magic all the time.