Chapter Text
Nox grinned at Lucien's dumbfounded expression.
Okay, so it had been a set-up. He had been adorably flustered by the mere implication that he had been trying to hit on her, and she wanted to see his reaction.
She continued wringing out her braid, putting on an innocent face. "Khajiit got'cher tongue?"
"I - that is - you have some wonderfully intricate tattoos, Nox - are those dots glowing?" He regained his composure quickly enough, bless him, and sure enough, his gaze was transfixed not by her nudity itself, but by her left arm.
She had forgotten that, until now, he hadn't actually seen her ink: thanks to Skyrim's bitter cold, she'd kept herself bundled up in thick furs from head to toe.
"Ah, yeah, got 'em did after me and the gang - well, after we hit it big one day, let's say."
That job had actually been an honest one, even: the Ayleid ruins around the Imperial City weren't any younger, nor any less ruined, for the Thalmor's occupation. A desperate enough gang of tomb-robbers could make a decent haul off of old Welkynd stones and other artifacts - if they could find a buyer.
"May I have a look? At the tattoos, I mean, obviously, that is - "
She grinned again, playfully. "If I cared about you lookin' at aught else, I wouldn't've called you over in the first place, love." His blush spread from his cheeks to his ears, and down his throat. He really was cute when he flustered. "But aye, you can look at my ink, too, if y'like."
"Ah - thank you - " He knelt down, stripping off his boots and rolling up his pants, so that when he waded into the water, only his skin got wet. Practical, that. "Is that a knife you've got wound up in your hair?"
She blinked, owlishly, inspecting the thin knife - and the other, littler tools - that she was weaving into her long braid. "Aye, part of my emergency kit. Knife's mostly for being long and thin, see - " She wrapped the trailing end of her braid around her shoulders, hopefully to hold her place in the work, as she extricated the lone pick that accompanied the blade. "This bit goes into a lock, and this long, thin bit, that's for pushing up the tumblers, see? In case of emergencies, or if I get caught out without the rest of my kit."
"I learn something new every day," he murmured, sounding fascinated. "So it's not like the stories; you can't just bend a hair pin into shape?"
She laughed, at that. "Oh, sure, you can improvise like that if you hafta, but it sucks, and I had the extra coin to get this set made special, so why not?"
"I see. Oh! The smokey bits, in your tattoos - they're moving, aren't they?"
Nox glanced down. "I should hope so, I paid good money for all that flash. It's - from what I'm understanding, it's alteration magic, to set in the stars, like, little magic lights that should ought to stay alight so long as I'm still around, and the smoke moves on its own." She traced a fingertip across her skin, and the lines of 'smoke' swirled under her touch. "Mostly."
"That's fascinating! The kind of magic that entails …."
He went on like that for a bit, but it kind of went right over her head. Still, it was nice, hearing him act so interested in something of hers - especially something she had chosen, rather than the crude 'compliments' she so often received. So, she made all the appropriate noises to indicate she was still listening.
Maybe she even picked up a bit about magic, but nothing she could properly articulate.