It's A Gamble • •

[annie emerald abernethy]

Annie loved strolling around an art fair. She loved the mixture of smells in the air, seeing the creativity spread out across the tables and stalls. She had bought many a thing from places like this. She first fell in love with them as a teenager in Camden, trying to find herself between old rock music and bruised shins from playing sports she wasn't even good at. Since then she had frequented fairs across countries, picking up pieces that called to her. She had blankets from India, jewellery from Africa, and glasswork she had picked up when hitchhiking across Scandinavia with her two best friends from university. A lot of the creative souls she found in New York often spoke of just travelling through, selling their work as they moved from state to state. Very few of them may go on to become the next Van Gogh or Banksy, but Annie still liked to see people supporting them at fairs just like this one. She would always prefer to own something that someone had put their heart and soul into creating, rather than buying a mass published print that has lost so much meaning by now. Masterpieces, to Annie, belonged in museums, not on a cheap canvas stuck in a million kitchens around the globe. Thankfully art was a peaceful and relaxing hobby for the history professor.

Walking away from the stall of handwoven carpets, Annie left behind the piece that had caught her eye there. She had seen a turquoise and purple one that would fill most of her living room, but she really didn’t need another rug. She had six that rotated around her apartment as she moved and freshened up each room. She wasn’t a hoarder, and while it was so pretty to her, it was for someone else to home. The next stall along caught a different sense of hers first. It was the smell. It reminded Annie at first of the smell of candles right after they were blown out. She loved that smoky aftermath almost more than the scent of the candles she adored to burn while she curled up with a good book and a documentary on her TV. Her lips curled upwards into a ruby red smile as she picked up a small item from the table. Gently, she ran her fingers over the detailed wood burning, admiring the skill, and then put it down to cast her eyes over the other art that was for sale there.

At the corner of the stall, she came upon a chess table made from the trunk of a tree. The board was burnt into the top, and the pieces were carved and then had the details etched in with the tools of the artist and his manipulation of the flame. Annie, in awe of the whole piece, quickly tried to recall if she could remember any of the rules of chess. It had been years since she had played it, but even longer since she had played it properly. Chess club at her boarding school had descended into an excuse for awkward teenagers to flirt. Annie knew she needed this piece. It would sit perfectly by the large window in her study, and maybe offer her a break when she was preparing class notes or grading papers. Annie was still quite new to her career, and sometimes that short break was exactly what she needed. “Excuse me, hi.” She flashed a huge smile at the artist on the inside of the stall. “If I pay for this now, can I come back at the end of day to haul it into my car? I’m parked six blocks away and I’ll never carry it.” She was little, and Annie’s strength was entirely mental, not physical.

• • •

TAGGED! Magnus Frederik Rask
WORDS! 634!
OUTFIT! Artsy Annie!
LYRICS! A Pirate’s Life For Me - - - We Cut Corners
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Magnus Frederik Rask]

Maggie would not have considered being an artist when he was a child. He'd always been one, even as a small child but he'd always considered it just a hobby of sorts. Sure, he developed more hobbies over the years because his parents always said they were good for mental health and his mother would know best about that. As he got older, he still didn't really consider it a viable career choice. He knew of people who made a killer living selling their art pieces but he'd not really thought about it for himself until about his final year of high school. People were really interested in the few pieces his parents had scattered around the place so he started to give them as gifts whenever he heard someone say they liked them. Eventually, it did lead to commissioned pieces from people who paid handsomely for them and proved to Maggie that he could make a real living from his art.

Still, because he'd promised, he'd gotten a degree, though he would help him with nothing at all. The secret night classes he took after the fact to get a business management degree would help him a hell of a lot more than anything else he'd done in his adult life thus far. While his commissioned pieces took up most of his income and he could probably live comfortably off them alone, Maggie still loved these little craft shows. These were the places where he could bring the pieces he made for fun, between the commissioned work and sell them to people who might not have known who he was beforehand. Magnus loved letting his imagination go wild and just looking at whatever he'd created after it was finished. That's how he found himself with a one-piece tree trunk chessboard among other things. Normally, during these things, he sold tons of coasters, cutting boards and other little knickknacks but he always brought a collection of bigger items, just in case something caught the eye of a passerby.

He never really knew what people were looking for at these things so he kept to the tried and true things that sold well and also offered up the event as a pick-up location for some pieces he'd been hired to create. It was also the best place to try out other things he made. Before he'd been a wood-burning artist, he'd been an actual paint and canvas, pencil and paper artist first so he put out a couple of those pieces as well. Maggie didn't expect the big pieces he brought to get much traction. He put a fair price on them, there was a ton of work that went into them but the people who usually frequented these things felt they were overpriced. He understood not everyone could afford the larger pieces, which was why he had the smaller ones and a price that made it seem like they were mass-produced. So when the young woman scanning his booth took an interest in the chessboard, he thought she would be the same as everyone else. Idle interest in it and then move on. He had smiled when she approached his tables but stayed back so she could wander. When she asked him about the tree truck board, he hadn't been expecting it. "Hey, yeah, no problem." He said with a smile. "I also do deliveries if that helps as well." He offered because it was true.

♦ ♦ ♦

 
TAG; annie emerald abernethy
WORDS; 576
LYRICS; Let's Be Bad --Meghan Hilty
NOTES; <3

[annie emerald abernethy]

Annie’s life had been a little less than conventional. On the outside it seemed perfectly normal – married parents and two siblings. People often thought she was joking if she mentioned that she was raised in a boarding school because her parents had had her far too young for their wishes. They didn’t actually believe that Annie considered her parents more acquaintances than family. Even now, she had wound up with her sisters in New York; Queenie because she wanted to spend more time with Annie, but Bellamy was essentially there so Annie could babysit her. The Abernethy’s had done a decent enough job raising the younger two, but Annie found herself critiquing every bad decision purely because she had been sent away rather than shown a mother’s love. Her nightmares weren’t chased away with loving arms, and she had ended up making her own family out of the kids she attended school with. They picked each other up on the bad days, and carried each other through the first heart breaks and the turmoil of the teenage years. Their bond was something she couldn’t explain to anyone else, other than to say the Lost Boys probably would have come close to it had Neverland allowed them to grow up.

Annie didn’t give her parents credit for how she turned out or for getting her position at NYU. They might have paid her way, but money was not the answer to everything, and she could have happily taken on student loans if they had helped her in other ways – like calling to see how things were going, or checking up to make sure she was doing okay. Annie’s relationship with her parents was a strange one, and not one she ever hoped to share with any children she might one day have. Most of the practical life skills she had picked up from books and the internet. Even her hobbies had been born from mindless Youtube browsing in the early hours of the morning. Music had been encouraged throughout school, since she had a trainable voice and could make a karaoke night seem a little less amateurish. Sketching had come from watching others, copying, and eventually finding a style of her own. Most of the time she sketched to drown out the anxiety, or the voice reminding her that she had so much to do. Her sketchpads were for herself though, and she very rarely ever shared her work since so much was left half-finished or because they take a bit of a strange twist.

She definitely wouldn’t have her own stall at a fair like this one. As crafty as she was, most of her projects were gifts for friends or simply something she had seen on a Pinterest lunch break and wanted to try for herself. Sometimes, making something from scratch was the only way she could find something in her style without paying a ludicrous amount of money. “Delivery would be amazing…but when could you do it?” She tilted her head ever so slightly, trying to conjure up the mental calendar that she thought up every morning when she brushed her teeth. “It’s not that I’m impatient, I just work odd hours sometimes.” Office hours and faculty meetings often kept her at the college later into the evening – not to mention her Thursday evening class. “I’m probably the most awkward customer this afternoon.” She rolled her eyes at herself, still smiling. She could always ask Queenie to stay in if the delivery was only available when she was unavailable.

• • •

TAGGED! Magnus Frederik Rask
WORDS! 597!
LYRICS! A Pirate’s Life For Me - - - We Cut Corners
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Magnus Frederik Rask]

Some days Maggie considered packing it all in and just getting a normal, steady job at a desk or behind a bar. He knew a few people who would hire him on the spot but then he remembered that if he sat at a desk, he would have to wear a tie and the damn things choked like a noose. So that was out. And while the tip money working a bar wouldn't be bad at all, it would still be nowhere near what he made in a week through his website, just off the trinkets he made and posted. Then there was the fact that if he worked one of those definitely-not-for-him jobs, he would lose all those creative juices that allowed him to earn his income. He was by no means rich but he was comfortable and able to work on pieces whenever he wanted and explore the world just as easily. Maggie had a habit of making sure his commissioned works unless the price of them was right, were all booked in through the winter. That way he had all spring and summer to explore the world, catch up with friends and do whatever the hell he wanted with his life. If the job was good enough, he would postpone but doing the work through the colder months, especially in New York, meant he rarely went out anyway. And when he did, it was usually for a grocery run or someone was throwing a birthday party that he should probably attend. A week here and there in the winter to snowboard was enough to tide him over until he could get out there and surf and camp on the beach.

He led the life of a nomad in a way, except he had a permanent place to lay his head if ever he was tired of the travel. As long as he had Loki by his side, Magnus was a happy man to be wherever he found himself. He routinely packed up his truck with a tent and a cooler of food and drinks and hit the road, stopping wherever he found a campground with an available site to rest his head for a day or two. He had his favourites of course but he liked to find new places. These were usually the trips he took to gather up inspiration for the little things he sold online and at fairs like the one today. He chuckled, shaking his head. "You've not even ranked in the top ten today." He offered as if that would make the young woman feel better. It probably wouldn't but it was also the truth. People approached him thinking he was a carpenter first and foremost; that his booth filled with wooden figures, signs and other, more intricate items were the true art and the real intricate burns into the tops and the sides were just the decoration. Carving out wood was the easy bit, that part of the project that took the least about of time. The wood-burning took precision, dedication and hours upon hours to get it just right. Most people thought it was the other way round.

"As for delivery, I'm available whenever you need me to be really. Tonight, I've got after shut down so," He paused for a second to do the quick timetable in his head. "Eight onwards, just in case something comes up that can't be helped." By the time the slower patrons left, the booth was shut down, deliveries loaded into the back of the truck and the rest of his wares loaded into the trailer, he could be making his first of the handful of deliveries by seven-thirty. He'd made a friend in a local mechanic and in exchange for work on the truck, he offered up some pieces for the bar he co-owned with his sister. It worked well for the three of them. Mitchie got bar stools for the Museum, Maggie got work done on his truck and had a couple of places to put his trailer while he was out doing deliveries in the city. While he technically still lived and worked in New York City, he was so far on the outskirts that it wasn't logical to drive his trailer all the way back home just to return to the furthest boroughs to deliver. "Maybe sooner, depending on how long it takes to pack up and park the trailer." He offered but it would still be at least an hour after the fair closed for the night.

♦ ♦ ♦

 
TAG; annie emerald abernethy
WORDS; 758
LYRICS; Let's Be Bad --Meghan Hilty
NOTES; <3

[annie emerald abernethy]

Annie was thankful that the university were flexible with her. She had wanted to amend the classes offered once she had secured her position there. She had been afraid they would think her young and foolish; another millennial desperate to change the world by throwing out the old. It wasn’t the case. She taught History for a start, so the old was exactly what she needed. Annie just wanted more of it. She felt there were areas ignored, or brushed over and her own papers and studies showed the powers that be that she was more than capable on expanding on their European History offer – plus it sweetened the pot for those students in other areas who would benefit understanding international history on a broader scale than what High school offered. After moving here, seeing her sisters and what they were taught, Annie was shocked by how much was left out; basically, if it wasn’t good for America and freedom then it didn’t need to be known. One of the first statements she threw out to a new class was that they needed to let go of what previous teachers said and be prepared to have certain aspects of history totally rewritten in her lectures. For Annie, it was important to show every side of history, even if it was forcing people to empathise with the bad guys and see how it had changed them since the battles were over and crisis averted.

She enjoyed a healthy debate between her students, playing Devil’s Advocate to get them to understand both sides of an argument. Annie firmly believed in their being two sides to every story, and sometimes even a third point of view that they needed to consider. The way she saw it was that everyone was as bad as their worst enemy – it was just human nature to think of yourself as the good guy. She saw it a lot, but it wasn’t her place to bring people down – not to mention it would only ever lead to trouble. Annie knew her life had sent her down a strange path. She was young, yet had seen and travelled enough to be more learned that most people ever got to be. She had perfected the art of people watching at a very young age, and had fallen in love with the free spirts that wandered London at night. Eventually she had found her kind across the globe, travelling and experiencing other cultures and customs. If she could be paid for that, she’d spend her life moving around, never really settling anywhere, but having fleeting romances with different countries and places.

“That’s a relief. Normally anything with a delivery attached tends to lead to fifteen minutes negotiating and countless sighs and eyerolls while I skim through my diary.” Annie had recently decided to only every order big, bulky purchases when she knew semester end was approaching and she could afford a few weeks at home without meetings or students flooding her e-mail inbox. She was still adjusting to having such a busy schedule. Her time as a TA meant she didn’t need to attend most of the meetings and there was a degree of flexibility, more chances to say no. Now she was trying to make a lasting impression – and a good one – since too many of the staff she was familiar with had a habit of remembering everyone’s bad moments before their best. “Is tonight not too late? For you, I mean. I’m fine with it!” Annie laughed awkwardly, adjusting her hat ever so slightly – a nervous habit that had followed her since high school. “My mind instantly went to how will you have dinner when it’s that late? You’ll be ravenous by that time, surely?” Annie was smart, but her initial reactions and responses were not always what most people would expect.

• • •

TAGGED! Magnus Frederik Rask
WORDS! 649!
LYRICS! A Pirate’s Life For Me - - - We Cut Corners
NOTES! <3 <3 <3