Drawing JerushaIndex | Time Under Chaos | Game Logs | PreGameLogs | Drawing Jerusha Jerusha paced across the Papingo Terrace, wishing she were anywhere else. If she were as careless of others' opinions as Delluth - but no. She was a Corrino. He might not care what people thought of him, but she knew how important it was to maintain appearances. She smoothed the sleeves of her tailored green-and-gold uniform and forced herself to sit down, looking around again for the Barimen boy. It was not long before she saw him coming up the path. If nothing else, he was punctual. Watching him move, she could tell he really did need that walking stick; one leg was noticeably shorter than the other, and he walked with a pronounced limp. He maintained a brisk pace, however, despite the artist's satchel slung over his shoulder and the bakery box he was carrying. His dress was casual: open-necked shirt, jacket, and trousers in the Barimen colors of dark green and bronze. His thin face lit with a smile when he saw her. "Miss Corrino. It was good of you to come." She managed a cordial nod. "It is very thoughtful of you. To want to do something for my father." "I owe Delluth a lot," Claudio said. "Of course, as a doctor I expect he has any number of people who could say that about him. On the other hand, it would be fair to say I owe nearly as much to his teacher, Skelton Corrino, but in Skelton's case I've never had any desire to keep up the connection." He put down the bakery box on a seat opposite Jerusha's and, after unslinging his satchel and setting it on the ground nearby, began untying the string. "Skelton can be ... difficult," she thought it was safe to say. "He's brilliant, though." "Brilliant as a glass mountain," Claudio agreed cheerfully, "and about as accessible." He took the lid off the box, revealing an assortment of iced cookies. He offered the box to Jerusha. "I didn't know your preferences, so I got a mix," he explained. She nearly laughed at his description of Skelton, and tried to cover it by looking into the box. "Do you always bribe your subjects like this?" she asked, picking out something involving chocolate. Noting the flash of humor across her face, Claudio covered a smile of his own as he selected a cinnamon star for himself. "Whatever works. Amba likes chocolate, too," he noted. He sat down and opened his satchel, producing a sketch pad and drawing pencils. "Who is Amba?" she asked, for lack of anything else to say. "Amba of House Heldt, Helena's sword dancing partner," Claudio explained. "The one who took down Crygst a few years ago. You must have heard about it... unless you were off on assignment then." "Oh," she said, brightening, and her lips curving into a feral smile. "Yes, I do remember that. Pity they patched him up." That smile needed to go on his sketchpad, Claudio thought as he turned to a fresh page. "Oh, now," he said to Jerusha in mock admonition. "Who else would all you sword dancers beat on if you didn't have Crygst?" "I'm sure some other idiot would present himself," Jerusha said. "And now I remember who Amba is. It's just that it's usually Helena-and-Amba." Relaxed like this, she looked much less forbidding. As Claudio began sketching and studying her face, he realized that she was beginning to show signs of age - just a little, around the corners of the eyes and the mouth, but enough to suggest mortality. He kept the observation to himself, though his pencil recorded it. To Jerusha's comment he answered, "Yes, it is like that ... though in some ways they're quite distinct. That's one reason they make such an effective team. Complementarity. Now, remind me -- I follow sword dancing but some circles more than others -- do you ever work with a partner? Or just solo?" Reminded of who he was and why they were there, she stiffened up again. "Solo." That was too short to be polite ... "I used to work with Tiercel Deshane, but he got married and had to give up some of his hobbies." That last was, to the discerning observer, said a manner that was a little too flatly factual. "It happens," Claudio said mildly. "Juggling a profession and a hobby and a family is more than some people can manage -- even if the profession and the hobby are as close as warrior and sword dancer. Do you find in your own case that the one feeds into the other?" "Not very well," she said, choosing another cookie and nibbling thoughtfully at it. "Sword dancing is all fenced about with rules and standards and traditions. Actual combat just isn't like that. The territory to be gained isn't colored squares, and one-on-one fights get interrupted as often as not. And of course people rarely get killed in the sword dancing these days." "No, though I'm told that was sometimes a feature in the Shadow it originally came from," said Claudio. He was by now sketching busily. "I've had very little opportunity to visit Shadow myself," he went on, "though a couple of my siblings have -- Pavlo, of course, and my sister Lovisa. Tell me about some of the places you've been." "Mostly the same places your brother has been to, I'm sure," she said. "I don't -- I can't travel on my own. My father--" She stopped abruptly, trying to pretend she hadn't felt a pang of sorrow. "I know he's a Logrus initiate," Claudio said, "though I don't quite know how that works for Shadow travel. I have to rely on Trump, myself, which I suppose is as good a reason as any to scatter them about." He smiled briefly, then asked, "Have you ever had a Trump done?" "Yes. He -- my father insisted, a while ago now, when he started traveling again, and because he took me along on some of his trips." Her voice wavered; she had to change the subject. "Are you a Trump artist?" "Yes, I am, though of course at my age I'm just starting out," said Claudio. "So far I've mostly done them for my family and close friends." "It must take a lot of practice," Jerusha said, not quite craning her neck to try to see what Claudio had been drawing. "As much as sword dancing, I dare say," he replied, with another flashing smile. "It's a discipline of mind as well as of eye and hand." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "And I suppose that those people who claim that it requires the capture of a bit of the subject's soul aren't far wrong." Then, noticing her look, he obligingly turned the sketchpad around so that she could see what he'd drawn. He had rendered several sketches of her face at various angles and with different expressions: pensive, relaxed, feral, cool, suppressing laughter. Jerusha was familiar with the face she saw in the mirror, but these penciled sketches somehow revealed more than the mask which we usually present to ourselves. "That's ... very good," she said, providing an example of 'unsettled' for him to sketch. "Why so many different ones?" "To give me as much as possible to work with when I get back to my studio," he replied, turning the sketchbook back toward himself and once more applying pencil to paper. "Think of these as facets, or puzzle pieces. In the interval I'll start putting them together, and by our next session I'll have some idea of what I might want the finished portrait to look like." "Oh. I didn't realize it was so complicated. I don't know much about making art. P-- my father insisted I learn to appreciate it, but I was no good at doing it." She frowned, remembering. "He said not to worry, he was no good at it either." "And both of you have other talents," Claudio pointed out, adding easily, "I certainly wouldn't be able to do the sorts of things you're good at." "No, I suppose not." Then, since he had brought it up, she said delicately, "I'm surprised that you have a ... permanent condition at all." "If it weren't for your father and Skelton, it could have been a lot more permanent, as in dead, or worse," answered Claudio. "I had a run-in with a demonic assassin when I was eight or nine years old. As Delluth explained it to me later, there wasn't -- and still isn't -- a lot known about the action of that particular sort of venom on children too young to shift. So, somewhere in between the injury and the treatment, it got... stuck." "Oh," she said softly. "He must have been terribly upset." Claudio looked up at her quickly, to catch her expression. "Delluth? Very probably he was," he acknowledged, "though of course he wouldn't have betrayed that to me at the time." She was looking down at her folded hands, which made it difficult to see her face. "No, he wouldn't. You would have needed to see strength and confidence, I suppose." Claudio nodded and said, "As a young child, I would only have been frightened by seeing an adult upset -- especially someone like a doctor." Jerusha sighed. With an edge to her voice, she remarked, "He always seems to know what's needed." Then, hearing herself, she blinked and her face stilled, and she decided it was time for another cookie. "Perfection can be a little daunting," Claudio agreed, reaching for another himself. She gave a bitter laugh. "But he'll be the first to tell you he isn't perfect." "Well, true. So few of us are. But somebody whose strengths are your own weaknesses can be daunting in their way, too." Jerusha gnawed on her cookie and scowled at an inoffensive trellis. Claudio recorded the scowl for posterity, but decided to shift the subject away from Jerusha's father, even by implication. "Have you ever visited a Shadow you'd like to settle down in?" he asked her. "Or does the fact that you're usually sent to a war zone rather put a damper on that kind of thought?" "It does that," she said. "But even so, I haven't been any place that's better than the Courts or the Ways of Corrino." "What are your favorite spots there, when you're not on duty?" Claudio asked. "Just for hanging out?" Relieved, Jerusha talked about places around the sword-dancing grounds, some gardens and decorated rooms in the Ways of Corrino, and various places where the warrior types liked to congregate. The rooms she lived in did not feature in the discussion. "And you like this terrace," she said. "Do you favor places with good light for artwork?" "That, and visually interesting," said Claudio, gesturing with his pencil toward a trellis wound with bright flowers in many colors. "Also places with a good variety of people, and good conversation. And bakeries," he added with a grin, taking another cookie. "A sidewalk cafe with a pleasant view and superior pastries is ideal." She smiled, which softened her face somewhat and hinted at what Delluth might have seen in her mother. "That does sound pleasant," she agreed, and began asking whether he had seen various landmarks around the Courts. Encouraged by the smile, which he rapidly began recording, Claudio willingly entered into a discussion of places they'd both seen, and trading recommendations, all the time wondering what it would take to get her to laugh out loud. He began slipping in brief anecdotes about some of the more absurd things he'd seen while people-watching. He found that she was definitely more inclined to shake her head, smiling a little, than to actually laugh. All in all, though, he felt satisfied with how the session went, especially since she agreed to meet him for the second one. At the end of it he rose and bowed formally over her hand with all the courtliness his parents had instilled in him, while suggesting a date in two cycles' time. "And I must say I shall look forward to it!" he told her.
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