CN: mention of hunting / implied animal death. As always if I miss something, please let me know so I can add it.
Word count: 405, Rating: G. Crossposted to the Rainbowfic community on Dreamwidth
Ostanes and Iosis are from the novel that I have some rough draft chapters up for (you can find them in the Story Index). Basically all you need it know is that Ostanes split himself into two people using alchemy so he could do his great work. Basically, they’re multiple and headmates, but in-story they wouldn’t fit the definition. Ostanes can’t use Iosis’ name and tends to refer them as one person most of the time.
Putting on his face was always a meditative thing. He could go get the cosmetics at any store – it was the color, not the ingredients – but he preferred to make them himself. A very basic, simple alchemy. Putting on his face was an alchemy too, of a kind, beyond even letting his other half out. A connection to a task done dozens of times, a process of days and weeks.
Finding the ingredients: rice, grown hundreds of miles away at a farm he happened upon once and had supported ever since; animal fat from local wildlife when he could and local farms when he couldn’t; blueberries, pokeberries, sumac berries, or chokecherry, depending the season and the supply; walnuts, acorns, or lampblack, easily kept on hand; marigold, sunflowers, and poppies from the garden; lipsi lazul, the beloved turquoise from the fungus growing on the summer false oak and which meant climbing up slippery branches 15 feet or more to gather leaves it grew on – there were a handful of mushrooms that gave similar shades, but not as reliably or as sweet smelling; and lumps of sweet sap as he foraged.
Preparing: pressing fruit; comminution of nuts, dried herbs, or fungus; decoction in ammonia or vinegar or alcohol to release the color; rendering and refining fat until it was smooth and odorless; emulsion of honey, resin, and mallow so the final product would be shiny and smooth once set; and then, finally bringing it all together, tint, emulsion, and solvent and then gradating, the longest and yet most satisfying process, until it was no longer a mixture, but an ingression, a new thing unable to be separated. And then decanting it into clean jars, to be stored and used without worry of degradation.
It was a connection too, to history and that was why he preferred natural ingredients: to remember centuries of women and servants doing similar tasks for beauty and fashion and disguise, of discovery and tradition, refinement and record.
He shivered and there was his other self, his beautiful clever brother who bore the costs with him, their hands continuing together the sublime act of painting their face, red over white over brown flesh. Ostanes faded back, ready to wait ever-patient, as his other half paused, looking at the carefully perfected colors, to pick the right one to answer the question. What would be his task today?
Iosis smiled and reached for a jar.
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