The Mist and the Lightning. Part 11 - стр. 3
“Thanks.”
“Do you really like it?” Nikto was delighted.
“Well, yes,” Lis replied, quite sincerely.
And Nikto shook his bright head with content.
“What will you do to Arel?”
“Wings on the back!”
“Ah, well, yes, because he is an eagle.”
“Yes,” Nikto agreed. “It will be very beautiful too, they will be like living!”
When Lis came to the tattoo artist the next time, he saw an unclean in one of the cages, he was sitting tied and waiting for the master to finish with Lis and return to work with him. Lis then always saw one or two unclean slaves in the cages. The owners seemed to hand them over to the master for a while, the master tattooed them and after a while returned the already decorated slave to the owners.
Nikto never left them with Marg, he always took them away. In general, Lis himself negotiated with him, he came and went. It took three times to make the fox, but Lis often came with Nikto just for the company, sat on a soft sofa, sipping alcohol, smoking and watching Arel tattooed. Or Nikto. The master corrected all the damaged tattoos for him, made, as Nikto said, “restoration”. And some, very old and damaged by ulcers, he first lightened with the help of a special tool and then covered with a new, more beautiful and clear pattern. And once, having also come with Nikto and Arel, Lis saw in the cage not an unclean one as usual, but a man. Absolutely human, not even a half-breed. A young guy. He looked deeply unhappy, hunted, but when he also saw people, he, without realizing it, rushed to the bars of the lattice. In the cage he could only move on all fours, it was too low to stand up to full height.
“Help,” he whispered, looking at Lis with mad eyes full of fear and despair: “Help.”
Lis looked at Nikto:
“Where are the other people here from?”
Nikto asked Marg.
“He says he was caught deep in a cave in the Western Mountains a few days ago.”
“But what should he do in the mountains, so far away?!”
Nikto shrugged his shoulders:
“I don’t know. An escaped slave or a criminal.” He sat down in a chair and put his hand on a special armrest. Marg began to mend the barely healed demonic beast eye on his hand.
But Lis couldn’t calm down, his gaze returned to the cage, and the guy, clinging to the bars, also looked at him.
“Nik… he is very young, he is a human.”
“Lis, the unclean have a lot of people as slaves, get used to it.”
“But he doesn't look like a criminal or a slave.”
“Fuck, talk to him yourself, if you're so interested!”
Lis went to the cage, squatted down:
“Who the hell are you?!”
“My name is Marcus.”
“And what were you doing so far in the mountains, Marcus?”
“I'm a traveler. I explore different places, in the North and in the South. I am a researcher.”
“What? What the fuck are you talking about? Researcher?!”
“Yes! I am a scientist, I study the nature and features of our world! I discovered in the north such fat birds that cannot fly, but can live in the cold! These are rare unknown species of flora and fauna. And also plants and minerals, in this cave I discovered a unique colony of stone flowers… my notes, my notebooks with notes…” When he spoke it quickly, choking with words to be in time, his eyes lit up.
“Are you out of your mind? What flowers?!”
“Unique stone flowers that exist only in our world! They glow! Nowhere else are there such ones!”