Alma in the bath
Andaris, 80 Zida 716
Some said that in Rynmere it’s sometimes better to be a horse than a woman. If that was true or not was perhaps up to the eye of the beholder, but it could seem like the society favored men, albeit no man would agree that it was so. Women lived good lives in Rynmere, they would say. All law abiding, honest and loyal good citizens had good lives in the city. Only those who were displeased with the reign and the nobility or other powerful people had bad lives. Mages, for example, were frowned upon and rebels were simply executed, but it was their own fault and they deserved it.
The mage and painter Yrmellyn Cole had kept a low profile in Rynmere during Zida arc 716. She had felt unsure of where the situation in the city was headed. The rebels had been hunted down, killed or imprisoned. Immortals knew what had happened to her friend of the past, Zvezdana Venora. The lady was missing in action, presumed dead. Gone. Yrmellyn had felt it would be best to not draw attention to herself and take the risk that someone would recall that she had years ago been the protégé of the lady. She had stayed at home, painted a bit and socialized with the neighbors red cat Webster.
Yrmellyn’s neighbor was a barmaid and worked late hours, so she was often away in the nights, and barely possible to wake in the days. The cat seemed to find its own food, and Yrmellyn assumed that it lived on rats it hunted and killed itself. Food wasn’t a problem, but Webster wanted a place to rest comfortable and somebody to cuddle with. Yrmellyn found herself chosen as preferred cat company when the true owner wasn’t available. The cat sought her out whether she wanted it or not. Yrmellyn did like the cat though. It was a silent and affectionate animal, once it had been let into her apartment so it could stop mewling loudly in front of her door.
Finally Yrmellyn had to go out and work though. She needed to make a living. It wasn’t possible to just hide from the tough, dangerous and demanding world forever. This was why the painter headed to the bath house of Andaris this afternoon, with an extraordinarily elegant and beautiful young slave woman in tow.
A few days earlier, a customer who wanted to be anonymous had sent the beautiful slave girl to order a “bath house painting”. If Yrmellyn would take on to paint it, in a zone for women only, she would be paid very well indeed. A short interview with the slave girl had made it clear that the slave was meant to be a central part of the motif, but the secret buyer also wanted “the whole bath house atmosphere with all its interesting decorations”.
Yrmellyn interpreted this as “favorite slave concubine surrounded by plenty of scantily clad women”. She hadn’t had any qualms agreeing to do the job. As a former courtesan she wasn’t overly concerned with a bit of bare skin and such. She had just said yes, on condition that the customer must provide her with a canvas of the size the painting was meant to be of, mounted on a wooden frame and ready to use. This was a standard condition when she took on a commission. The customer must invest a bit in the materials. If they changed their mind before she had started to paint, the loss would be on them but they could keep the canvas. In case they didn’t pay her for the job once she was done, the painter would keep the painting and sell it. In addition Yrmellyn had demanded that this specific customer must pay any fees the bath house might charge. She had been told that this would be arranged in advance. All she would need to do was go there and carry out the painting. More information would be provided in the bath house. A contract had been written and signed and the painter was ready to work.
The slave girl turned up punctually at the agreed time this day, carrying a big frame with the canvas, just like Yrmellyn had said. It was wrapped in simple cloth. The girl also carried a bag and she insisted on carrying the painter’s backpack as well. When Yrmellyn wanted to carry the backpack herself the slave seemed anxious and insecure. In a low voice she said that she was expected to carry things, so it was safest to avoid problems. The painter didn’t like this, but as the backpack was already on the slaves back and it seemed like it could be come complicated to get it back, it seemed meaningless to waste time on discussion. If it was so important to the girl to get to carry absolutely everything, so be it. Yrmellyn didn’t want to seem careless though, and she wanted to be in command of the situation, so she decided to establish her leadership over the slave.
“Very well. I allow you to carry the backpack then” she said, making it clear that this was her own decision, as leader of the job.
The slave nodded without saying anything. Yrmellyn was under the impression that the girl seemed relieved that someone else would take lead.
The girl didn’t want to reveal her name, so Yrmellyn asked her to at least give her nickname to call her, for the sake of practicality. The girl hesitated a little bit, but then she suggested that her nickname could be Alma, if “Mistress Cole” would approve of this. If the girl hadn’t seemed so serious and been so soft-spoken the painter might have laughed out loud. She felt it would be out of place to laugh though. Respectless even. There was something with the way the slave had said the name that made Yrmellyn decide to just say she was okay with calling the slave Alma.
“Alma. It’s a nice name.”
An unreadable expression moved over the slave’s face and disappeared again, leaving it blank as a mask. As she seemed to totally lack initiative and just stood there and waited Yrmellyn had to once more take lead. She had never been looking to lord it over other people, but as a painter she was used to giving instructions so she told Alma to come.
“Let’s go them. Come, Alma!”
They headed to the bath house. After a failed attempt to walk beside the slave, Yrmellyn walked first, behaving as the leader she felt compelled to be. The slave followed behind her like a beautiful and heavily loaded human mule.
Yrmellyn and Alma approached the bath house and went in. They were expected. A female employee with a pleasant face and long flaxen hair greeted Yrmellyn she was a prominent person. She told the painter that a financial arrangement had been made and everything the painter might order in the bath house would be on the account of her customer. The bathhouse employee announced this in a remarkably cheery voice. She smiled and encouraged the painter to feel free to order as much as she wanted, of anything the baht house had to offer. It was obvious that they hoped Yrmellyn would take the opportunity to indulge in all kinds of luxurious services only nobility could normally afford.
When the bath house servant had made this clear, the painter and the slave were promptly shown the way to a section reserved for ladies only. The bath house servant said she was going to stay with Yrmellyn full time, as a personal servant. (This was a totally new and very expensive service the bath house had invented for this occasion. They would charge Yrmellyn’s rich customer for it, a knowledge they found no reason to bother the painter with.) Yrmellyn wasn’t in a position to have a say in the details of the arrangements, but she didn’t want a slave and a bath house servant to think she was weak. She found I best to pretend to be in charge by approving the information like it had just been a suggestion.
She nodded. “I approve of this arrangement. Please tell me your name.”
The woman seemed as surprised as the slave had been when she was asked for a name. “Bianca”, she said hesitantly.
Bianca opened a blue door framed by a beautiful little vault decorated with mosaic and stepped to the side to let the visitor pass. “This way please, Lady Cole. After you.” Yrmellyn would have wanted to stop and admire the artwork and give it a closer inspection, but she reminded herself that she was here to work and it was best to move on. She went in, followed by the servant, and finally the slave who was last woman in, still carrying everything and also tasked with closing the door after them.
They were now in a relatively small but very elegant washing room. Bianca recommended that they would follow the ordinary routines, in order to give the painter the full experience of their baths. The servant figured this would be useful for the painting. It could be necessary even, as people in the poolroom might feel uncomfortable if Yrmellyn turned up fully clothed. Bianca explained that they would undress, wash themselves with soft linen rugs and get towels to wrap themselves in, then enter the poolroom attired like all other women there. Yrmellyn didn’t object. Bianca’s reasoning seemed sound enough. People would naturally be more at ease if she looked like one of them.
They washed. The servant poured water in small wooden basins, first for Yrmellyn and then for herself. “Follow our example, slave” said Bianca to Alma, in a tone like she was speaking to a dog she wanted to behave well. Alma carefully put the wrapped canvas and the bags on a dry and safe place, undressed and washed herself the same way the other women did, but not as slowly, because she was behind. Every small detail of Alma was truly beautiful, the painter noted, gauging her motif in a professional way. The girl’s face was extraordinarly beautiful, her skin was of an appealing soft golden tan color and her wavy hair was dark. Her build was lithe and elegant and her movements were graceful. It would be easy to paint a beautiful picture of a motif like her. However, as she was an artist she took interest in many appearances, and she found the baht servant Bianca a good motif too, pale and flaxen haired, voluptuous and curvaceous. Perhaps she would add the bath servant to “the whole bath house atmosphere” her customer wanted as background to the paining of Alma.
She looked at them, but none of them looked at her.
When the washing ritual was done, Bianca handed Yrmellyn a white linen towel to wrap around her body, and a smaller towel for her hair, should “Lady Cole” wish to use it. It went without saying that the slave was assumed to get her towels herself. When all of them were dresses as scantily as was considered proper for a stay in the poolroom for ladies only, Bianca opened the door opposite the one they had entered the washing room through. It felt like stepping into a mysterious and secret world where half naked women dwelled in fragrant mists rising from the many braziers and the shimmering pool water reflected the light of a multitude of small lanterns. There were no windows and the Zida day outside seemed like just a cold tale. The pool room felt like a women’s world of eternal night, separated from the ordinary world.
Bianca informed the painter that she had been instructed to make sure the painter would get a good understanding of the treatments that were going on. This was true. The proprietor of the bath had given her instructions to make Yrmellyn consume as much as possible while she was there, which they would charge her unknown rich customer for. They had a written contract with him of course. An artist wasn’t seen as reliable nor wealthy, so ordinarily they wouldn’t have given Yrmellyn anything without asking for payment in advance. All this was however to be kept behind the scenes. Bianca’s job was to cause as much consumption of luxury as possible, so for now the painter was “Lady Cole”.
As it seemed to be demanded by her customer the painter didn’t say no. She received a number of beneficial and beautifying treatments for body, face and hair. Bianca and Alma tagged along and both of them took part in everything. The bill would be incredibly fat, but Yrmellyn didn’t care as she wasn’t paying, Bianca would get a bonus in form of a percentage of the spending, and Alma had no say whatsoever or any intention to question the arrangements her owner made with other people. It would be lie to say they didn’t know that they were taking advantage of the financial arrangement though. The three women were silently united in their understanding of how they were shamelessly ripping Alma’s owner off. Being “dressed” the same scant way, in only towels, also seem to erase social differences. During the process Bianca eventually stopped calling the slave girl “slave” and started to call her Alma, like Yrmellyn did. It after a while she also replaced “Lady Cole” with Yrmellyn, as a painter really wasn’t so much above a bath servant and the painter didn’t seem to mind. Once the slave was ordered to use their names she obliged obediently. Her owner had after all told her to obey the orders of the painter. Being ordered to have a good in the company of other women, she did as she was told.
After bonding over an abundance of embellishment treatments, the three of them went to take a special steam treatment. They entered a small compartment where several other women were already gathered. It was hot in there. Once in a while water was poured over hot stones in special braziers and the sizzling sound when it transformed blended with laughs and small cries when clouds of hot steam enclosed the bathing women. It wasn’t overly hot though. It was possible to stay there for a long time, though time actually didn’t really seem to exist anymore.
This was the ultimate luxury for all the women in the steam bath, to step out of time and forget all demands of social roles. Here, finally, it didn’t matter what was expected of noble women or working class commoners, wives and mothers or kept mistresses, servants and slaves or free artisans. They all just were...free. There, in this steamy refuge place outside of real life, Yrmellyn Cole found that the right time had come to speak about her profession and her true mission in the bath house. It was met with giggles. The painter continued to elaborate on her visions of the painting, set on persuading the group of women to contribute.
“I will paint you all just as beautiful as you truly are, but your faces will not be possible to recognize ...”
Eventually they gave in to the temptation to take part in this great secret joke at the expense of fathers, husbands, lovers, employers, owners, and other things men prided themselves for being. They would all be on this painting, oh yes!
Out in the poolroom again, the painter felt it was high time to get down to work. She favored the dry oil pastel crayons for commission like these, as wet colors needed more preparations and took time to dry. If Yrmellyn had been able to afford an atelier it would have been different, but for a less established painter taking random commissions the oil pastels were the most practical colors to use.
Alma was her main motif, the slave, in the center of the picture, every detail of her outstanding beauty meticulously documented on the canvas, framed by shimmering water and “the whole bath house atmosphere”. Around her Yrmellyn painted an assortment of other women, with altered faces as they requested privacy, also Bianca. There was a limit for how far it was possible for the women of Rynmere to go. Yrmellyn took respected this, as she had promised. And so she painted them all as beautiful as they truly were, like she had once upon a time learnt from her mentor Mariuz Arbin to paint people to look their best and most beautiful, as this side of them was as true as their shadow.
Alma didn’t have a choice though. She was the central motif, and she did what she had to do. To her it wasn’t a joke, it was work.
Eventually the painting was nearly ready. The group of women dispersed and the slave was allowed to move out of the position she had kept all the time, immovable like a statue.
Yrmellyn had left a small blank space in the lower right corner. There she finally, slowly, painted the picture of a tall woman with dark blond hair, dressed in a towel. She stood behind an easel, working at a picture inside the picture, doing the job she had to do, with no other choice than to carry it out if she wanted to provide for herself and not need to starve. She was of somewhat athletic build, with fairly strong shoulders, narrow waist and lean hips. She looked definitely feminine, but not in a frail and willowy way. With the right attire she could easily have passed as a thunder priestess or lightning knight back in Rharne, but she had never worn the right attire. She had always been something else than met the eye.
That was the mage painter herself, working, doing what she had to do.
She signed her painting.
Yrmellyn Cole.
The mage and painter Yrmellyn Cole had kept a low profile in Rynmere during Zida arc 716. She had felt unsure of where the situation in the city was headed. The rebels had been hunted down, killed or imprisoned. Immortals knew what had happened to her friend of the past, Zvezdana Venora. The lady was missing in action, presumed dead. Gone. Yrmellyn had felt it would be best to not draw attention to herself and take the risk that someone would recall that she had years ago been the protégé of the lady. She had stayed at home, painted a bit and socialized with the neighbors red cat Webster.
Yrmellyn’s neighbor was a barmaid and worked late hours, so she was often away in the nights, and barely possible to wake in the days. The cat seemed to find its own food, and Yrmellyn assumed that it lived on rats it hunted and killed itself. Food wasn’t a problem, but Webster wanted a place to rest comfortable and somebody to cuddle with. Yrmellyn found herself chosen as preferred cat company when the true owner wasn’t available. The cat sought her out whether she wanted it or not. Yrmellyn did like the cat though. It was a silent and affectionate animal, once it had been let into her apartment so it could stop mewling loudly in front of her door.
Finally Yrmellyn had to go out and work though. She needed to make a living. It wasn’t possible to just hide from the tough, dangerous and demanding world forever. This was why the painter headed to the bath house of Andaris this afternoon, with an extraordinarily elegant and beautiful young slave woman in tow.
A few days earlier, a customer who wanted to be anonymous had sent the beautiful slave girl to order a “bath house painting”. If Yrmellyn would take on to paint it, in a zone for women only, she would be paid very well indeed. A short interview with the slave girl had made it clear that the slave was meant to be a central part of the motif, but the secret buyer also wanted “the whole bath house atmosphere with all its interesting decorations”.
Yrmellyn interpreted this as “favorite slave concubine surrounded by plenty of scantily clad women”. She hadn’t had any qualms agreeing to do the job. As a former courtesan she wasn’t overly concerned with a bit of bare skin and such. She had just said yes, on condition that the customer must provide her with a canvas of the size the painting was meant to be of, mounted on a wooden frame and ready to use. This was a standard condition when she took on a commission. The customer must invest a bit in the materials. If they changed their mind before she had started to paint, the loss would be on them but they could keep the canvas. In case they didn’t pay her for the job once she was done, the painter would keep the painting and sell it. In addition Yrmellyn had demanded that this specific customer must pay any fees the bath house might charge. She had been told that this would be arranged in advance. All she would need to do was go there and carry out the painting. More information would be provided in the bath house. A contract had been written and signed and the painter was ready to work.
The slave girl turned up punctually at the agreed time this day, carrying a big frame with the canvas, just like Yrmellyn had said. It was wrapped in simple cloth. The girl also carried a bag and she insisted on carrying the painter’s backpack as well. When Yrmellyn wanted to carry the backpack herself the slave seemed anxious and insecure. In a low voice she said that she was expected to carry things, so it was safest to avoid problems. The painter didn’t like this, but as the backpack was already on the slaves back and it seemed like it could be come complicated to get it back, it seemed meaningless to waste time on discussion. If it was so important to the girl to get to carry absolutely everything, so be it. Yrmellyn didn’t want to seem careless though, and she wanted to be in command of the situation, so she decided to establish her leadership over the slave.
“Very well. I allow you to carry the backpack then” she said, making it clear that this was her own decision, as leader of the job.
The slave nodded without saying anything. Yrmellyn was under the impression that the girl seemed relieved that someone else would take lead.
The girl didn’t want to reveal her name, so Yrmellyn asked her to at least give her nickname to call her, for the sake of practicality. The girl hesitated a little bit, but then she suggested that her nickname could be Alma, if “Mistress Cole” would approve of this. If the girl hadn’t seemed so serious and been so soft-spoken the painter might have laughed out loud. She felt it would be out of place to laugh though. Respectless even. There was something with the way the slave had said the name that made Yrmellyn decide to just say she was okay with calling the slave Alma.
“Alma. It’s a nice name.”
An unreadable expression moved over the slave’s face and disappeared again, leaving it blank as a mask. As she seemed to totally lack initiative and just stood there and waited Yrmellyn had to once more take lead. She had never been looking to lord it over other people, but as a painter she was used to giving instructions so she told Alma to come.
“Let’s go them. Come, Alma!”
They headed to the bath house. After a failed attempt to walk beside the slave, Yrmellyn walked first, behaving as the leader she felt compelled to be. The slave followed behind her like a beautiful and heavily loaded human mule.
Yrmellyn and Alma approached the bath house and went in. They were expected. A female employee with a pleasant face and long flaxen hair greeted Yrmellyn she was a prominent person. She told the painter that a financial arrangement had been made and everything the painter might order in the bath house would be on the account of her customer. The bathhouse employee announced this in a remarkably cheery voice. She smiled and encouraged the painter to feel free to order as much as she wanted, of anything the baht house had to offer. It was obvious that they hoped Yrmellyn would take the opportunity to indulge in all kinds of luxurious services only nobility could normally afford.
When the bath house servant had made this clear, the painter and the slave were promptly shown the way to a section reserved for ladies only. The bath house servant said she was going to stay with Yrmellyn full time, as a personal servant. (This was a totally new and very expensive service the bath house had invented for this occasion. They would charge Yrmellyn’s rich customer for it, a knowledge they found no reason to bother the painter with.) Yrmellyn wasn’t in a position to have a say in the details of the arrangements, but she didn’t want a slave and a bath house servant to think she was weak. She found I best to pretend to be in charge by approving the information like it had just been a suggestion.
She nodded. “I approve of this arrangement. Please tell me your name.”
The woman seemed as surprised as the slave had been when she was asked for a name. “Bianca”, she said hesitantly.
Bianca opened a blue door framed by a beautiful little vault decorated with mosaic and stepped to the side to let the visitor pass. “This way please, Lady Cole. After you.” Yrmellyn would have wanted to stop and admire the artwork and give it a closer inspection, but she reminded herself that she was here to work and it was best to move on. She went in, followed by the servant, and finally the slave who was last woman in, still carrying everything and also tasked with closing the door after them.
They were now in a relatively small but very elegant washing room. Bianca recommended that they would follow the ordinary routines, in order to give the painter the full experience of their baths. The servant figured this would be useful for the painting. It could be necessary even, as people in the poolroom might feel uncomfortable if Yrmellyn turned up fully clothed. Bianca explained that they would undress, wash themselves with soft linen rugs and get towels to wrap themselves in, then enter the poolroom attired like all other women there. Yrmellyn didn’t object. Bianca’s reasoning seemed sound enough. People would naturally be more at ease if she looked like one of them.
They washed. The servant poured water in small wooden basins, first for Yrmellyn and then for herself. “Follow our example, slave” said Bianca to Alma, in a tone like she was speaking to a dog she wanted to behave well. Alma carefully put the wrapped canvas and the bags on a dry and safe place, undressed and washed herself the same way the other women did, but not as slowly, because she was behind. Every small detail of Alma was truly beautiful, the painter noted, gauging her motif in a professional way. The girl’s face was extraordinarly beautiful, her skin was of an appealing soft golden tan color and her wavy hair was dark. Her build was lithe and elegant and her movements were graceful. It would be easy to paint a beautiful picture of a motif like her. However, as she was an artist she took interest in many appearances, and she found the baht servant Bianca a good motif too, pale and flaxen haired, voluptuous and curvaceous. Perhaps she would add the bath servant to “the whole bath house atmosphere” her customer wanted as background to the paining of Alma.
She looked at them, but none of them looked at her.
When the washing ritual was done, Bianca handed Yrmellyn a white linen towel to wrap around her body, and a smaller towel for her hair, should “Lady Cole” wish to use it. It went without saying that the slave was assumed to get her towels herself. When all of them were dresses as scantily as was considered proper for a stay in the poolroom for ladies only, Bianca opened the door opposite the one they had entered the washing room through. It felt like stepping into a mysterious and secret world where half naked women dwelled in fragrant mists rising from the many braziers and the shimmering pool water reflected the light of a multitude of small lanterns. There were no windows and the Zida day outside seemed like just a cold tale. The pool room felt like a women’s world of eternal night, separated from the ordinary world.
Bianca informed the painter that she had been instructed to make sure the painter would get a good understanding of the treatments that were going on. This was true. The proprietor of the bath had given her instructions to make Yrmellyn consume as much as possible while she was there, which they would charge her unknown rich customer for. They had a written contract with him of course. An artist wasn’t seen as reliable nor wealthy, so ordinarily they wouldn’t have given Yrmellyn anything without asking for payment in advance. All this was however to be kept behind the scenes. Bianca’s job was to cause as much consumption of luxury as possible, so for now the painter was “Lady Cole”.
As it seemed to be demanded by her customer the painter didn’t say no. She received a number of beneficial and beautifying treatments for body, face and hair. Bianca and Alma tagged along and both of them took part in everything. The bill would be incredibly fat, but Yrmellyn didn’t care as she wasn’t paying, Bianca would get a bonus in form of a percentage of the spending, and Alma had no say whatsoever or any intention to question the arrangements her owner made with other people. It would be lie to say they didn’t know that they were taking advantage of the financial arrangement though. The three women were silently united in their understanding of how they were shamelessly ripping Alma’s owner off. Being “dressed” the same scant way, in only towels, also seem to erase social differences. During the process Bianca eventually stopped calling the slave girl “slave” and started to call her Alma, like Yrmellyn did. It after a while she also replaced “Lady Cole” with Yrmellyn, as a painter really wasn’t so much above a bath servant and the painter didn’t seem to mind. Once the slave was ordered to use their names she obliged obediently. Her owner had after all told her to obey the orders of the painter. Being ordered to have a good in the company of other women, she did as she was told.
After bonding over an abundance of embellishment treatments, the three of them went to take a special steam treatment. They entered a small compartment where several other women were already gathered. It was hot in there. Once in a while water was poured over hot stones in special braziers and the sizzling sound when it transformed blended with laughs and small cries when clouds of hot steam enclosed the bathing women. It wasn’t overly hot though. It was possible to stay there for a long time, though time actually didn’t really seem to exist anymore.
This was the ultimate luxury for all the women in the steam bath, to step out of time and forget all demands of social roles. Here, finally, it didn’t matter what was expected of noble women or working class commoners, wives and mothers or kept mistresses, servants and slaves or free artisans. They all just were...free. There, in this steamy refuge place outside of real life, Yrmellyn Cole found that the right time had come to speak about her profession and her true mission in the bath house. It was met with giggles. The painter continued to elaborate on her visions of the painting, set on persuading the group of women to contribute.
“I will paint you all just as beautiful as you truly are, but your faces will not be possible to recognize ...”
Eventually they gave in to the temptation to take part in this great secret joke at the expense of fathers, husbands, lovers, employers, owners, and other things men prided themselves for being. They would all be on this painting, oh yes!
Out in the poolroom again, the painter felt it was high time to get down to work. She favored the dry oil pastel crayons for commission like these, as wet colors needed more preparations and took time to dry. If Yrmellyn had been able to afford an atelier it would have been different, but for a less established painter taking random commissions the oil pastels were the most practical colors to use.
Alma was her main motif, the slave, in the center of the picture, every detail of her outstanding beauty meticulously documented on the canvas, framed by shimmering water and “the whole bath house atmosphere”. Around her Yrmellyn painted an assortment of other women, with altered faces as they requested privacy, also Bianca. There was a limit for how far it was possible for the women of Rynmere to go. Yrmellyn took respected this, as she had promised. And so she painted them all as beautiful as they truly were, like she had once upon a time learnt from her mentor Mariuz Arbin to paint people to look their best and most beautiful, as this side of them was as true as their shadow.
Alma didn’t have a choice though. She was the central motif, and she did what she had to do. To her it wasn’t a joke, it was work.
Eventually the painting was nearly ready. The group of women dispersed and the slave was allowed to move out of the position she had kept all the time, immovable like a statue.
Yrmellyn had left a small blank space in the lower right corner. There she finally, slowly, painted the picture of a tall woman with dark blond hair, dressed in a towel. She stood behind an easel, working at a picture inside the picture, doing the job she had to do, with no other choice than to carry it out if she wanted to provide for herself and not need to starve. She was of somewhat athletic build, with fairly strong shoulders, narrow waist and lean hips. She looked definitely feminine, but not in a frail and willowy way. With the right attire she could easily have passed as a thunder priestess or lightning knight back in Rharne, but she had never worn the right attire. She had always been something else than met the eye.
That was the mage painter herself, working, doing what she had to do.
She signed her painting.
Yrmellyn Cole.
