You Spin Me Round

Paint hissed quietly as it was sprayed from within a handheld metal can. It splattered over a stone brick wall, filling every crevasse with liquid color. Red, pink, orange, and gold worked in perfect harmony. A few trails of paint dripped down the surface, giving the art a messy but endearing touch.

Clem stepped back from her work. She crossed one arm over her chest and rested her cheek against the fist of her other hand. Blue eyes peered over the wall, scrutinizing the painted piece. It was a dragon, one of Clem’s favorite things to paint. Red scales covered its body, highlighted in orange and pink from a setting sun within the depiction. Striking golden eyes stared right out from the wall, piercing the souls of those who would walk by.

Clem furrowed her brow and tilted her head, contemplating what else she could add to put the final touches on this piece. She flipped her paint can in her hand absentmindedly. Maybe some mountains? Yeah, that seemed right.

The painter stepped forward to begin painting again, but froze in place. A laugh echoed down the hallway from someone passing nearby. Clem latched herself to the wall, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t come her way. She had taken to painting in abandoned rooms and hallways in the castle lately. Though she had learnt to escape those who caught her making graffiti, the thought of being discovered still sent her heart pacing. It was a deep-seated instinct to run, but a thrill nonetheless.

The laughter faded and Clem let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding in. That was a close one! She returned to her artwork, adding in looming mountains behind the majestic red dragon. Black paint dripped down to mix with the few trails of color. The woman stepped back again and nodded in satisfaction.

Footsteps caught Clem’s attention. She darted behind the pillar of an arch in the hallway. Peeking around the side, her blue gaze caught on to a man with fiery hair. He was sneaking down the adjacent hallway, jumping from shadow to shadow. Clem raised an eyebrow. It was almost amusing to watch him from where she was at. He disappeared down the hallway behind the corner. The painter elected to follow him. She had finished her art and had nothing better to do at the moment.

Clem pursued the man for a while, staying just out of sight. She had never met him before. Then again, she hadn’t met many people in Errings Rising. The woman was fairly seclusive since joining the guild, spending her time painting or attempting to read some old documents that she had found. She felt like she didn’t fit in with most of the guild members as all the ones she had met seemed a little odd. Clem still craved social interaction, however. Perhaps that was what pushed her to follow this unknown man.

The man arrived at a pantry room of sorts that seemed to have an attached kitchen. Clem peered around the corner, watching as he honed in on some dishes that had been set out. He sat, preparing himself to chow down. Not before removing his shirt completely, though. Clem whipped back around the corner, her cheeks turning slightly pink. She felt like she was intruding on his privacy, watching him while he was shirtless. Never had she been around a man like this so close… if her mother’s life had taught her anything, it was that she should proceed with caution.

Clem made the decision to just walk in and talk to the guy. Surely it would be easy, she could just ignore his shirtlessness and talk to him like a normal person would. Yeah! I can do that, Clem thought, psyching herself up, I can totally do that. Easy peasy.

As she rounded the corner, all plans went out the window. The awkwardness Clem had planned to avoid seemed inevitable. “Er… hi! Is there enough for two? I’m Clem,” she greeted with a friendly smile. The woman took a seat across the table from the fiery-haired man. She mentally cursed herself. Had she really been so deprived of social interaction that she forgot how to talk to others? Hopefully they could talk enough to satiate the loneliness that had been collecting inside her.

Clem’s sudden appearance seemed to startle the redhead. It took him a moment, but when he realized she was sitting in front of him, staring at him with curious blue eyes, he fell backwards out of his seat. Flailing arms nearly knocked some plates of food to the floor, but the young woman reached out and steadied them.

“Shit, you okay dude?” Clem asked, peeking over the table at the fallen man. Somehow he had manifested an outfit of fancy-ish clothes out of nowhere. She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. This guy was an odd one already. Hopefully he wouldn’t turn out to be any worse.

The redhead hopped to his feet and gave Clem a deep bow. She squirmed uncomfortably in her seat for a moment. Being raised without any education on etiquette, she had no idea how to respond to formalities. It was only a few years ago that she had started to throw in an occasional ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. She hoped this guy didn’t expect her to act the same.

“Naw, man, you can eat too,” Clem said, waving him back to the table. His words were peculiar and it took a second for her to grasp what he was saying. By ‘this one’ he seemed to be referring to himself… Weird. The thought of him serving her sent another pang of unease through her.

“Why ya talkin’ like that, Tura?” she asked bluntly. “You ain’t a slave, you’re free to do whatever the hell you want. Eat some food! And don’t call me mistress.”

Before they could even start eating, Tura collapsed to the floor once more. This time it wasn’t from falling off of his seat. The man’s body convulsed and spasmed right before Clem’s eyes. She leapt to her feet and rushed over to his side, holding her hands out towards him helplessly. What could she do? There seemed to be nothing. Medical training was something she had never received. “Shit, shit, shit,” Clem hissed as she knelt by Tura’s side. Was this guy she had just met about to die right before her eyes?

Luckily, the episode seemed to fade within moments. Silence filled the room, save for Tura’s panting. Clem stood up and grabbed a napkin from the table, holding it out to the redhead. “For your nose,” she explained. The painter crouched down again, observing him with furrowed brows. What the hell had just happened? She’d heard of seizures before, but nothing like this.

“You okay?” was all that Clem said, the question hanging in the air.

The way he spoke continued to confuse Clem. She wasn’t used to someone using ‘this one’ instead of ‘me’ or ‘my’. While she wasn’t exactly an expert in language or grammar, it just sounded wrong. Did he not have enough sense of self to claim his own existence? It was all so odd.

“Might? Purity and light? Magnificence? Man, you got some eye issues or somethin’?” Clem asked incredulously. “I ain’t no being of light or nothin’.” While she wasn’t necessarily insecure, Clem knew exactly what she was. She was a being of color and paint, of dirt and darkness, a street rat who looked out for herself only. She was fiery, stubborn, and often rude. Nothing about her felt majestic or holy in the slightest like what Tura was speaking of.

“Where the hell did you grow up?” she asked, brow furrowing. He spoke so lowly of himself and so highly of women. That felt so backwards from the way her own upbringing was. Among her community, men were cheats and scumbags who took advantage of women and treated them like garbage. She saw it over and over again with the boyfriends her mom would bring home. They would lie, steal, abuse her and her mother. However, she tried to treat everyone as an equal. Nobody deserved a higher standing based on something like sex, they had to earn it.

Tura was speaking as if he wasn’t even equal, as if he were a slave that was on a lower tier of existence from women. “Why d’ya speak like you ain’t worth nothing? You the same species as women, ain’t you? Why would that make ya any less?” While she had her own reservations about men, Clem tried to figure out why Tura was this way so she could convince him to stop speaking that way. It was freaking her out a bit that he thought so lowly of himself. She wanted him to know she didn’t mind and didn’t want to be referred to so highly.