Curse Of The Angel

Chapter 1 - Ink

Paintings on my skin
Don't let them read in between the lines
Hide the scars inside
Don't let them in

The scars tell a story that
No one wants to read
When these words were uttered out loud, met with disbelief
Scars on my skin
Hide them in ink

Hide them in fucking ink.

3rd person POV

Artemis sat on the counter idly swinging her legs, the long fingers that rarely stopped tapping by her sides, drumming out the rhythm to a melody only she could hear. Her head was tilted slightly to the side, extenuating her angular jaw as she stared into space.  A ringbound sketchbook was discarded next to her, the blue of the cover not quite matching the one in her hair.

It was a fairly quiet evening so far, with only one customer all day. It was this way every year at this time. No one was thinking about body modifications of any sort, everybody preoccupied with the thought of the Taking next week. 

An easy silence hung over the room. There wasn't a lot inturrupting it apart from the a gentle tick tick tick and the quiet buzz of a tattoo machine that came from the other side of the room. A golden skinned, sunkissed man sat working on the intricate details of that customer's back tattoo, a bandana tied round his head to keep the springy, black, barrel curls out of his eyes. Much of his visible skin was adorned with artwork of all kinds. In a way he was a walking advertisement for his studio, with the evidence of both his and Artemis' skills plastered all over his body.

The door banged open, cool air temporarily flowing into the studio. Jade stood in the doorway, her facial expression a perturbing mixture of shock and guilt as she stood staring at the wall, frozen.  At the sudden source of noise Artemis' head whipped round, eyes wide, relaxing when she realised it was Jade. Realising she wasn't moving, her brow furrowed. Easily springing off the counter, her lanky legs covered the room in seconds. 

"Jade...? Helloooooo?" She waved her hands in front of her face which was still fixated on the wall. "JD? Earth to JD, I repeat, earth to-" Jade's head suddenly turned and her shocking silver eyes met with her friend's, before a relaxed smile fell into place. 

"So why exactly where you eye-fucking the wall for a second there," she teased. Jade's reaction to this was comical - a facial expression painted itself on her face that just screamed what the actual hell and she looked taken aback, her head tilting in confusion, before a half snort half laugh (well more like three quarters snort) bubbled its way out of her throat. 

She became serious once again. "I didn't mean to open the door quite so hard, and well..." Her hand came up and gripped the back of her long, elegant neck. "I may or may not have dented the wall." She looked away guiltily.

Artemis turned round to squint at the wall, and her brow furrowed once again. A sizeable dent lay there, with long cracks spidering off of it, as though it was a very scaled down model of the long, jagged fissures caused by earthquakes. It was quite a lot of damage, and there was no way Jade would have the strength to make such a dent... would she?

"It was probably already there and we just hadn't noticed, don't worry about it," she grinned. "I guess I definitely do need glasses then," she said jokingly. "Why were you in such a rush anyway?"

Jade glanced up at the clock on the wall, her face twisting with a mental huh as she absorbed the knowledge that she was on time. "When I left, I was running really late because Lucas was having a particularly clingy day. I didn't want Duarte to have to keep the studio open later then he has to." The silent man in the back of the room raised his head and smiled at her, his adoring brown eyes lingering on her face.