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Post by haus on Aug 8, 2015 5:55:15 GMT -5
Jonah was doing that thing again. That thing where he played hooky from the increasingly hefty number of things he had to do at home. He'd gotten a call from a prospective buyer— some ritzy rich CEO who wanted to take a look at one of the paintings from his collection of works he liked to call "some shit i did after staying awake for like 5 days straight". He actually had no bloody idea why anyone wanted to buy any of his paintings, seeing as he thought they were utter and complete garbage, but... years of art school made him very, very good at bullshitting plenty of euphoric and deep conceptual mumbo-jumbo about symbolism, coupled with some kind of social commentary on whatever Jonah felt like lying about on that particular day. And Jonah, being excellent at making good impressions, managed to snag a couple collectors' numbers in case they wanted to stop by and have at his insomnia-fueled experiments.
And of course, to properly make a good impression, one had to clean his house.
It wasn't like he had to do some major interior redecorating. Jonah was an artist, after all. And wasn't the stereotype that artists were messy people? The word itself conjured up an image of an age long ago, where traditional media was commonplace and not at all the kind of commodity it was now— and the image included the quintessential painter, sitting on a stool with his brush in hand, and plenty of stains on his well-worn apron.
But this wasn't a matter of a handful of canvases and the occasional misplaced brush or even of trying to make his space look classier than it was. Uh, Jonah had a very, very different problem. As in, his house at the moment was a literal fucking pigsty and even he couldn't stand to be there for the time being. Especially since he spilled an entire can of paint, making every single room smell like an industrial wastebin to him and basically it was just a big huge no-fun zone back at the Jonahcave right now.
He sighed, thinking about the smell of paint sticking to his clothes— then he stopped abruptly in front of a shop. It looked quaint— not at all like some of the higher-tech establishments that littered the upper class district. Had a kind of homey feel to it, which Jonah liked immediately. Jonah looked around a little, reading a sign at the shop's entrance. Hiraeth— an antique store. Ooh, how cute. Some cool stuff must be in there, he thought— like real, physical books! He hadn't seen one since he left the lower class all those years ago.
With that, Jonah gently pushed the door open, peeking inside curiously.
"Hellooo," he called out. "Nice place you have here— if anyone's here, I mean."
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Unapproved Character
the ultimate bae - Rated: A+++
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Post by †heophilus on Aug 12, 2015 0:53:49 GMT -5
Theophilus stared at the cards spread out on the counter before him, the edges flickering slightly from the softly whirring holo-display. Stuck. Again. He tapped at the cards, still holding some vain splinter of hope that he could free himself from the lock, but, to his not-so-surprise, none of them budged. He sighed and, with a swipe of his finger, scattered them into a restart - how many times now? His fictional cash in the corner of the display blinked pointedly further into the negatives, and Theophilus vowed to never even touch any sort of gambling game with his grubby fingers if he cared even a little about his future. Or bank account. He didn't even know how to play solitaire. Even with the embarrassing amount of times he'd booted it up when his shop was quiet and empty. So, that was even more embarrassing? No one had to know.
Hiraeth wasn't exactly a hubbub of activity, even on its best days, but Theophilus didn't really have a problem with that. He still made enough to keep himself going, what with the shopfront and the...other.....shopfront. Shopback? His what some may call 'questionable business practices' (but Theophilus would argue that they were, in fact, very solid business practices, if you think about it). Either way, between them, it was more than enough, but he still had spots of slow, empty days, with nothing but his own company and the ticking of many, many clocks on the walls to tell him just how slowly time was moving. A particularly loud cuckoo clock, decorated to the nines with gaudy vines and shiny berries and swinging pinecone pendulums and a whole family of carved woodland creatures, was usually the recipient of his unmitigated hatred. Something about it just gave him the urge to throw it out a window.
"Might just close up early," he sighed aloud, turning his attention back to the countertop and tapping cards absently with his pointer finger.
And, as if to set him right, the door chimed open.
Theophilus slammed his hand down on the holo-display to scatter it as the voice called out, and he shoved the display under the counter, pushing up on his toes to lean across the wood. "Good afternoon," he said cheerfully, sliding to the side of the counter to see past the wardrobe that usually blocked his view of the door, and - oh! Pink hair! Theophilus beamed at the customer, raising one hand in greeting. "Ah, thank you very much - welcome to Hiraeth. Can I help you with anything?"
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Posts: 16
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Post by haus on Aug 12, 2015 3:31:56 GMT -5
Whoa. Everything really was as quaint as he imagined on the inside. Jonah was no stranger to hand-crafted goods— he did go to art school after all —but his colleagues were merely imitators of past legends at best. Nothing would really come close to the same finely tuned attention to each subtle detail that could only be gained through centuries of knowledge and skill, passed down from generation to generation. People today didn't have such a luxury— or rather, more often chose not to, when technology could essentially displace pretty much the entire workforce if it wasn't for those anti-robotics interests groups lobbying up at the top.
Ew. Politics. Transferring train of thought.
The store was quiet for the most part, save for a voice and the ticking of a bunch of old analog clocks— those were hella rare in this day and age.
"I'm just looking around, thanks—" oh— the shopkeeper had pink hair! "You are so rocking that color by the way."
He smiled, soon to be distracted by a particularly ostentatious clock. With vines and shit. And woodland creatures. And shiny berries and swinging pinecones. He squinted, moving towards it in order to get a closer look. Oh my god, Jonah thought. This thing was absolutely ridiculous. It was so kitschy it was almost cute in the kind of silly, endearing way that old people sometimes were. If Jonah's sense of humor wasn't as finely tuned as it was, he might've felt moderately insulted by its tacky opulence. But tacky was the new cool as far as Jonah was concerned— and shit. When it came to tack, it was either go hard or go home.
"Nice clock," he commented offhandedly. No doubt in his mind that somewhere out there was a rich old man who collected this exact kind of thing. If Jonah was more into crafts, he might've considered making some post-ironic homage to it, except with like... fruit. Bananas. Pineapples. Or something. He'd work on that concept.
Jonah perused other items along the shelves, passing by old vases, figurines, porcelain horses, paintin—
Wait. Wait a fucking moment.
Jonah's brows furrowed as he sifted through a stack of canvases, pulling out a medium-sized painting. He held it up to the light with a concerned expression on his face.
This painting... was his. This was his painting. He painted this. This was a thing that he physically made with his own two hands. This was the painting that, while sitting alone in the academy's studio one night, was torn from his possession by some cruel person who probably kicked puppies for a living. This was the painting that he spent an entire week looking for. This was the very same painting that he tried to make a replica of at home, which was the reason for the entire can of spilled paint that evicted him from his own residence. And not only that, no— it didn't stop there. This was the fucking painting he did of that cute waiter at his favorite café— the cute, short blond that he managed to get the number of— and the same cute blond he convinced to model for him in order to produce the very painting he was currently holding in his hands, right at this very moment.
No number of terrible, insomnia-fueled, late night, run-on laden paragraphs could convey how Jonah was feeling right then and there.
"Um, excuse me," Jonah started, carrying the painting to the front. "This belongs to me."
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