Open!

[motheroffaces]

A. It's too cold to be outside, or she would most certainly be out. It's snowing outside the library, the flakes drifting down beyond the pane, and the woman perched in the windowsill doesn't seem to be anywhere near dressed for the weather. Her robes are light, more ornamental than practical -- some relics of a bygone era. Dark hair is impossibly long, spilling down the sill and nearly to the floor, left loose and undecorated. In her lap is a pad, and she appears to be attempting to draw . . . though it's hard to say, watching her, that she even knows how to hold a pencil. She keeps shifting her fingers, trying to find something that looks comfortable, and the scrawl that she's producing doesn't look much like anything at all.

You'll either find her trying at this or casting down her pencil in disgust, staring out at the falling snow. For anyone spiritually-inclined, she's exuding an enormous amount of spiritual presence; for anyone else, she's merely a woman -- though one who looks very out of place.

B. Sounds like the triads are at it again. They seem to have cornered a tall, pale woman in the nearby alley. Her dark eyes spear them, her voice raised in demand. Whatever she says, however, is lost on the triad members, who smirk. One sparks fire into his hands, ready to move.

The woman answers with no bending. Perhaps she doesn't have any at all.

Comments

[motheroffaces]

Her eyebrows rise at the first comment, though her reply is less offended and more a matter of pride. "Unlike some, I am not confined to my pools. And if I am to be forced to be here, I may as well understand my cell."

Yes, Mia, you and Aang both suggested it. And she knows it, privately, even she does not give the credit openly.

"As for my . . . sketchbook, there is nothing to mar." Her hand moves for the girl to see the finished product; the result is . . . well . . . pretty bad, like a two year old with their first crayon -- a fact that she's fully aware of, pressing her lips together briefly. "Apparently I cannot begin to reproduce what little human art I have seen."

So irritating, to have a human make something she actually admires -- and then be unable to echo it.

[mercuryadept]

Knowing who she is, and with an implicit invitation to sit down next to her, Mia does so, scooting the chair closer to the table as she looks over at the rather uncertain lines and curves that make up the Mother's attempts. She smiles sympathetically but allows her eyes to drift up to her. "I knew you weren't confined to it, Uma," she says softly. "On the contrary, I'm glad to see you've come to visit, as it were.

"But that said, though you may not be able to reproduce our semblance of art, you have something far greater," Mia continues as she gently takes the pencil out of the Mother's hand and flips the page to find a blank page to begin a sketch of her own. "You have your own art—the art of creating faces... identities. You are the artist and sculpture behind this." She pauses from writing to wave her left hand over her face. "And... indirectly, you are the artist that created the capacity for us to create this more simple art. That, in an of itself, is perhaps the greater achievement." Perhaps the words might sound like embellishment, but they're quite serious. After all, Mia is amazed at the spirit's responsibility and her work.

That said, she begins a rather crude—but certainly better than stick-figure quality—outline of the Mother, occasionally glancing up at her for reference.