“Not bad,” he said, happy with the results.
Ella looked at her ankle. It was a densely intertwined group of beautiful runes making a rather stunning band all the way around. And, incredibly, it didn’t hurt. Sure, there’d been a poking sensation as he marked her, but apparently these pigments muted nearly all pain when they were applied.
“You do incredible work. It’s stunning,” she admired.
“Of course it is,” he replied, leaning closer, a confused look on his face. “But this doesn’t make sense.”
“What?”
“You shouldn’t absorb and assimilate that one so quickly.”
“Which one?”
“The silver-white one. A very powerful pigment that normally only binds to the most select few of our order. And yet you have already taken it in. And look. It is helping the others set in place. How remarkable.”
“I guess I’m just?—”
“Impossible!”
Ella jumped at the outburst. “What?”
“The blackest pigment. Look!”
“Look at what? I don’t… oh!”
She saw what he was talking about now that she knew where to look. The black pigment was normally void of any color, but this application had begun shifting. Changing. It was dissolving before their eyes, losing its darkness and shifting into a swirling mix of the other colors combined, drawing from all of them and forming a unifying rune of sorts.
“I’ve never seen the like of it. Whatareyou?”
“I’m a human, like I said.”
“Most unusual. Most unusual indeed!”
The Skrizzit shuffled around his pigments, arranging them and rearranging them on his tray, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. Finally, after several busy minutes, he stopped and returned to examine his handiwork. More than that, how this woman, this impossible woman, had somehow done what she had.
Gone was his frown, now replaced by a brightness in his eyes. An excited look. He took a small device from his pocket, no bigger than his palm, rounded on the edges, as thick as a finger. He pressed the center and tossed it in the air above her. Ella reached up to catch it, but the little disc remained aloft above her, silently hovering.
“What is it?”
“A recording disc. Oh, this is remarkable,” he said, clearly worked up but in a good way. “I am going to document the entire process.”
“Is that normal?”
“Normal? No. We never bother. Why would we? But this? You? This is something entirely new, and I have the incredible privilege of being the first Skrizzit in the sector to apply these pigments. To document your species’ reaction. And oh, what a reaction it has been so far. Marvelous. Just marvelous!”
“Uh, so that wasn’t bad, what it just did? The black ink, I mean.”
“Bad? No. I mean yes, I suppose, but also no. I don’t know what it means, but one thing is clear.”
“Yeah?”
“Only the finest pigments will be used on you. And I am going to carefully record every last detail of it. I’ll be the most famous Skrizzit in the order, thanks to you.”
“You’re welcome, I guess.”
The man was positively buzzing with anticipation, excited to find out what this novel specimen might do next. How her skin would react to the many runes he would apply to her. What had started as a tedious annoyance had become something quite different, and Skrizzit Volkarian was going to be the one breaking news of this to the galaxy.
“Only my very best work,” he said to himself, as if preparing for a difficult task. “All will see this. Nothing but the absolute best will do.” He turned to actually look Ella in the eye, the amazing piece of meat he was about to work on morphing back into a person in his gaze, at least for a moment. “Relax, my dear. This will be a longer session than usual.”
