[i]21st Last Seed,
A house, somewhere in Wayrest.[/i]

[hr]

[indent]A set of pliers sat askew amidst a pile of silver wire, coiled like a snake but bent and twisted unnaturally. A small vortex that was the circular frame for a diagram on parchment; tea stained, and tickled with cigar ash - smudged just so as to hide the design. The thick tracing that had been made with pencil was etched so confidently on the surface that it had also created an indentation, a river of charcoal creating the image of mastercrafted jewellery. 

Holding down the corners of the parchment were crystal tumblers, slabs of solid paint, and a cigar box. Trembling fingers reached out to feel the current, stroking each precise line as a jaw quivered, droplets of a rich liquer clung to the dry lower lip of a mouth held ajar. The red that stained the bloodshot corner of otherwise beautiful eyes were the warning lines of danger at the situation. 

A rasping breath heaved from the scrawny gentleman’s chest and he swallowed back another gulp of the whisky. He was long past feeling the burn rush down his oesophagus and into his stomach. All that sat there was a bleak emptiness that rumbled and that’s where the sting fell. “Did I…?” he wheezed, blinking down at the page as he tried to make sense of the words written before him, and the line-art of the [i]Lover’s Knot[/i], half buried under his clutter and stained with his mess. 

“Did I do it? Did I steal it?” he whimpered, memories of holding the piece lingering only half there in the darkest corners of his mind, like a ghost. A spectre that elicited a sense of panic and a throbbing anxiety in his chest. His ribcage was too frail to hold such a thunderous heartbeat and he brought down the amber liquid again to drown it, to turn it slick and heavy and bring everything down to the floor. His legs obeyed the command, stop-starting in their movement so it appeared janky and broken. Like a newborn deer finding itself for the first time. His eyes too, were that of a deer as it stared headfirst into danger.

Njall pinched the corner of his sketch, dragging it and the crystal tumbler, the paint, and the cigar box down with it. A smash, and thud, and a clatter. All intrusive sounds that were not so intrusive to a lost and drunken mind, just the perfect kind of ambiance. 

“I remember something… I remember something,” he muttered, staring at it closely, his pupils dilating into tiny dots the closer he brought the parchment to his face -- stopping it only when it grazed the tip of his aquiline nose. “Diamonds, glass… Something, something.” he struggled, desperately gulping down the last drops of his whisky. “I wasn’t in Evermore, was I?” he breathed.

Pale and unwashed, Njall could suddenly smell his own breath as it pushed back at him from the paper. A warm and intoxicating fume that it would be dangerous to bring close to a flame. 

After a moment or two more of scrutinous inspection, the drunken Nord felt that the best course of action was to carefully fold, and fold again the drawing - before shoving it roughly under the leg of his table, and when he staggered back to his feet to place the items in a heap in the centre, the wobbled the entire structure. “Gone now, gone to someplace…” he mused, scratching his oily hairline with a finger. He turned his face this way and that, careful and suspicious of the shadows that flickered against the walls of his humble lodgings. “Like watchful demons tonight you are,” he spoke out to them, narrowing his eyes some. “Don’t eat my applause,” he cursed, wagging a finger at the moving darkness of a lamp that flickered.

Njall sighed, his shoulders drooping. His lids were heavy as his stupor continued to worsen. The paper under the table leg was all but gone to him now, and instead his focus turned to a canvas propped against the wall. The abstract shape of a feminine figure in black, topped with red like a plumed crown stared back at the palid Nord, at least from where her eyes should have been painted. “I know, I know-misbehaving again,” he slurred out, shrugging his shoulders. “Just that, well…”

With yet another sigh, it was clear the man had given up on whatever needed to be said. Instead, retreating once more to the floor, only this time taking to spreading out on the floor beside his mysterious woman. He seemed more relaxed there, the stillness briefly bringing colour back to his complexion. On the ceiling, more strokes of red adorned the beams and careful tiling. An invasion of an artist’s colour on an architect's best work. The tendrils and tentacles of red gave his mind something to focus on, and as his head began to spin around, and around, and around, he visualised them peeling away from the ceiling, spiraling down carefully to caress and blanket him. 

They cocooned him from whatever it was that had been bothering him only minutes ago.

Njall fell asleep like that, as he so often did. 
[/indent]