No prompt used. Challenge instead.
The challenge: Obtain challenges from other FFMers (and challenge others as well) and pick a line of dialogue and two complex characters who work together for a goal. My choices ended up being: “Just toss the fucking underwear in the fire!” (from SarcasticCupcake5), A fighter pilot, crash-landed and separated from their squadron, hopelessly lost, and hopelessly optimistic. (from The-Inkling) and A vampire who likes to paint sunsets (from GDeyke).
It was a normal day for Roshan: a healthy dose of blood for breakfast, admiring his previous paintings, making sure that he was not running out of blood soon and preparing to leave for the cliff to paint the day’s sunset. It would hurt his skin again, but since it was the sunset, it was worth it. He healed during the night and the morning anyway, so the discomfort was a small price to pay.
That evening, after returning home with a new sunset painting, he was going to see which of the paintings he would sell at the art fair next month. He did not want to part ways with any of his paintings, but truth to be told, he was running out of space. He had to get rid of some of them or else some of the paintings would suffer on the floor, getting dust and perhaps unwelcome guests such as mice. That would not do.
That all came to a halt when he found a human sitting at his painting spot with a campfire burning. His clothes lay scattered around it and he had a blanket wrapped around himself.
Roshan stopped, trying to figure out what to do. Why was someone here of all places? And why did they have a campfire there?
And what was that smell?
The human turned to look behind their back, as if they had sensed that someone was looking at them. The look of surprise turned into delight. “Finally a person! I’ve been looking for civilization for days.”
“Why are you here?” Roshan asked, more concerned about why his own place, on his own property, was being disgraced like this rather than the identity of this apparently male human.
“My fighter crashlanded a couple of days ago. My squadron didn’t come for me, so I decided that I’ll trek to some direction until I’d find other people. I knew I’d find someone eventually.” The man smiled. “I’m Teague Zomber, although you can call me Tea.”
Roshan blinked a few times. “I’m Roshan.” He looked at the sunset. He would lose it if he did not paint it soon. “I take it you want to get to other humans?”
“Yes, that would be lovely,” Tea told, giving a smile so sweet it disgusted Roshan.
“Very well.” Roshan would not miss a sunset for any reason. “I’ll paint this sunset, let you stay at my place for the night and take you to the nearby village in the morning. Deal?”
“Deal,” Tea agreed.
With a sigh, Roshan set his canvas at the wrong spot and got to work. With so little time left, he rushed the painting. If he would have his way, he would have Tea depart with it as a price for the help.
At some point, Tea started to dress up again. Then Roshan found the source of the smell.
“What the hell? Burn that thing!” he roared.
“But they’re my underwear!” Tea cried out, horrified.
“They’re disgusting!”
“But they’ll be all good after I wash them!”
“Just toss the fucking underwear in the fire!”
“But-“
“Do it for fuck’s sake!”
Tea tossed his soiled underwear into the fire. The smell got even worse. Roshan gagged. Had he not felt sick, he would have tossed this fool down the cliff and retrieved his blood later for all the trouble he had caused.
He had better help the man to get rid of him the human-approved way.
In the next morning, Tea bid farewell to a shield-coated Roshan with a smelly, sloppy sunset painting tucked under his armpit. Roshan merely snarled in return and watched as the man’s bus left, taking the fighter pilot away with him.
Only once he was sure that Teague Zomber was gone did Roshan leave, swearing that after he was done with deep-cleaning every room Tea was in and his painting spot, he would take a good feast to blur the memories of the insolent man he had had to spend time with.
WindySilver 