BYRON & CALLI: EXCHANGING LOOKS

Taking place during Adventure Log XVI: A Monster Revealed

"Next!" Calli called out. She'd made good time getting everyone into passable disguise. Gale had been stoic and patient, Taylan eager to play a role, Travis doubtful but cooperative, so all that was left was Byron.

He passed Travis in the narrow alley they were using as a makeshift changing room. Those not in the hot seat clustered together at the opening, blocking the view of anyone passing by.

So it was just them.

"Sit." She gently kicked the crate in front of her for emphasis. It was lower than her own to ensure she'd be comfortable while working on the taller men. There'd been a number of boxes and broken furnature piled up in the alley to choose from, and after she'd prestidigitated them they made adequate perches. Her magic had likewise cleaned the filth off the ground around them and cleared the air of a foul miasma of bodily fluids.

Byron hesitated. She wondered if she'd been too cheeky, guessing he normally bucked being bossed around like that. But he took his place and leaned against the wooden building walling one side of their hideaway. He was avoiding her eyes, choosing instead to inspect a crack forming in the plaster wall behind her. Maybe she'd pushed too far with her bold overture the night before...

His height and the limited space meant she had to be conscious of where to place her legs, and she'd settled for the outside of her right thigh nestled against the outside of his own right. It's not possible to do someone's makeup from a distance, afterall. The fact that she managed Travis' without having to make extraneous contact was something she was confident would never come up.

"I need you to turn your face towards me a bit, please." She traced her fingers in her usual cleansing spell, removing any sweat or grime from her new canvas. "So first we should alter something structural. Disguise the terrain underneath, yes? You saw how I lengthened Taylan's chin, filled out Gale's cheeks, and erased Travis' scars, in addition to aging them all a bit." Calli picked out a nondescript clay pot from the make-shift table she'd set up and scooped out a lump of sticky goo. "I'll need you to stay still for this part."

Focusing on her task at hand helped her remain calm and not think about the city, and people they loved, once more in danger. She knew running to check on Daesha, daughter of the murdered Endrin and one of her best friends, risked making a bad situation worse. She would cry for them later. She couldn't let herself think about her parents' reaction to her being an enemy of the queen right now. Not after everything... Calli felt her familiar panic squeeze in at her lungs. Taking long, deep, breaths she kept her mind on things she could control. Like these disguises. And why not multitask? As the world fell down around her, she wanted more than ever for someone to help her through the nights.

She tried to remain professional as she worked, warming the mixture in her hands before smoothing it into the few visible scars the fighter bore. His skin was already warm to touch, making the job easier. She bobbed her head from one side to the other inspecting his profile, and settled on adding an additional ridge to his nose. It would make it look like he'd broken it previously. "I'm surprised you don't already have one, honestly." She admitted to him. His eyes flicked to hers briefly and he made a short noise in his throat, at which point she realised he'd taken her 'stay still' instruction entirely too literally. The corner of her mouth turned up in a crooked smile, "It's okay to talk now, I'm done with this bit."

"It's been broken before, but I always managed to get it reset." He shrugged as he reached his hand up towards his face, but Calli grabbed his hand before he could touch it.

"The putty needs to set, best to leave it alone as much as you can." His hand was warm, too. In unison they both pulled their hands back. Byron continued studying the crack on the wall with singular determination.

Calli took a charcoal stick from her well-worn kit of face paints and held it at the ready. "Next I will need to emphasize where your lines naturally fall when you move, could you look unhappy for a moment? Knit your brows, frown, scrunch your nose... maybe even smile for good measure. Just make faces for me until I say stop."

She sat back and watched as the Korvosan Bear, the pit champion, intimidating and deadly, began running the gamut of emotions with his facial features. It looked like he was malfunctioning. Calli had what she needed pretty quickly, but let him continue a bit longer before letting out a tiny snicker.

He stopped at once and gave her resigned side-eye.

"If it makes you feel better the only one who I didn't do that to was Nightingale, because I already did it to him years ago when I was still learning." His eyes returned to the wall, and she continued his transformation. She mapped out his features and then began painting them in, imagining what he'd look like in another twenty years. His bone structure was strong. She felt the rasp of stubble at the very beginning of resurgence along his jaw as she blended the makeup in with her fingertips and tucked the sensation away to write about later.

He remained stoic and focused on the plaster behind her, unmoving as the walls themselves. She really was beginning to worry she'd made a mistake sharing that memory with him.

That is, until she dropped the stick of white greasepaint. They both leant forward as if to reach for it, but Byron held back, unsure if he should be moving, yet. So Calli crouched down and fished out the tube from under her crate. Grinning up and holding it aloft in triumph once she’d grasped it, she found his gaze had wandered, and was currently looking with appreciation at her decolletage.

His eyes widened guiltily when he realised he'd been caught, and he resumed his devoted wall-watching.

'“Oh, I see.” She understood now. He hadn't been avoiding her gaze out of displeasure- quite the opposite. Calli stood back up and slinked back to him, blocking his view of the wall behind. She stepped over his lap so one of her thick thighs pressed either side of his knees where he sat to block his escape. She dispensed some of the paint on to her palm and casually returned the tube to her kit. Once more Calli rubbed her hands together, distributing the concoction all along her fingers. And then she placed one hand either side of his face, leading with her nails, and ran her painted fingers through his hair at his temples, giving him streaks of white to trace where her hands had been.

His head naturally tilted back slightly at the motion, turning his face parallel to hers as she looked down at him with a knowing smile. Her heart was pounding. She held his head there, with his eyes looking up into hers, and at this distance she could really commit them to memory- they made her think of a mahogany obsidian stone: consistent in colour with surprising depth of texture- and she savored the moment.

"Looks good to me," Calli whispered, only inches from his face, and she then removed herself from his personal space.

She packed her disguise kit away into the bag of holding, magically cleaning errant makeup from anything that needed it, and dropped his assigned priest robe into his lap. His attention was all hers, now. She hoisted her bag, and with a wink had her hairclip change her own looks to that of a much lighter-skinned full-blooded elf with blonde hair and blue eyes. Where Calliandra's face was soft and round, she had sharpened the features a bit, and aged herself up another fifteen years, though for an elf that visual could bely many more than that.

"Let's get this show on the road, gents!" She proclaimed to the party as she exited the alley. She felt him watching her go. Dragging herself away had been delicious agony, but she wasn't going to do all the work for him, and it would be a shame to ruin the disguise so soon. She hoped they survived the day... Calli was already looking forward to their next session.