I haven't posted anything in an eternity but this was apparently rotting away in my notes.
Tuition
~ ~ ~
"See, Red? That wasn't so bad, was it?"
The figure on the floor dragged himself onto the room's small desk. He slumped over it as a hand reached up to the side of his face dripping ink and ichor.
Panic gripped him at the utter darkness. "It's not- it isn't- I can't see- "
"Give it time," the lady said. She spoke airily, as if she hadn't just gouged his eye out and filled the gaping cavity with a viscous blob of prismatic pigment. "Art takes patience, you know."
He breathed. In and out. In. And out. The pain didn't subside, but when he moved his hand, he could see outlines and shadows out of his left eye. He blinked once, twice, and quickly replaced his hand as the pain returned, sharp and throbbing.
"You'll hurt yourself like that," she tutted.
He kept his hand over his eye and resisted the urge to dig his fingers in to pull out the thread of pain stabbing through his skull. He heard a laugh. Heard her laugh, amused. He glared at her as well as he could.
"Oh don't give me that look. You told me to put it wherever it would be most effective. Would you have preferred I use your heart?"
". . .no."
She laughed again. Paper rustled behind him, the pages of her dress swishing with her movement. She hummed, perfectly cheerful. Probably because she had a body again.
"How long?"
"Hmm?"
"How long until it stops hurting? Until I can see out of it?"
"Let's see. . . last time it was an eye, it took a month, but that was with a poppet. For your kin. . .a day, maybe two, isn't that nice?"
He'd rather have kept his eye, but what was done was done. "Lucky me," he muttered.
"You are lucky," she said. "It's usually much harder to strike a deal with a Teacher such as myself. The materials alone to summon me would have cost a great deal. You should be grateful."
"Yes. Thank you for traumatizing me and my friends. Thank you for scaring the wits out of me and plucking my eye out. I am ever so grateful for the honor."
"You're welcome, you big useless mop. And I am ever so pleased to find that your first reaction upon seeing me as I am is to try burning me."
". . .you were a pad of papers and then you were not. Did you expect me to shake your hand?"
"Yes, or some courtesy. But no, instead, you snatch up my empty vessel and threaten to set it alight. It was rather amusing to see though, and I never would have though you'd find this form of mine pretty-"
"I was threatening you, I was trying to intimidate you."
"It was flattering nonetheless," she laughed. "And quite a fun little show of bravado. Bravo, Red, bravo."
". . what are you gonna do with it?"
"With what? This?" She smiled at the little orb dangling by bloody nerves from her hand, a pretty white eye with an iris of blue ringed with green. "Perhaps I'll dip it in resin and hang it from a shelf. Or maybe I'll keep it in a jar as a marble, or crush and mix it into paint for a fine portrait of its old owner. So many possibilities, and the organs of cloth spawn are so terribly hard to come by . . .any suggestions? It was yours, after all."
"I don't care, just don't show it off."
"Not to your friends, you mean? Don't worry, I won't show them. Or tell them. It's part of our deal after all."
Quick doodle of Colin and LT. She's something of a secretary, mostly because she insists on hanging around Colin despite his crankiness and she likes sorting stuff anyway.
