Jul 1, 2018
seen from Estonia
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Greece
seen from China
seen from Canada
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Yemen
seen from Chile
seen from United States
seen from Yemen
seen from Germany
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Greece
Arieth’s body arrived yesterday so I can finally take photos of the brothers together.
Aeramin Firewind, as he appears in Knights of Naren, my finished piece for the first week of character drawcember.
1 - The new eyes work well for Aeramin. I need to fix his eyelashes, but the eyes are nice!
2 - Tik looks great with shoes and a new shirt. :)
3 - More shoes. I could have taken more pictures of shoes, but I figured that was enough.
4 - Leinath now has a body. He’s looking good! I really love how well the Dikadoll body poses.
I need to make his outfit yet, but he’s cute in the turtleneck sweater in the meantime.
Naren - Camping Class
Aeramin had already gotten his schedule for regular classes. Now he stood in the line for extracurricular classes. He had taken one before, horse-riding, with his then boyfriend/roommate, Zaelith. They had broken up since then and had managed to convince the residence coordinator to let them trade roommates with two other students who hadn’t been getting along. Aeramin moved into a new room with a new roommate.
They got along well enough. Aeramin had been warned by the previous roommate that he was a slob, and it was true. He didn’t clean up after himself, but he also wasn’t there very often, which worked out well. Aeramin had been doing some questionable things to earn a little money so that he could pay for things like extracurricular classes, or maybe even an adahi to visit home. It wasn't really against the rules, and if it had been, he wouldn’t have even considered it, but just because it wasn’t mentioned in the rules, didn’t mean Aeramin wanted to be the example who got it put there. He was quiet and discreet, as were his clients.
He finally reached the front of the line. He already knew what was offered during his free times. There were a great many things that interested him. Music, art, calligraphy, as well as some outdoors activities. He considered taking the second horse-riding class but figured Zaelith would be taking it. The less time he had to spend with him right now, the better.
The camping class sounded interesting, but it was expensive. Still, it could come in useful if he was assigned an adahi after graduation. The camping class was special as they actually left the mage complex and went camping on the other side of the island for a week after classes concluded for the semester. Aeramin decided to try that one first.
“I’d like to take the camping class.”
The woman in charge of the extracurricular scheduling looked him up and down. “Did you bring a copy of your record from the main office?”
Aeramin pulled it out of his satchel and handed it to her. Only students with good records were allowed to take this class.
She flipped through it. “Your record is good. Do you have the 100 gold pieces fee?”
He handed her a slip of paper from the Thril Gandir bank. It wouldn’t have been easy to carry around 100 gold pieces. The paper was easier.
“Good, and the 100 gold piece adahi fee?”
Adahi fee? Wasn’t the cost of the adahi covered in the first 100 gold pieces? Aeramin stammered, “Um, I- uh, thought it was included?” He checked in his satchel but only found one gold piece and a few silvers.
The woman frowned impatiently. “It’s not, and that’s not enough,” she said, indicating the coins he had pulled out of his satchel. “Perhaps you’d like to sign up for something else. Hurry up. There are people waiting behind you.”
Aeramin twitched an ear and frowned. “Okay, the calligraphy class then.” Maybe if he saved up enough, he could take the camping class next semester.
Naren - Under the Sun and the Moon
Aeramin rushed back to his room from the mess hall after breakfast. He knew they would be coming for him soon. The three days had passed far too quickly. He felt she had only just arrived, and now she already had to go. It seemed like just yesterday he received her letter telling him that she had finally saved enough to visit. His father and fraternal twin brother had to stay behind to work on the farm, and she had mentioned that his father was worried about her traveling alone. He had agreed in the end, knowing how important the trip was to her, and to his son.
It had been seven years since the mages showed up at the farm to take him to his new home. He had tested positive for magic as an infant when his name was officially entered in the records on that quarter’s Name Day. When he was five, they came to take him for training. He hadn’t understood at the time. He didn’t want to leave his family or his home.
They took him to Thril Gandir, an island a day’s journey off the south coast of the continent where all the mages were taken. He remembered how homesick he was at first, and how he cried himself to sleep every night, even though there were seven other elven boys in the same room. He received letters from her, even though he was just beginning to read. She told him of things that happened on the farm, and he dreamed of being there instead of the cold stone walls of the grey buildings. Everything he had known was distant, and for the past seven years, he yearned to go back.
He reached his room, shutting the door behind himself. He sat on his bed to wait. Even now, he couldn’t leave. At first, he didn’t understand how the other students in his dormitory room were able to visit home, but he wasn’t. The only other who didn’t was Zaelith, but even he had visits from his family. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that he truly understood just how much money was paid for the right to leave for a few days, and how much money was needed to travel and stay at the inn on the island.
He jumped to his feet when the knock came at the door. He had moved to a different dormitory now, with smaller rooms. Still, four boys had to share a room. At the end of the semester, he and the others who had just celebrated their twelfth Name Days would be moving to yet another building where they would be housed two per room. He and Zaelith had already signed up to be roommates. It wouldn’t be until they were in their twenties and had completed their studies that they would be allowed their own rooms.
Zaelith was the only other one in the room this morning, and he barely spared a glance up from his book as Aeramin answered the door. One of the armored adahi guards was there.
“Aeramin Firewind?” the large man asked.
“Yes.”
“You have a visitor. Follow me.”
Aeramin nodded and followed along behind the man to a plain room near the entrance of the complex. There were more adahis here. Some were patrolling the area and others guarding doors. His mother was already in the room, sitting in one of the chairs. She smiled when she saw him and outstretched her arms, raising out of her chair enough to kiss his forehead and embrace him.
“My son. It’s our last few hours together before I have to leave for the journey back home.”
He nodded. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t cry today. He wasn’t a baby. He was twelve, but it was a promise he was already breaking. A tear escaped, and more followed. He buried his face in her cloak covering her arm and muffled, “I don’t want you to go.”
She patted his back. “I don’t want to go either, but there’s no more money for the inn. I can’t stay here any longer.”
He nodded again. He hated money. He hated that some people had it, and others, like his family, didn’t.
She pulled back, looking at his face and brushing his copper curls away from his tear-stained cheeks. “You’ve grown so much, and we’ve missed so much together. I’ve missed you every single day since they came to get you.”
“I’ve missed you and Da and Arieth too. It’s not fair.”
She frowned and nodded. “It’s not, but it is the way of things. It may sound silly, but one of the things that helped me cope was looking out the window. Do you have a window in your room here?”
“Yes.”
“Whenever I was sad because I missed you too much, I would look out the window and up to the sky. The sun and the moon are the same no matter where you are. I knew that the sun I was under was the same sun you were under, and at night it’s the same moon and stars. It made me feel like you were closer.”
“I guess I could try that.” He wasn’t convinced it would work. Maybe it would if he imagined she was looking at the same time.
She smiled sadly and reached for her bag. She pulled out a book. It looked very old and some of the pages had come loose from the binding. Aeramin regarded it curiously as she placed it in his hands. “I found this in a chest in the attic at home. It was your grandfather's -- Your father’s father. Your father never knew him as he died while your father was still a baby. His name was Karuna, and he was a mage. Your father couldn’t tell me much about him other than he had a very powerful staff that he created himself. I think some of his notes are in there. There’s more in the chest at home, but they’re not in very good shape. I plan to sort through and see what I can find that might be able to survive being posted to you if you’d like.”
Aeramin carefully opened the book. It had been written neatly, but some of the writing had faded. He looked up at his mother, “I would very much like that.”
“I’ll spend some time going through it this winter then.”
He closed the book and put it aside. They only had a short time left together before she had to go, and he wanted to make the most of it.