Amez was walking his daily walk from his little apartment down the street to his own tattoo shop, when he saw a big commotion not far from it. In the middle of the street there was a large gathered crowd, their bodies concealing some sort of scene. Cautiously he walked towards it. As he did, a familiar shape within suddenly became visible. It was a figure clad in black hooded robe, wearing black boots, hands covered by black gloves, and the face hidden behind a black veil: it was Rum’s skeleton! What was its name again? Or zes name, as Rum had put it? Rose, something. “White Rose!” Amez half-shouted.

He sprinted the last distance up towards the crowd. The commotion appeared to stem from White Rose blocking the road by standing in the way of a large hand-pulled cart. Ze was using zes finger to point at everything and everyone around ze. Nobody understood anything, and plenty of people were annoyed with ze. As Amez entered the crowd he saw a man grab White Rose’ wrist and attempt to drag ze along with him. After an initial jerk motion that put ze out of balance, White Rose responded by putting zes right foot to the ground, and, like nothing; lifted the man up in the air by his own grip. From the encircling crowd, Amez saw men and women with attitudes varying from curiosity, to annoyance, to anger, to awe. Meanwhile, Amez himself, along with worry, felt utterly amazed by the display of strength before him. At first he didn’t even know what to do, or how to communicate with White Rose. He’d known ze for less than a day, and during that time he’d never spoken to ze, only about ze. All he understood was that ze had a mind akin to a child, or perhaps more of a toddler – except for a less lively personality.

“White Rose?” he tried saying. The skeleton turned its head around and dropped the gripping man down hard. As the man came down onto his feet he released his grip and stumbled backwards and down onto his buttocks. White Rose walked up to Amez, and put zes head to one side.

“Please, come with me?” Amez took out his hand, gesturing at ze. When ze just looked at his hand, he took a chance and grabbed zes. Ze didn’t resist. Consequently, Amez pulled and guided ze hurriedly past the crowd and into his shop.

“Damn that brother mine!” he said as he entered his shop. “Where is he, anyways? Shouldn’t he be taking care of you?” He turned around to look at the skeleton which had followed behind him. It, however, didn’t respond. So instead Amez walked over to and sat down in a chair, leaning his forehead into his right hand, massaging his head with his right thumb.

“Rum’s disappeared. And I have a customer soon, today. I can’t babysit you! I don’t even know you, I met you yesterday and that was even by accident!” Still the skeleton didn’t do anything. Amez grabbed a chair next to him and patted the seat. “Please come and sit down.” The skeleton didn’t respond, and just put its head to its side. Amez tried to recall what Rum had done yesterday for the skeleton to understand how to sit down. He got up from his chair, and then put his buttocks into a sitting-down position over the chair. “Alright, White Rose, this is called sitting.” With an exaggerated slow technique he put his hovering butt down. “Now you do it” and pointed at ze, and then at the chair. An awkward moment followed, the skeleton shifting its eyes from Amez to the chair, then back to Amez, then back at the chair again. Amez repeated his pointing and even re-demonstrated the act of sitting. Finally the skeleton stepped forwards and, with an exaggerated slow motion, sat down in the chair.

“Now what do I do about you?” Amez got up and walked over to his shop bedroom, taking a peek inside. No Rum to be found, he observed.

He got back and sat down again. “What to do…” he sat there for several seconds and had little clue. “Well, you seem pretty silent. Though what else to expect from a skeleton.” He nodded to himself some, thinking.

“You know what!?” he finally burst out loud. “You’ll just have to sit there, and try not to bother the customers. Okay? Just sit there, until Rum comes back. Can you do that?” Amez stared down the skeleton for a small eternity, before remembering that it was a skeleton and that skeletons physically couldn’t even blink.

“Alright then, where did I put my pencil?”

Amez started working on the sketch for his customer. White Rose, blessingly, managed to sit still. Although ze observed him with some intensity, ze didn’t make a single noise. The only thing even making Amez remember ze being there was the small occasional rotation of zes head to watch his movements, or on the rare occasion ze found something else worth glancing at for a moment, like Amez’ small library of literature on enchantments, tattoos and magic, or his array of stacks of former sketches, or his work table filled with tools.

An hour or so later Amez’s only customer for the day arrived. The customer was a dwarf in plain quality clothing – shirt, pants, shoes – the kind of clothes a lord’s son might wear for a day outdoor; efficient but good looking.

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“Oh, who is this?” the dwarf said as he noticed White Rose sitting dead still on zes chair at the one end of the shop’s room. “Did you have another customer before me?”

“Oh, no no no. This is…” Amez fiddled with his hand while trying to find a good answer, “… a friend of my brother. He–she–the friend… “ Amez fiddled some more, “… is mute! And hard of hearing. And has a terrible facial scare! Yeah, so: my brother just needed me to look after his friend. But that person won’t be bothering us though, just gonna sit there and wait for my brother to return.”

The dwarf made a question mark with his brow, and gave White Rose a look over. He shrugged and walked over to Amez. “Nice sketch!”

“Yeah, you like it?” The dwarf nodded slowly, admiration in his eyes as he took in the details. The drawing was of a rabbit with boots carrying a battleaxe overhead and charging at something.

“And this will give me the speed I need?” The dwarf queried.

“Yes! Given the mana regeneration rate you described for me, and the dimensions we agreed upon, I foresee that you should be able to enhance your running speed up too twice a day with two full charges, and about one full day for the replenishment of one charge. That should make up for your– how did you put it?“ Amez swirled his finger vaguely at the dwarf’s feet.

“I’m a dwarf, we run slower than you tall folk. But I’m in a party with other humans and elves, so I need to be able to move better during battle. I can’t support my allies if my battleaxe can’t reach my enemy before they do!”

“Yeah, I can understand that one. Well, okay, it seems you like the sketch. I’m just going to polish it some more and then I guess we can start, okay?” The dwarf agreed, finding a chair of his own to sit by the cushioned tattoo table. As White Rose sat and watched with an eerie silence about ze, both the dwarf and Amez forgot ze was even there. Amez worked out his last sketch details in less than half an hour, before asking the dwarf to take off his shirt and lay down on the table.

As Amez started the process of putting ink to the dwarf’s right shoulder blade, the dwarf began chatting: “Have ya heard the recent news out of Iron City?”

“No, I haven’t” Amez absentmindedly mumbled, intensely focused on his work.

“Well they say that someone from the dungeon lords tried to infiltrate The Mecha-Gnomes’ Revenge! I could hardly contain my surprise when I heard it! The dungeon lords, inside of our city!? Can you say you expected that?”

“Not really” Amez mumble again.

The dwarf was silent for a little bit, taking in the pain of Amez’s needle for a moment. “You know my party’s is one of The Mecha-Gnomes’ Revenge? We were among the first parties to join when they first opened up to not-gnomes. Not all the parties can say that. The Revenge was probably infiltrated because they’ve started to become so big now.” The dwarf went silent a little more as he grimaced the pain arriving. A few moments of pain later he continued: “I heard the story from my contacts at the guild HQ. Apparently some evil mage had tried to hex one of the guild mages’ to conceal his real level! But the spell wore off, luckily. Talk about stupid dungeon lords, sending such an impotent mage to infiltrate us – hah! They should’ve sent the real wizards and -witches, if they wanted to fool us!”

Again the dwarf went silent for a little while. “Say, do you ever go outside of the City Walls?”

“Sometimes” Amez mumbled.

“You know people outside the Walls? Anyone I might know?”

“I know many people” Amez sighed while refilling some ink.

“You know dwarves in The Little Mountain?”

“Mostly just customers.”

“And the none-customers?”

“Some friends of mine brought me to a dwarven gilde once”

“Oh” the dwarf laughed a little, “those are fun, aren’t they? Which one was it, summer or winter?”

“It was a summer gilde”

“Aaah” the dwarf dreamed himself away into happy memories, “all the food you can want, music all the evening, and all the deep powerful speeches, the beautiful folksy poetry. Gildes is the best invention of the dwarves, in my humble dwarven opinion. Not the dwarven steel or runic enchantments: but a feast for the people! Those moments are what makes life worth living. Don’t you agree?”

“Mmm-yeah”

“I met my wife on a summer gilde. She spoke the best poetry I’ve ever heard. Warmed my body down to the soul and shook it. She was so great, also she came fourth in our clan’s drinking competition that evening – she knows how to drink that one!”

“Mmm” More quiet in the room.

“I heard you started practicing with that urban elf–” the dwarf began again, “–what was her name?”

“Ildunir” Amez said, while nodding at his own bloody craft beginning to take shape on the dwarf’s shoulder blade.

“Yeah, how is that going? Did she teach you how to use a sword?”

“It’s a light halberd”

“Yeah? And she taught you the pointy end of it yet?” the dwarf chuckled a little.

Amez filled in some more ink into his needle. “First practice is tomorrow afternoon”

“Ah, aye, I’d like to see that” and the dwarf smiled to himself, even as the sharp needle came down upon his shoulder blade again, and he could even feel the slow sliding of his own blood down his back.

As the conversation died out, the dwarf instead went on to stare at White Rose which was looking at his general direction with an unyielding, frozen gaze. The gaze unnerved the dwarf, changing his expression from that little smile of his, to an expression of uncertainty, before a stoic plainness befell his cheeks, eyes and lips. Somehow that person made him think about dungeons, about war and the dangerous magics he would sometimes face days on end. And he thought about skeletons, and other undead warriors that lurked in the dark; their patience endless, their resolve and calculation unmatched. Looking at this dark clothed figure, the dwarf remembered ambushes in the dark, and friends mortally wounded. So many bad memories came to him, and such an unnerving feeling crept up on him, that eventually he couldn’t take it any longer. He looked away, even knowing that he’d be continued looked at, he couldn’t face that unrelenting gaze.

“That friend of your brother really is a quiet one”