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creative inspirations

Creative Inspirations | Monday, period 1

"Good morning," Hannibal began when they were all present. "Today we will once again be experiencing a manmade curiosity. In the thirteenth century, the abbot of the Sedlec Cistercian Monastery brought back soil from the holy land, prompting a great number of the faithful to want to be buried in the church. As has happened in other places, once there was no further room for burial, the bones were kept in an ossuary nearby."

//From the outside, it doesn't look like much,// Jono said, hands in his pockets, looking over the faces of the students for any signs that anybody might be uncomfortable with today's trip. It wasn't exactly a cheery vacation destination, however fascinating it seemed to himself and Hannibal, after all. //It's just a small old church, more or less. The inside is… a little bit more striking. The bones were stored there, yes, but there were so many of them, a woodcarver was hired to put them in some sort of order. The result was… rather spectacular, if macabre.//

"If at any point you feel unable to remain with us," no pun intended, naturally, "there is a nearby gift shop, or you can wander the small town. Though we will be in the Czech Republic, so unless you speak Czech, I recommend you not go too far," Hannibal cautioned.

Jono was still briefly tempted to elbow Hannibal for that completely-unintentional-honest pun all the same. Honestly, Hannibal.

//If you're exceptionally uncomfortable and would rather not wander alone, feel free to grab me,// Jono added, just to be on the safe side. //I'd rather not have anybody doing anything they're really not okay with today, especially given that these are actual human remains we're dealing with. For those who do stick around… no touching, please. Because, again, human remains. Respect for this history and the people involved in it above all else, while we're out today.//

"And whether you are awestruck, horrified, or any combination thereof, we hope that it inspires you," Hannibal said.

He led them through the portal, which let them out in the charming little cemetery surrounding the chapel. It was a lovely day.

[OOC: OCD up! Also, a warning, links lead to photos of (very artistically arranged) human bones. Click at your own discretion!]

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There was no screaming on the inside from Alluka--not even from Nanika--as she watched intently as Jono made the red the right red by using blue as well. There was no screaming on the outside either. Or catching that concerned look.

She squealed with happiness when he turned the page back to her to look at.

"That's the right colour! I couldn't find it, but it was hiding in the blue! Thank you!"

It absolutely was the right colour. That was the hell of it. Jono stared down at it thoughtfully before looking back at her.

He remembered the way she'd recoiled from his bleeding hand, not because of the injury itself, but because of the possibility that it would stain her dress.

//Have you seen that colour a lot before coming here, luv?//

She'd only had one dress at the time and bloodstains smelled funny after they'd dried.

Alluka stole his blue pencil crayon from his hand with a grin and bent her head over her page, to fix the red on it.

"Uh huh," she said, carefully shading over one of the red parts.

She could have given him more of an answer, but she was concentrating pretty hard.

That was not the answer he'd been hoping to hear. At all.

//Back home?//

He supposed there wasn't much opportunity to see it otherwise. The island had been fairly well-behaved so far this summer.

She blinked and giggled, looking up at him.

"I've only been here and home," Alluka said reasonably, with laughter in her big blue eyes. He was being really silly. "So it had to be at home, right?"

//Not your own blood, though?//

Because if it was her own blood, Jono was going to be finding out where she was from and then making a very special field trip in order to... do something. Something very angrily.

As it stood, he wasn't exactly thrilled, here.

She had to stop and think about that.

"I might've scraped my knee a few times," Alluka said thoughtfully. "But that never bled much."

Surely he wasn't going to go and do something angrily over that?

Not over that, no. But it was good to know.

//Did you see many bones back home, too?//

Those were rather more concerning than blood, after all. And she'd seemed enraptured with them when she was standing on Hannibal's shoulders.

... Which was quite the feat unto itself, but he'd worry about that part later.

There. That line was looking much more like blood now. She beamed at it and started on the next section.

She was still only half-paying attention to Jono, though she absently offered him a yellow pencil crayon. He could draw too.

"Uh huh," she said, still utterly unaware of the way that was weird. "There's a lot of bones in bodies."

Jono... accepted the yellow pencil crayon, and stared at it for a moment. What was he meant to do with this?

He shrugged, and then set to work drawing... a very yellow construct that looked like a dog bone out of a Disney cartoon.

//So... you've seen a lot of bodies, then?//

That was horrifying, for the record. In case that was somehow unclear in the very carefully casual way he was asking these things while he idly drew a veritable feast for Mickey Mouse's best friend.

"I don't know what lots is," she said, since she still didn't, even after talking to Hannibal about it. "But sometimes Nanika would come out and there'd be bodies after and other times it was for lessons."

Alluka still didn't think it was anything horrifying. She was almost done fixing all the blood.

Nanika, at least, wasn't something that Jono found surprising.

//Lessons?//

Those, on the other hand? Those were horrifying.

//What sort of lessons, luv?//

His pencil had stalled out. It was difficult to focus on his not-so-stellar artwork with this particular conversation on the table.

She wasn't having any trouble--though her picture was still more interesting than anything Jono was doing, funnily enough.

"Well," she said, finally setting the blue down and reaching for the black, "there's an awful lot to know about bodies."

//There is,// Jono allowed, looking over at Alluka's picture. It was far more interesting than his own, probably for reasons Alluka didn't realize. //Bodies are very complicated things, after all.//

Hooboy.

"Lots of pieces," she agreed, wriggling her feet underneath the table. Her blobby rope was starting to look the way it was supposed to, as she coloured some of it black.

The butlers always wore black.

"Lots to know."

//Lots to know about each piece,// Jono found himself agreeing, a bare echo as he watched her add the black. //What's that you're adding in now?//

He was right to be concerned, right?

"Clothes," she said absently. She pointed with one end of her pencil at a squiggle of black across the page. "That's a shoe."

It didn't look much like a shoe, but what she was drawing didn't look much like a person any longer either.

Though the shapes were starting to come out on the page all the same, and, even if they weren't cooperating and they demonstrated a child's understanding of form and perspective, it was plainly clear that whoever that blood had belonged to hadn't had a very good day in the least.

//Well, it's a very nice shoe...//

Jono was thankful, not for the first time, that he couldn't throw up.

//What happened to him?//

She wrinkled her nose, not at the question, but at having to look for a different pencil.

This time she picked a brown one. There wasn't much hair to colour, but it needed to be coloured in anyway.

"Nanika," she said, once she was busy doing the colouring again.

Weren't you glad that you'd agreed to her requests now, Jono?

Edited 2015-07-21 00:24 (UTC)

Yyyyyyyyyyup.

Very much.

//... Well, she's very thorough, I'll give her that.//

Dear lord.

Alluka giggled.

"She got mad," she explained, "but then she wasn't mad again by the time I came back out."

But there'd been the body on the ground.

//Well, I'm glad she's feeling better, then.//

No, really. Jono could not properly express how much of a relief that was.

//But she's not the only one who left bodies around for you to see, back home?//

Oh, Jono was still being silly.

She laughed and smiled, finishing up the poor butler's hair.

"No," she said. "We had to learn about bodies and if you're going to learn about them, you should learn from the real thing."

Jesus bloody Christ. It was probably also fortunate that Jono couldn't go any more pale than he already was, too.

//What were you being taught about bodies for, exactly?//

See? Just idle curiosity, there.

//You were being prepared for something...?//

Her head bobbed in agreement as she studied her picture. Should she draw the grass? Oh, but the green would get in the blood's way.

"The family trade," she said happily. "We all get to learn it, though everyone knows way more than me since I lost time in my room. But, if I'm good enough, they'll let me catch up, maybe."

She could hope!

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