On the other hand, stone and crystal nymphs were overly sensitive and required a diamond-tipped needle so as not to fracture the surface of their skin.
Gargoyles were somewhere in the middle. I’d learned how to tattoo myself long before even meeting Effie and using her enchanted ink.
What had started as a curiosity from seeing the tattoos on humans had turned into an obsession. I could never get my wings back, but I could make myself stand out in other ways.
I started with a regular human tattoo gun and broke several of them in the process. While my skin wasn’t completely stone, it was still thick enough that it couldn’t be punctured with mundane tools.
Then I watched a sculptor in Ireland use a delicate chisel to create a path for pigment to flow through. He’d explained that the pigment would stain the stone if left alone long enough.
I broke into his studio that night and gave myself my first tattoo on the inside of my wrist. The Celtic symbolruis, a long line with five, shorter, tilted lines slashed through it.
It meant the end of one thing and the beginning of another.
After that, I stole the sculptor’s tools and made off into the night, boarding a ship to the United States and starting a new life.
Over the years I perfected the craft, tattoos littering my own skin and my art gracing the skin of other supernaturals all over the world.
I’d even had the witch who created my last glamour sixty years ago translate the tattoos into my ‘human’ persona. I no longer wore the glamour, but if I put it on today my arms, legs, and back would still be covered with my art.
Dallan was the only other monster at the shop that knew how to tattoo stone skin as I’d taught him how to do it over the years so that we could service more customers together.
Because of that I could havetechnicallyleft Brendan to Dallan to tattoo, but my tentacled friend was less patient with gargoyles than I was.
“Once you’ve been treating the tattoo for three weeks you can forgo the spray. If you work outside, try to keep it covered as the sun will make the ink fade, especially seeing as it’s a colored tatt,” I continued my explanation as I wrapped his bicep in saran wrap.
Brendan stayed silent, as he had for our entire two-hour session. He’d sent all of his requirements for the tattoo via email last month so he wouldn’t have to talk to me. Apparently the taboo of speaking or acknowledging a Wingless didn’t extend to electronic communication.
“If there is any trouble feel free to come back and we’ll fix it,” I finished, feeling the way I always did when I tattooed other gargoyles: completely invisible.
I wasn’t sure why I even let gargoyles come to Monstrous Ink to get tattooed by me at all. Nothing ever changed.
Once upon a time I used to hope that the Accords would bring the gargoyle race into the modern day and they would abandon some of their more archaic rules about Wingless.
But it had been over fifty years since the Accords and I wasn’t holding my breath anymore.
With a shake of my head I began cleaning up my station, ignoring the gargoyle still sitting in my chair. I wasn’t sure what kind of thought process the gargoyles who came to get tatted by me while still pretending like I didn’t exist went through, and I didn’t care much anymore.
The money still spent the same. Now that I had a bunch of new mouths to feed I could use it. One of those mouths being one with plump pink lips that rarely tilted up into a genuine smile.
“You and that human a thing?”
At the sound of Brendan’s voice, the chisel tip I was busily cleaning slipped out of my fingers and clattered onto the tin tray in my lap.
Whirling around, I faced the gargoyle, trying to keep my expression neutral. “Did you just say something?”
Over the years they would sometimes slip up and make a comment or compliment my work, but never in the over two-hundred years since my wings were ripped from my back had they ever asked me a direct question.
Brendan shrugged. “Yeah? What of it?”
I wasn’t sure how old Brendan was, but he had to be on the younger side. None of the older ones, no matter how much curiosity they had rattling between their ears, would have ever broken the taboo.
“I don’t think it’s any of your business whether she and I are anything, you came here for a tattoo, not for a play-by-play of my life.” I spoke slowly, trying to measure out my words in what was suddenly an A/B conversation.
Brendan let out an inelegant snort. “You wear her scent on your skin like a fucking perfume. You Wingless are so un-gargoyle.”
Irritation sparked somewhere deep in my chest. It was true that I didn’t feel much like a gargoyle anymore. After two centuries living amongst humans and other supernaturals, the secretive nature that most of my species still kept seemed completely counterproductive.
Gargoyles still lived isolated lives, only coming into the modern world to buy supplies, or like Brendan, get some kind of service like my tattoo skills.
