Send🧠+ a word for my a headcanon for my muse in association with that word: canons
[The image above is my best attempt at giving his tattoos a visual reference. This doesn’t include his scars.]
After the ritual at Tal’doren, Laurent had a hard time coping with the separation. He was gravely injured still, due to the traps used to capture him, and his mind was filled with fractured memories. He couldn’t remember some things that he wanted to recall, but then there were unwelcome things he remembered very clearly. He was distraught and still unstable, so he was confined to a bed while others were busy trying to find ways to manage the reports of Forsaken moving on Gilneas.
During that time in bed, he met a scribe who was in a similar state. She was older than him, and not as prone to violence, but she kept scribbling on every spare piece of paper in their room. She was at it for hours on end each day, and often passed out from exhaustion. She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t speak. She just wrote nonsense over and over.
She became the focus that saved Laurent’s mind.
He would talk and sing to her, soothingly, and expect nothing over her. In time, he managed to convince her to eat with him, telling her that he would eat if she would. In time, he learned her name, Paloma, but that was about all she would say.
One night, he was just talking to sooth her and he happened to mention his relationship with the Light. He told her that he wanted to always remember it and was afraid it would fall into the growing void in his heart and mind. The woman moved to his bed and lifted her sleeve. Her arm was covered in symbols. He asked her about them, but she couldn’t find the words to express herself, so she picked up her pen and wrote a symbol on his arm. He smiled and told her it was only temporary. He wanted to always remember. In response, she made another mark, but this time drew blood, driving the ink into his skin.
Tattoos.
It took her nearly two weeks to inscribe his body with a symbolic ‘yoke’ tattoo on his back, a vigil candle on his chest, and the canons and tenets of his faith. It was a painful process, but Laurent sat still for hours to let Paloma work. In the end, he had his reminder, and today it serves two purposes, as Paloma never made it out of Gilneas.
In his human form, these tattoos are often hidden beneath his clothing, and in Worgen form they are completely obscured beneath his fur. However, they do glow softly when he is drawing upon the Light.
Thank you for the ask, @saidelia-draconis!
