“God, no.”
“Well, let’s talk artwork first and that should help work out where it could go.”
It was weird, walking into the shop at night. He flicked on some of the lights but not all of them, creating an almost cosy little circle of light in the empty space. “I’ll just grab some paper and pencils. Have a look at the designs on the walls; let me know what jumps out at you.”
I walked up to the beautifully framed images. Page after page of pin-up girls and demons, mermaids and skulls, it was all lovely, but not what I was looking for. It wasn’t until I got to the third or fourth frame that I began to see what I wanted. The drawings stopped being beautiful clichés and became something else. Twisty, twiggy faeries peeked out of groves, stilt-legged fantastical beasts stalked over rolling green hills, wise women with skulls in their hair and great bearded wizards toting crystal topped staffs.
“What are you thinking?” His voice was a low buzz in my ear and I jumped and shivered in response. When I turned around, there was only a small gap between the wall, me and him. He crossed his arms across his chest and I tried not to notice the swell of his biceps as he does. He smelled so good, like winter rain and something citrusy.
“I want a dragon,” I said without thinking. Miazydar’s ears perk up and he moves closer.
You would permanently mark your body with my image?
Well, yeah. It’s me and you forever, right?
“Lemme guess, a red one?
“Yeah.”
“Any of these interest you?” he says, showing me several frames of designs. There are sinuous Chinese dragons and burly Western ones, small pieces and large. “Not any of these, huh?” I shook my head. “C’mere,” he said, stepping back and going to the workbench he had set up. He pulled the black journal out of his pocket and flicked through the pages, putting the book down open in front of me when he found what he was looking for. There was Miazydar.
I felt a weird jerk in my chest. He was with me every day, my dragon, but to see him rendered as he should look… I didn’t get to see him often enough like that. I reached out to touch the page, then pulled them back. “It’s OK,” he said. I ran my finger lightly along the sweep of his wings, the curl of his tail, going from one drawing to the next. I flipped the page and the next, looking at design after design. Any or all of them would have worked for me. For a moment I imagined myself like Sable, my skin a kaleidoscope of colour. I went to look at the next page, but his hand covered mine.
“The rest… the dragons designs are here. There’s some other stuff in here from Damorica but…”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” he said, pulling back his hand and rubbing it on his leg. “I mean, you were there. It’s not a secret. Well, it is, but the artwork… Fuck, just take a look. I’ll get some colours together.”
I watched him walk away into the gloom of the shop before I turned the page. There were some beautiful renderings of Natty, Gump and the canids from the prince’s manor. I flicked quickly past the images of the Mellors and some of the other soldiers, not wanting to remember them anytime soon, or their fiery deaths. There were quick sketches of the ruins that littered the Damorican countryside, some of the newer buildings, even
what looked like the old Imperial Palace. Then I turned the next page.
I pulled away, my fingers slipping from the page and resting limply on the bench. My eyes went wide and I just stared, taking a moment before flipping through the pages, faster and faster. It was me, page after page of me: at the shop, in my frou-frou dress in Damorica, hunched over and looking upset in the punt, sitting at the dining table in the manor, reading, talking, smiling, crying, day-dreaming, arguing and then finally, there she was, the girl on Sable’s back, the girl Ash, and then I, were for a day: the dragon rider. A lot of these drawings had to be imaginings, he had never seen me sleep within Miazydar’s coils, or look down over an alien valley or flying over foreign lands. He sat down when I got to the final one, a quite detailed portrait of me. He stared at me, eyes, face, carefully blank. “So what do you think?”
My brain stuttered then froze. I’ve read millions of books, they’ve given me blueprint after blueprint of acceptable behaviour. I’ve explored and observed the consequences of thousands of different scenarios within the pages, but my mind was coming up with nothing right now. Artistic boys are a trope I’m familiar with, they’re usually either sweetly obsessive, only able to communicate their feelings through their scribblings, or, they’re creepy stalkers. The behaviour’s very similar, it was just the bad guy’s persistence in the face of romantic rejection that seemed to foreshadow their subsequent shitty actions. For me to work out how to respond to Flea, I’d have to know how to cast him: as a lover or stalker. “I don’t know what to say.”
He picked the book up and briskly flipped through the pages, bringing it back to the dragon ones. “Look, this one was what I was thinking.” It showed a back view of Miazydar, his tail whipping, his wings flung out as if he was flying upwards, rapidly gaining height. His head was pulled back and his mouth open, baring his sharp fangs as if screaming his challenge. “I mean, we could add some flowers along the sides to make it more feminine if you like.”
“No, this is the right one, just like this.”
“So where were you thinking?”
“On my arm. I don’t want it to be…a sexy tattoo. I don’t have any problems with girls who get them.” I waved to some of the pictures on the wall. “They look beautiful, the artwork complements that.”
“You think you’re not beautiful, not sexy enough for that?” he said with a frown.
“It’s not that. It’s just not how I feel about this. This design doesn’t look sexy to me.”
I would hope not.
“To me, it looks strong, proud, defiant. Maybe if you tattoo that on me, it’ll be true,” I said.
“Tess, a tattoo’s not a prophecy or a spell. People ascribe all sorts of romantic shit to it, but in the end, it’s just pigment and skin.”
“So put the pigment into my skin, here.” I slapped my hand on my forearm.
“That’s not real discreet.”