| Mithran Tat |
| Summary: | Lleufer Ynyr goes to Miri to get the tattoo he'd been asking her about recently, based on a Mithran symbol. |
| Date: | 01/09/2017 (OOC Date) |
| Related Logs: | Mithran Tat related logs (Lleufer) |
  |
| Sick Bay, Deck 3, Battlestar Orion |
| Come on, you know what the Sick Bay looks like! Go smell it. |
| Mon Mar 19 2049 |
An appointed time is set, and once he gets off shift for the ship's evening, the Master-at-Arms goes to hit the mess and then the showers before he eventually arrives in Medical all clean and fed. Ynyr's dressed in off duty tanks and looks relaxed as he wanders in, looking around for Miri - or even Samtara for that matter. Doctor Stone is always good company, and their friendship goes back a long time. Soon as he does see Miri, Lleufer changes his direction. The Gunnery Sergeant has a warm smile for her puts up an arm to lean against the bulkhead, "I have an appointment at 20:30 to get my hair and nails done." Followed by a wink.
"Yeah, yeah, I know what you want. Why does everyone always come to /me/ when it's time to permanently mar their flesh?" Miri retorts. She gets up from her desk, stretching. "Talk it over with the wifey, then?"
"Eh," Ynyr says by way of meaning, no, he hasn't yet. "Bennett and I have been kind of busy. But she has a lot more tats than I do so I hardly think she's liable to object." Lleu takes his hand from his upraised arm he's leaning against and rubs it over his shorn, fuzzy hair. "I think I have opted to go for an arm tat, but with a slight modification. I want it enclosed in a circle and add a hint of stars showing through the edges of the rising sunlight. Think that's all right and won't mess up your design sketch too much? Piraeus stars, though nothing enough to get a jump coordinate from. Not that /that/ matters anymore."
"Give me a few minutes, let me see what I can do about the stars. I already had it in a border. Bold will hold, and I don't like tattoos that just sort of fizzle out at the edges." Miri sits back down at her desk and pulls a folder out from the bottom drawer. She hunts around for a pencil. "Aha. Just a sec."
"Exactly. I designed, since it's a symbol, and the circle is also part of the symbology, it suits it perfectly. Then it's easy and clean if I wanted to build on additional designs at a later time rather then them bleeding together." The Gunny finds a chairand boldly grabs it to bring it over by where Miri is seated. He straddles it so the back of the chair is facing her and crosses his muscled arms over the top of the chair back as he watches her working on the sketch. "As much as it is homage to Piraeus and the 20 years of my life spent there, building a family and ranch, raising our kids, it's also … sort of a religious symbol."
That last part makes Miri look up from her drawing. "A religious symbol? Howso?"
"Exactly. A design, since it's a symbol, and the circle is also part of the symbology, it suits it perfectly. Then it's easy and clean if I wanted to build on additional designs at a later time rather then them bleeding together." The Gunny finds a chairand boldly grabs it to bring it over by where Miri is seated. He straddles it so the back of the chair is facing her and crosses his muscled arms over the top of the chair back as he watches her working on the sketch. "As much as it is homage to Piraeus and the 20 years of my life spent there, building a family and ranch, raising our kids, it's also … sort of a religious symbol." Lleufer is in his tanks and tags, clearly off duty and speaking low with Miri who is working on modifying a drawing. (set for Sam)
Lleufer listens to Miri's question and thinks about it, "The design, both parts, actually have to do with Mithras. A reglion that until recently was concentrated on Tauron, but which actually is pretty old and was once very widely popular before the concept of the Lords and Ladies of Kobol spread through the Colonies. Mithras is a concept based on a single God instead of a pantheon." Ynyr keeps his baritone very low, "The Ysrali symbol of a circle with a dot in it is representative of a sun within the universe, and specifically Piraeus' sun I think. But that same sun within a circle is a symbol of Mithras. So is the sun coming up over a mountain range. The same principles that followers of Mithras venerate are the same principles that founded the Colonial Marine Corps, and the same values the skinjob models are based upon. Strength, comradery, faith, honor, justice, and so forth."
"I know about the Mithran faith. I didn't know you were an adherent. It all makes sense, though. Kind of a universal… thing." Well done, Miri. After a few more moments of drawing, she holds it up. "How's this, then? I don't know if I got the stars quite right."
Ynyr leans over to have a better look, "I guess I'm … rather fascinated by the concept. A root of everything it means to be a Marine, to me. So I have been trying really hard to study up on it. I'm drawn strongly to it, yet the only person I really suspect is a real follower of the religion won't tell me shit about it. He gets real upset and angry if I try to ask him things about it, so…" Lleu shrugs, "I just have to wing it on my own. It feels right though." Miri's drawing is studied and Lleu nods, "Yes, I like it. Only, make the circle thicker and a small gap between it and the actual image so it is clear that it is part of the symbology, not simply a shape to contain the design. The stars look good. I want them subtle."
"Picky picky picky. It's not like it's going to be etched into your skin forever." Miri's back to drawing, fixing things up. "I can't get too deep into metaphysical shit. It just makes my brain explode. Not my bag. Not at all. I mean, I believe in the gods, but I leave the rest of the stuff to people who are smarter than me."
Lleufer looks at Miri, "Why not? I could get it re-inked when it fades in time. Keep it crisp." He gives her a nod, "I still respect Demeter. It's just complicated, like maybe now I feel … like the Lords and Lady's of Kobol are really facets, aspects of a whole - it's expression broken down like light through a prism."
On his upper left arm is Lleu's CMC tat with the Colonial Marine's logo and saying roughly in a circular form, but with the lettering above and below it. Lleufer taps his upper right arm, "Right here, to balance against my other tat on my left arm."
"Hopefully, if you take care of this, you won't need to get it re-inked. Sunscreen, my good man, sunscreen!" Miri is pleased with her drawing. She doesn't have any transfer paper, so now it's time to redraw it on Lleu's arm with permanent markers. "It's best if you stand for this, so I can get a good idea of how it's going to lay."
"Sunscreen? Is that the secret to keeping a tat from blurring over time?" Ynyr turns his head and tries to look at his old CMC tat he got about 35 years ago. Or well, 55 years ago if you count elapsed time spent in the core, by date. It has blurred a little over time but not a lot. Probably has worn shirt sleeves a lot when he's gotten sun exposure. "I don't guess I ever heard that but I can do that. Protect them." Tanks are already entirely sleeveless so nothing to pull off to get out of Miri's way. "Sure." Lleu moves to stand and leans against the wall so he can keep his body as still as possible for her, leaning lightly against his left side.
"I mean, yeah. Protects the pigments and your skin. Also keeps you from getting skin cancer, but I guess the Arpay gene therapy helped with that one." Miri pushes him a little. "Stand straight, if you can. Or as straight as you stand normally, anyway."
"I am standing straight." Isn't he? Lleufer stops leaning against the wall - Miri may mean that instead of merely not hunching up. So he stands instead more or less at parade rest, but lets his hands hang rather than clasping them loosely behind his back. "This all right?" After a moment he adds low, "I've always used sun screen normally. My father was a red-head so I've always kind of been leary of getting sunburns." Thankfully for him, Lleu tans instead of freckles and burns easily.
"Did any of your kids turn out ginger?" Miri asks as she carefully reproduces the drawing on his arm. She changes things up a few times, but is right there with the alcohol wipes to get it right.
Lleufer thinks about that, "Sean is rather red haired and fair, but maybe more strawberry blonde than true coppery-red. Grey eyes like his mother had, before Bennett got her golden Arpay mods." He smiles, "Shay too, actually. Only Llewellyn came out darker haired with golden eyes, but he otherwise looks like a younger version of me." The Gunny smiles, proud of his kids, his family dear to him. But then Lleu looses some of his warmth, "Sean's probably dead though."
"You don't know that," Miri replies reflexively. Through the past two wars, she's been through this dance a million times. Doesn't help that she's doing this bare-handed and is getting blasted with Lleu's surface emotions. Wonderful. "There. Look in the mirror. Tell me what you think."
Aside from a vague uneasiness and a hint of inner pain at this thoughts, there's no strong emotions to be blasting Miri with as she touches his arm. Lleu is for the most part quiet, calm. Merely thinking of his kids. "No, I don't know. We are going to hold out hope against the odds. We might find him someday, Bennett and I, and if we do, maybe there will be grandchildren." That makes him smile, "Sean was always the most sensible one, the most level headed of the three. Shay's twin by birth but the two of them never were a lot alike. He was mature for his age even when he was still just a boy." Yeah, he misses his eldest son, but hasn't given up hope.
Miri's instruction gets Lleu to shift when she tells him to and to look at the sketched in tat drawing on his arm, "Nice. That's a great size, too."
"Great. Let me get everything set up. Get yourself some coffee or morpha or whatever while you wait." Miri's glad no one's around to hear her stupid jokes.
"Morpha?" Lleufer looks at her, surprised, "I assume that's a joke. Nobody gave me any pain meds for my first tat." Probably a Marine tradion of Jarheads everywhere to get their first tat done LIKE A MAN with no whining, and suck it up! No pain, no gain. "May I sit or you need me standing while you do it?" The invitation was given though so Ynyr will go see if Samtara's got a pot of coffee going, because /he/ knows she has the best coffee on the ship outside of Command staff. He'll find a means to snag a cup even if he has to make the pot, and wanders back in a few minutes with a black cup of steaming coffee. Until she tells him otherwise, Lleu resumes his seat to wait and sip his hot drink.
"I was kidding," Miri confirms. She's washed her hands and set up her machines in one of the patient bays. "You gotta earn your ink, mister. Sit down on this stretcher and we'll get going in juuuust a minute." The machine goes buzz buzz! Ink is poured into a liquid medicine cup and there's a cup of water next to it.
"Yes, Sir." Lleufer gets up and moves to where Miri wants him, then settles himself on the stretcher, straddling it. He sets his coffee cup aside and can snag it with his left hand for sips as he wants it, but it's still pretty hot so it needs to cool a little anyway. "I hope I -have- earned my ink after all the shit I've been through over the years. Many times over." He smiles his lopsided grin even though the Arpay nanotech long since repaired his strokelike damage caused when Lleu had been shot in the head way back at Santos Ridge, on Picon in the last war. "You ever given yourself ink? I assume you have plenty of tats I haven't seen."
"Just the ones on my arm," a string of inch-high block letters, "and the one on my chest," another single block letter. "I'd want someone else if I was going to get something more substantial, and when you're afraid of touching people, that stuff kind of goes of the window, you know?" Miri preps the area on his arm and dips the needles in the ink. "Here we go."
That gets a blink out of him. Lleufer's own Arpay eyes focus on Miri anew, "That's right. I completely forgot about your … eh, extra heightened sensitivity. Are you all right, doing this tat for me? I don't want to make you uncomfortable." Needles don't bother him. Lleu glances down at the tat gun and his arm, "Go for it." Then he looks off elsewhere and stays relaxed even though it'll hurt. Not much at first, but really ache later once she's been at it a while. "I trust you. You have to trust somebody, some people. We just need to try to choose carefully."
"I'm not worried. I've got my gloves on." And with that, Miri makes the first line. "Not so bad, especially there on your arm, right?" And there she goes, off at work. "I did mine during the last war with a sewing needle and pen ink. I've gotten a little more high-tech since then. I bought the machine because I thought maybe I was going to do something on my thigh, but that never happened." Bzzzz. Bzzztzzz. Bzzzzz. She carefully wipes the area with some gauze before starting up again. "It's taking me some time. It's better now that I have some folks to help me with this stuff and figure out how to use and control it. But twenty-some-odd years is a long time to hide in plain sight."
Oh yes. That does hurt, but not nearly as much as other things in life he's had to endure. Adrenlin dumping into your blood stream can help with pain a lot short term but is no damn help at all after much damage has been done. Or in this case, just a rapidly thrusting needle jabbing a gazillion times into your flesh in rapid fire. Nope, no adrenlin to mask that. Lleu focuses on not getting tense and trying to ignore the pain as well as the buzzzing of the tat gun. Best if he doesn't tense up muscles in his arm if he can help it anyway. Take a sip of coffee instead, then set it down carefully without spilling any of it. "Probably a good investment. You know that any one of us would pay you in trade goods or services for your doing tats for us. Or owe you favours you can call upon later if you ever need something in return. Even if it was just a massage, or swapping shifts around, or doing your laundry for a month, whatever. Taking your time is good. Practice improves your skills, enhances patience and your ability to be subtle." Probably tonight Lleu's going to want a pain pill to help him sleep so the ache doesn't make him restless.
Lleufer grins, "Or trading skills. I could teach you to play guitar, for example. I want to get my hands on a fiddle, or uilleann pipes!" Then he looses his smile, "But I suppose that's probably not going to happen now we're leaving the Colonies behind."
"Don't worry. It's just going to be like a bad sunburn. Sleep on your left side for a few days." Oh shit. Her bare forearm is touching his arm. That's how that happened. "Sorry. This is why I avoided touching people outside of work for two decades." She adjusts her arms. "Maybe we have a civilian on board who knows how to make instruments, or has some to trade. And I'd love a massage, if you know someone who's proficient. Half-assed massages suck, but after all this time…" she doesn't finish the sentence. "I don't even know."
He didn't notice anything unusual but he does turn his head to see what Miri was talking about to apologize for. Lleu shrugs, "I'm not worried about it. I've nothing to hide from you, not that I'm inviting prying either." He listens to what she has to suggest and nods, "I can ask around. The older I get, the more I am enjoying music and want to play. Not that I have much time for it, but when I do have free time to myself, it's not like I have anything to do but go work out. Unless I can get lucky and catch Bennett off duty at the same time." Lleu thinks about it, "I -think- I'm pretty good at massage, but I only do that for Bennett. I'm sure somebody on ship surely is good at them though if you ask around. If you find someone who is, you can call on one of your favours to find somebody like me who'd trade them for massage time, but then use it to pay you for doing the tat." Ynyr smiles, "Still works out as a trade of skills and favors that way. The challenge can be fun."
"Well, I mean, with the way I am about stuff, you know I'm not going to be actively seeking it out. If the offer arises, I'll deal with it as it comes. As it stands, I don't exactly have a line of people knocking down my door to offer, so it's all academic." Miri wipes, gets some more ink. "Long line coming up. Brace yourself."
Lleufer curls one edge of his mouth into his half smile, "I should have brought some scotch. Sipping whiskey while off duty while we are at Condition 3 is probably a far better idea than drinking coffee. Maybe if you pause for a break I'll go get some from my locker." He gives her a nod, "Go for it." Her drawing of course makes him think of Piraeus, of the ranch there that he and Bennett worked hard to build. Their hewn log home set with dry stacked stone for the hearth and ground level footings. How the valley spread between a ripple of ridgelines with Sheridan on the other side of one to the southeast, and the higher mountains to the north and west to rise up into the clouds. The small meandering river that ran through the valley, with Knox's and Tabbi's cabin just down the way but close by. Cattle and horses of Lleu's ranch scattered through the river valley where the trees opened into broad, long natural meadows yet still in the higher land above Sheridan proper. The sunlight sparkling on the water, and the taste of that water or the trout-like Pirauen fish they'd catch and cook from that cold mountain melt. Those thoughts of his home give way to a peaceful silence from Ynyr, but also maybe a little sad with longing, knowing he can't go back.
Miri stops, pulling the machine away. "Just a sec," she says, turning away. She wipes her eyes with the back of her wrist, then takes a long, deep breath. "Okay, just had to adjust something," she says lightly. She starts back up again, making sure there's no skin contact. "You're lucky, that you had all this, and even luckier to have so much of your family here, you know."
He's still quiet, looking off at nothing in particular aside from a glance to Miri. Lleu shifts his jaw, "Yes. I'm glad we got to live on Piraeus for a while, with the Ysrali. They looked after our children, helped to keep them safe. No Direwolves ever threatened our kids." Though he himself nearly died once when direwolves tried to rip him apart, leaving Ynyr badly scarred on his left side. "I have Bennett here, and Shay on another ship with us, and now Llewellyn, too. And maybe we'll get luckier still and find Sean. Part of me dreads loosing any of them in this war, and part of me doesn't. After seeing and hearing both Mallas and Kapali more than once, and the Ysrali as well, I'm less worried about loosing them now. Or dying myself. Because I know they'd still be around, looking out for us and waiting for us to join them. Or that's what I would do, I'd wait for them, if I go first. I never believed in any sort of spirit after death, but I suppose I do now." Yep ,the tat is coming along fine now, taking shape. He glances at it and gives Miri an encouraging smile.
"I'm hoping there's nothing after I die. I don't have anyone to haunt." Miri's comment is delivered simply, with no self-pity or regret. She continues to work in silence for as long as Lleufer will let her.
Ha! Lleufer can't leave a comment like that without making a reply. "Sure you do. You have friends. People who care about you. We watch out for each other, not just our loved ones." He then grows quiet and lets her work on his arm, drinking his coffee and letting his thoughts roam. After a little while, he takes up singing softly in his baritone an old tune from Aerilon, about the wind and the rain and the mountains who's roots spread far and wide in fields of golden grain to the sea..