Kellach Donnallen (bane_bait) wrote in valloic, @ 2023-05-15 17:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, the quarry: abigail blyg, werewolf ta: kellach donallen |
Her companion, she knew, found all this stuff a lot easier than she did. Even so, it was nice to have company, particularly this sort of non-judgmental company. That the company was someone she barely knew also helped; she didn’t have to worry about looking sweaty and gross or being slow and bad at everything around Kellach, because he didn’t care, and therefore neither did she.
Running wasn’t for everyone. Kellach got a certain sense of freedom when he ran, the kind he’d never had as a kid growing up in Belfast. He enjoyed it, but he didn’t like running alone. He didn’t like being left alone with his thoughts like that.
However, his pack wasn’t here to run with him anymore, so he was very pleased when Abi agreed to go running with him. Kellach liked Abi, at least from the exchange they’d had on the forum. She seemed genuine and earnest and if Kellach could help her get into better shape the way she wanted, then he was only happy to help if she kept agreeing to go running with him.
“Aye, an’ ya did great!” Kellach said with a grin. The run had left him out of breath as well, but happy. “I wasn’t sure if ye’d wanna do the whole three miles, but ya stuck to it.” He took a healthy drink of water before motioning towards the track again. “Keep movin’ though. Ye don’t wanna just stop cold after a workout like that.”
“Ugh,” Abi groaned, but she made herself start walking. This was news to her, which meant it was probably good that she’d started running with someone. It had been good to have someone alongside who she could talk to, keeping it from getting quite as soul-crushingly boring, but apparently she was also going to learn things. “Seriously? I thought the whole point of finishing was that now I get to fall over and die.”
Kellach laughed breathlessly. “That’s what I’ve been told,” he said as he fell into step beside her. “Don’ worry, once we catch our breaths, ye kin roll over an’ die all ya want.” He fell into step beside her. “How are ye feelin’?” He asked. “Yer legs feel okay? Yer shins?”
“My everything feels tired,” Abi replied. “Other than that, I’m okay. The one good thing about having avoided sports like the plague my whole life is that I don’t have any injuries making it harder now. My joints are great! Just, you know, I don’t even know what out of shape is because I’ve never been in shape to start with.”
“Tired is better’en pain,” Kellach said with a casual shrug. “Tired means that ye’ve worked. That's what the blacksmith I used to work under used to say.” He gave Abi a grin as they continued to walk. “An if ye keep this up, ye’ll be in shape in no time! Ye just gotta keep at it.” He took another pull from his water bottle. “Ya didn’t like sports growin’ up?” He asked. “What sorta thing do you like to do?”
“I was always an art kid,” she said. Upon seeing Kellach drink, she turned their walking back toward where her water bottle was abandoned by the track; Abi had more or less forgotten its existence in the haze of exhaustion. “Which means I want to hear more about that blacksmithing thing! I’ve never done metalworking at all, but it looks so cool!”
Kellach stopped walking and for Abi to grab her waterbottle and come back. He hadn’t expected her to have an interest in his profession. He knew artsy types (his pack leader being one of them), and none of them had ever considered smithing to be an “art.”
“It’s a lot of hard work,” he said, his expression turning sheepish. “An’ fer a while I wasn’t very good at it. It was just something I had to do t’ support my ma and my younger sister. I took it seriously enough just to learn an’ get by. But at the time I was more interested in drinkin’ and…well you know…” He chuckled and started walking now that Abi was back with her water bottle. “I was taught t’ make blades an’ suh, but fer the most part the master blacksmith had me makin’ nails an’ horseshoes. My cousin Daniel was the real talent, ye see.” Kellach smiled wanly. “It wasn’t until I was shipped off to Australia that I actually realized that I missed the forge. So whenever we made it into a town an’ we had the time, I tried t’ get into one. An’ I got pretty good. My best piece that I made was a battle hammer as part of my test to be recognized fer me next rank.”
Abi downed some water while Kellach explained and looked positively blissful about it. Who knew water could taste so good? Water was fine, usually, but water after a run on a warm afternoon felt like a gift straight from the gods.
“A battle hammer, wow! That’s so cool. I’ve always thought functional art was amazing, but I’ve only ever been around, like…ceramics, mostly. Bowls and mugs and stuff,” she said. “Are you blacksmithing here, too?”
A bit of pride swelled up in Kellach’s chest at Abi’s praise and he couldn’t help puffing it out a little. “Aye, it was pretty cool!” He said. However, that puff left him when she asked if he was doing any work at Vallo. His eyes moved to the track in front of them. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t have a forge ‘ere an’ I feel kind of strange askin’ the other blacksmiths around to use theirs…” his words trailed off. “Actually,” he said after a minute, “that’s not really true. I mean, some o’ it is, but…” he rolled his shoulders and looked up from the track towards the city’s skyline. “It’s weird wakin’ up in a whole different world. Back home I had a purpose. I dunno what it is I’m doin’ here.”
He shook his head. That was enough about that. Abi might not want to run with him again if he got introspective like that. “What about yer art?” He asked. “Ye said ye do ceramics?”
“I’ve only done a tiny bit of ceramics,” Abi said. “I know the basics on types of clay and kilns and stuff, and I’ve learned to use a wheel and everything, but I’m like…survey knowledge only. My area’s mostly drawing and painting. I’m going to college for it here, which is what I was planning to do back home before everything got turned sideways on us. I just finished up my first year, and so far it’s been pretty cool. I just have to figure out if I really want to specialize in fine art or get-a-job art.”
Kellach knew there were different types of art in the world. Of course he knew. There was music and painting and sculpture…but he’d never heard art being defined as “get-a-job”. The latter of which seemed so dismissive of something so wonderful. He quirked a brow quizzically at Abi. “What’s the difference between fine art and get-a-job- art?” He asked. “Isn’t all art fine art?”
“In art school terms, no,” Abi replied with a little sigh of dismay. “Fine art is art for its own sake. What I was calling get-a-job art is actually called commercial art—doing art for clients just for the money. So like, graphic design for advertisements and stuff like that. Basically I’m trying to figure out if I believe in myself enough to think people might want to buy the stuff I create from my own inspiration, or if I’d rather play it safe and train in art that’ll let me get a steady job, or if maybe I should just say to hell with art as anything but a hobby and major in statistics.”
Kellach frowned. That didn’t seem like a fair choice to have to make, but he understood the need to be able to support yourself and those that depend on you. “I guess no matter what century ye live in, it’s always the same problem, innit? Everyone’s gotta survive.” He shook his head and took another glug of water. “I’d like t’ be able to tell you t’ do what you want to do, follow yer dream an’ all that, but that seems like bad advice.” Especially coming from him, who never had a dream to follow. “What kinda things d’ye paint?”
Abi brightened immediately on being asked about her work. Even wiped out from running, she was enthusiastic about it.
“Lately I’ve been really into portraits of animals,” she said. “The don’t show emotion the same way humans do, so getting the feeling right is a really fun challenge. Lately I’ve been painting the chocobos a lot—uh, those are big birds that people ride like horses. About the same size as an ostrich, but a lot friendlier. My housemates ride them and race them.”
Chocobos? Kellach’s brows furrowed. What Abi just described sounded like an emu or a cassowary, neither of which were birds Kellach thought one was able to ride…or that one would want to ride. Forget about racing them. Was it possible that a chocobo was a bird from the New World? There was a lot about the world outside of 1860’s Ireland that Kellach was not familiar with. He’d been smacked up the head with that the moment he stepped off the boat in Australia. One thing being in the 21st century had taught him was that the world was a lot smaller now. Maybe a chocobo was a bird from the far east? Or maybe even Africa…?
“Uh, right…” he said as he rubbed the back of his head, trying to sound as if he knew exactly what Abi was saying and hoping he didn’t sound as clueless as he felt. “Animals can be tricky. A lot of what they’re thinkin’ is in their eyes or the way they move.” He lowered his hand from his head. “Ye got anythin’ you wanna show off?”
“Always!” Abi laughed. “I’ll show you what’s in the sketchbook when we finish the…cooldown, right? It’s called a cooldown?” She was pretty sure that was a sports word she’d heard before. This seemed like it must be it.
Kellach laughed. “Aye, it's called a cooldown,” he said. “An’ I think we’ve pretty much finished it.” Abi didn’t seem as though she was still panting the way she had been when they had finished their run. He figured that both of their heart rates were probably doing alright. He motioned back to where they had left their things earlier. “Show me whatcha got?”
Abi picked up her backpack (small, black, with little bat wings on the side) and pulled out the sketchbook that went everywhere with her. She flipped through, skipping past the embarrassing number of times that she drew her boyfriend until she landed on the latest in chocobo studies.
“Here, these are the chocobos,” she said, handing the notebook over. “You can flip on through from there if you want.”
The next several pages were all detailed pen and ink drawings of the big birds—some full body, some attempting to capture the birds in motion, some focused in on a face or a wing as she tried to zero in on a particular detail. It was evident that she was in fact very good at what she did, even if one had never seen a chocobo in person.
Kellach flipped through the sketches, looking at each of them carefully. The first thing he was made aware of was the fact that a chocobo was, in fact, not an emu or a cassowary. From the sketches they reminded Kellach of an overgrown chicken.
The second (and far more important) thing he took note of was how good the sketches were. Kellach didn’t have any talent himself when it came to drawing or painting, but even he could tell that Abi was very talented. “These are really good,” he said as he looked through the drawings. “I like this one a lot!” he turned her book around to indicate one of the drawings of the birds in motion. He turned the book around so he could look at more. “What ye were saying before? About work art and fine art…have ye tried selling any of these to people?”
“Selling them?” Abi blinked, as if the idea had never once crossed her mind. “No, I mean…I do drawings for friends sometimes, but I never thought any of my stuff was really polished enough for selling. Do you think anybody would buy them?”
The truth was, Abi was one in a million good at drawing. She knew she was good, but she’d never considered that she was that good. She was always busy picking her work apart and finding the flaws, considering it good enough to give to friends but not good enough to ask for real money for.
Kellach tilted his head as he continued to flip through the sketchbook. His brows furrowed together. He didn’t know anything about art, or what made good art, or what made someone want to buy art. But he’d been in the 21st century long enough to know that getting one’s art out to the public was a lot easier now than it had been. “Aye, I think so,” he said. “Is that what ye wanna do?” He looked up from the book at Abi.
“I mean, I’ve been saying I wanted to be an artist when I grow up since I was five,” Abi admitted. “I guess I’ve just always been scared to take the plunge and say ‘yeah, this is good enough, someone would pay real money to have it.’ But maybe it’s time to…I don’t know, get a few prints together and see how it goes, or something.”
“Aye, I kin understand,” Kellach said with a nod. “My whole life I was always told what I was gonna do and what I was gonna be. Then when I was out on me own, it was scary as balls.” He shrugged. “Still is, if I’m honest. But I made the decision that I’m gonna live on my own terms, no matter what,” He closed the sketch book and handed it back to Abi. “So if ye want t’ sell yer art, I say go fer it! At least then ye kin say ye tried, right?”
“Maybe I’ll give it a try,” Abi said as she took the book and returned it to her backpack. She stood with the pack over her shoulder and gave Kellach a smile. “Thanks, Kellach—for the encouragement and for the run. You’re right, it’s a lot less boring with company. Wanna do it again day after tomorrow?”
Abi seemed happy and Kellach was happy to help. “Yer welcome, lass.” He said. “I’d like to do this again. Just let me know when yer ready, and we’ll go.”
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