Bareo
Bareo yawned and laid his brush down in the scooped out front shelf of his easel. Funny, hr thought breifly, to be so tired at such a time of day. "You can relax now," he told the Lady Holder, who was looking as tired as he. "I really ought to have given you a break sooner."
Lady Pasima smiled greatfully, wincing at some cramp in her leg as she moved. "You must be twice as tired as I," she observed. "I've only been sitting and I'm exhausted. You've been doing the hard part!"
Bareo grinned. "The sitting can be harder than the painting. All I have to do is draw what I see. The subject has to create it."
"Modest as usual," Pasima chided and shook her head. "We're so lucky to have found an artist who wasn't so stuck up. My father had this cranky old Master who barked at you every time you blinked."
"It's a pleasure to do portraits for you and your family," Bareo replied. "I just hope you'll allow me the pleasure for many turns to come."
"You're forbidden to go looking," Pasima threatened, "we've got first claim on your talents."
Bareo chuckled. "What a problem to have. Stuck as the personal artist of a beautiful Lady Holder and handsome Lord Holder and their family. What a horrible fate."
"Go get some fresh air and stop kissing up," Pasima growled. "My son has finally chosen a poor girl to be his Lady, and I'd like you to do a portrait of her after you've finished mine."
"Untameable Thasmias has been tamed?" Bareo scoffed. "I don't believe it!" In the past turn or so that Bareo had been doing portraits for the Lord and Lady of Redlake Hold, he and the lord heir, who was now 22, become very close. His friend hadn't told him of selecting a bride, and he couldn't wait to meet the woman.
"Amazing isn't it?" Pasima agreed as they left the room. "Thought he'd never choose one."
Bareo bid lady Pasima a goodbye and told her that she could take as long as she wanted but he'd be back in the sitting room in about half an hour. She replied that she'd be back as soon as he was ready.
Finally free, Bareo greatfully fled the hold with as much dignity as he could muster. Outside it was a clear, sunny day which would have been perfect for a swim had he not been expected back in such a short time.
An indignant chirp alerted Bareo to the arrival of his flit. Alkee had landed on a young sapling and had his wings raised in alarm as the young tree couldn't support his miniscule weight.
"Get off that branch before you kill the poor tree," Bareo instructed the flit, who greatfully hopped onto the offered arm and sauntered up to his usual place on Bareo's shoulder.
From the safety of his perch, Alkee subjected the tree to a ferocious scolding before pretending it didn't exist. Bareo chuckled at Alkee's antics and was rewarded with a malevolent glare from the little marble.
"I didn't mean it offensively," Bareo apologized, stroking the little flit's back as he strolled through the courtyard. He had Impressed Alkee just over two sevendays ago and already he had begun to wonder how he'd lived without his companion for twenty-three turns of his life. "What'd you do during the sitting?" he asked the flit, adding images to emphsize his words.
Alkee chirped happily and extended his wings, preening happily and looking very smug. Without the slightest trace of guilt, Alkee informed his human through an image that he had spent the time with two browns harassing a feline.
"You're the most disobedient little flit there ever was," Bareo scolded him, though he couldn't quite be angry with Alkee for more than a few seconds. "How many times have I told you to go after canines not felines? I don't want to have to patch up feline scratches."
Alkee gave the flitter-equivalent of a grin and agreed heartily. Bareo rewarded the flit with a peice of meat he carried as snacks for the growing flit. As he looked up from giving the flit his snack, Bareo noticed a rather attractive woman about his age wandering around in the courtyard and looking quite lost. Bareo strode up to her boldly, coughing gently to get her attention.
"You look lost," he remarked when she looked up in suprise, flashing the most winning smile he could muster. "Anywhere I can help you find your way too?"
The woman smiled back greatfully. "Thank Faranth someone found me! Do you live in this maze of a hold?" she gestured generally toward the hold proper.
"Since last Turn, yes. I have to admit, I got lost at least twice a sevenday for the first month I lived here," Bareo replied. "Redlake's a twisty place to navigate."
"So I've noticed," the woman replied wryly, pushing a strand of jet black hair behind one ear and looking up at him with sparkling navy blue eyes. "I don't suppose you'd have the time to escort a poor lost girl to the Lady Holder's study?"
"I've always got time for pretty young ladies," Bareo assured her, grinning when she blushed prettily. "Especially for such a little favor as escorting them through the halls of a Hold I know like the back of my hand."
Alkee, feeling left out and jealous of this woman for taking his human's attention from him, chirped louldy to remind Bareo of his presence. The woman's eyes darted to where Alkee peeked out curiously from around Bareo's neck. "What a beautiful little flit!" she gasped, reaching out to touch him, but drawing her hand back quickly.
Alkee, however, was putty in the hands of anyone who stroked his ego and clambered down Bareo's arm in a comical gait to stand on Bareo's hand, stretching his neck out in the woman's direction. "He's begging for you to scratch his eyeridges," Bareo explained when the woman gave him a questioning look. "Just reach out. He doesn't bite."
A bit hesitantly, the woman reached out and scratched Alkee's eyeridges tentatively. Alkee crooned encouragingly and the woman smiled bemusedly as she scratched. "His skin is so soft!" she exclaimed as she drew her hand back.
Alkee shoved his head towards her but Bareo told him sternly to stop being a pest and go back up to his shoulder. Alkee glared at his human defiantly but obeyed. "Willful little things," Bareo chuckled.
The woman nodded. "But very affectionate," she added, smiling up at the flit, who returned her gaze with a strange sort of chirp and nipped his human's ear in a "told-you-so" sort of manner.
"Shall we be off?" he asked, extending an arm through which the woman linked her own.
"We'd better, or I'll be late for my appointment," she replied and the two started off, chatting easily as they walked through the maze of halls that made up Redlake's hold proper.
Alkee, at some point, snuck onto the woman's shoulders and rode there, much to the woman's delight and Bareo's displeasure, for the remainder of the walk. Soon they arrived at the enterance to the hallway off of which were the Lord and Lady holder's studies.
"Just go down to the first door on the right," Bareo instructed the woman before forcefully collecting his flit, bidding her a hasty good-bye, and racing down the halls to the sitting room to prepare his paints.
Alkee refused to leave, curling up on one of the paint shelves. Bareo made short work of mixing his paints and then sat back to think about his encounter with the pretty young woman. Yes, he'd have to seek her out after the sitting was done. Ah, to have a woman in his life again. His last romantic interest had been gone from his life (after shattering one of his very valuable vases in a fight) for over a turn now.
"Bareo?" Pasima called as she walked into the room, in a more casual dress than the one she'd been wearing for her sitting. "Could we suspend my sitting for a time? I've got an urgent head study I need done."
"But..." Bareo began to protest but then nodded his compliance. "I suppose we could. I've got the basic framework down and-"
"Good," Pasima cut him off with a deft wave of her hand. "I'll go tell your subject you're ready for her." Pasima swept out of the room and Bareo laid the half-finished portrait of Pasima to a side and pickud up a smaller canvas, holding it under one arm as he adjusted the easel.
As Bareo was setting the canvas up, Pasima arrived. Bareo looked up and had to make a concious effort not to widen his eyes when he saw his subject was none other than the young woman he'd escorted to Pasima's study. "Bareo, meet Reimia," Pasima introduced him. "Future Lady Holder of Redlake Hold."
"We've... already met," Bareo managed, smiling weakly. "Please have a seat Reimia." Of course. He should have known that a woman like Reimia might have suited Thasmias' tastes in a wife. Stupid to think she might be his.
"Good then. I'll be back in an hour. I expect good work from you, Bareo," Pasima sad as she left, waggling a finger threateningly at Bareo. "Just because your subject is a beautiful young woman instead of an old hag like me doesn't mean you can spend more time drooling over her than painting."
Bareo smiled and assured the Lady Holder that she was not an old hag and that he would do just as good a job on Reimia's portrait as on hers. Pasima left, muttering something about kiss-up artists.
It pained Bareo slightly to paint Reimia, knowing that she could never be his. Funny he had such feelings when he'd scarcely known her an hour. Nonetheless, the silence that settled between artist and subject was one that not even Alkee dared to break.
Reimia was the first to speak up, not moving her head as she spoke. "I'm sorry, Bareo."
Bareo waited for a moment before replying. "What do you have to be sorry for?" he said at last, the words sounding a bit more harsh than he'd intended.
"For flirting. For leading you on when I knew I was already committed," Reimia replied, her voice slightly defiant.
"There's no reason to be sorry for flirting," Bareo replied stiffly as he continued to paint almost mechanically.
The uncomfortable silence settled between them for a while, and the only sounds were of Bareo's brush on the canvas.
"Still..." Reimia tried again. "I feel like I've hurt you. And I didn't mean to hurt you. I really didn't."
"Well you didn't," Bareo lied. "So don't blame yourself. I ought to know by now that all the best women are taken."
Remia smiled. "You flatter me."
"I don't mean to," Bareo lied again.
The silence which settled now remained for the rest of the sitting. Bareo concentrated on his painting, blocking out all thoughts of who his subject was and painting with a single mind. He finished the headstudy after an hour and a half. "How is it?" he asked Reimia, turining the portrait toward her.
"Perfect," she replied, rising abruptly. She walked around the easel and gave Bareo a quick hug before feeling the room.
Later that night, Bareo receieved the horrible news that Lord Holder Tarmhos had died of a cardiac arrest. The healers had been unable to revive him and, as of that night, Thasmias was the new Lord Holder of Redlake. He and Reimia were to be espoused at an impromptu ceremony in two days.
Bareo recieved the message with doubled horror. First that Tarmhos was gone so quickly, second that Reimia was to be espoused before he might have a chance to do something to persuade her to choose him over Lord Thasmias.
Of course, he could do and did nothing to prevent the marriage and watched with the other still greiving residents of the hold as Thasmias and Reimia were espoused.
Bareo was seated at a table after the feast, intent on drowning his sorrows in wine when a man clad in riding gear sat down across from him. "What do you want?" Bareo snapped.
"Only to offer you a way away from Redlake which, if rumor is correct, seems to be a place of pain for you right now," the man replied, helping himself to a wineskin.
"Another comission?" Bareo asked, much more interested now. It was true that it would be hard to stay at Redlake now that Reimia was espoused.
"Not exactly," the man replied, putting down his glass. "I am a Searchrider for Dragonsoul Weyr, and my blue and I were invited to Search for Candidates at this momentous occasion. My dragon has found you acceptable as a Candidate. Would you like to come to Dragonsoul?"
He knew it was stupid to make such a decision so quickly, but his dissapointment over Reimia's espousal prompted him. "What've I got to loose?" he said with a grin and a little shrug. "Can we leave tonight?"
The Searchrider nodded sympathetically. "As soon as you are ready. My blue and I will be waiting in the open courtyard."
Bareo quickly packed his paints, easel, and brushes as well as his wardrobe and summoned Alkee to him. He bundled all his clothes in one large bag and everything else onto another of a similar size. Saying a silent good-bye to Redlake, Bareo slung his bags over his shoulder and raced out to meet the dragonrider, Alkee flying along beside him, chirping questioningly at his rider's haste.
The Searchrider helped him to secure his bags and then climbed up to his blue's back and extend a hand to help Bareo up. Bareo lept up and settled himself in front of the rider. Alkee curled up in his lap, head raised and emitting curious chirps. The flit squawked as the blue launched himself into the air and winged his way into the air before going between. Bareo welcomed the numbing blackness that enshrouded him and counted to three.