DEAR FRIEND as you know,  your flowers are withering
your mother's gone insane, your leaves have drifted away.
but the clouds are clearing up
and i've come reveling, burning incandescently,
like a bastard on the burning sea.

Aside from her new cousins being born, things had been mostly quiet for the tigress since she'd moved from her hut back to the captain's quarters. The air, despite being a bit more humid, a bit more dusty, felt fresher in a sense. The scents were calming and welcoming, warm to the female. It cleared her head, the noise dying down, and allowing her to begin to get some real work done, along with focus on things she may have pushed to the side after the loss of her wife. She was thinking - thinking of when she was a child. Goldie would run around gladly, speaking to all she saw, making conversation to all that would allow it, and learning as much as she could, and that made her happy. In its own right, learning new things was just as productive as doing something like planning, hunting, or training. And it was just as important, too, to build relationships with the folks around her. And she's decided, that maybe she should use this revelation and turn back the tide in a sense. Things had become complicated in adulthood, skewed with wars and hurt, but things had been peaceful among the groups since the great battle against the Pitt, and she didn't see it changing just yet. The captain figures, maybe for a little while, it would be fine to focus her mind back into a more carefree attitude.

And thus lead the path down learning the art of tattoos. How exactly did it work on an animal? Her roleplayer didn't know, and didn't really care. It just works. Just trust him on this one. The female had already had experience with traditional art, taking on painting and sketching when she was younger as a hobby. She hasn't done it properly in some time, but that was alright. She wasn't looking to do something very detailed or skilled looking, just something that she liked, and all she had to do to accomplish that was sketch out some ideas. And so that's exactly what she'd do, trying out several different designs, using washable ink to practice on her paws to get a feel for how it'd actually work when she moved onto the final stage. Eventually, she lands upon a design she likes enough to finalize. She decides upon a stipple style of shading, and thick linework to make the simple shapes pop out. It overall wasn't very meaningful - it had thought behind it, but it wasn't connected to any personal idea or story. That's how she wanted it, though, so that was perfectly fine, and it's not like anyone was gonna tell her no. She wasn't asking for anyone's opinion.

The captain would practice a few more times, wash off her paw, and then take a mirror to work on the real thing. The good thing about working with a stipple was that it gave her room for error so long as she was careful. And finally, she would be left with the new marking on her chest. A cat skull, wearing a crown, sitting upon a small pile of leaves and flowers, four bolts of lightning framing its corners. She'd let it sit for a little while, working on other things inside her room to let it settle, before walking out onto the docks, then the beach, to show off her new tattoo, and of course, do things like walk around the archipelago.

DEAR FRIEND as you know,  your flowers are withering
your mother's gone insane, your leaves have drifted away.
but the clouds are clearing up
and i've come reveling, burning incandescently,
like a bastard on the burning sea.

The first to approach would be Finnegan, one of the newest additions to her ever growing family. Her gaze turns to him as he waves in hello, happy to see him getting out and about, even if watching noisy seagulls was not the most efficient or even fun usage of time. She had been bracing for questions from about everybody she'd wind up passing, aside from Keona of course, who wouldn't be able to spot such a difference. She shakes her head gently at his question of whether it was part of her fur or not. "Oi, Finn. Is' called a tattoo! You take some permanent ink n' poke yourself for a while n' you've got yourself a new marking." She explains briefly, trying to keep it simple so it was easy enough to understand. "You prolly shouldn' do it yourself, though, I just did 'cause I wanted to." She was the boss, nobody could tell her no. She figures it was probably best to give a warning to the boy so not to plant any ideas about stabbing himself with permanent dye.

Afterwards a feline she'd met maybe once, or twice, at most, before approaches. She offers a nod to him. "Thank you, n' yea, I did!" she confirms his assumption of her doing it. Goldie wasn't known to not do something herself if she could. She liked to take things in her own paws and make sure they're done right, and so not to inconvenience anybody else.

The female's ears twitch as another young cousin approaches, looking to the male as he spoke up with his own comments and questions. She blinks at him asking for one for himself, thinking on it for a moment. He was certainly too small right now to get anything permanent, and Roxie likely wouldn't be too happy if she just handed out tattoos to her children willy-nilly. "Maybe, but you better ask your mama first," the tigress would answer Alex with a soft tone, offering the boy a playful wink. He definitely was too young to receive a yes, but it didn't hurt to have him thinking about getting one. After all, if it was something he really wanted, he'd have to plan out how he wanted it to look. Even if the ideas might change over time naturally as he grew.

The female always carried a warm smile whenever one of her sons made way, and that was often, considering Seapaw's intent in keeping close with her and his siblings. Goldie would offer a bump in return to the boy's headbutt, chuckling. "Thanks, hon." She responded with another nod, flashing a grin to him. The attention is kind of nice - not in the sense she feels a need for it, but the fact others presented an interest in the tattoo at all. She thinks it would be a nice artform for her crewmates to get interested in, and she knows Ry and Michael had already had their own done. She thinks she'd like doing it again, seeing her crewmates all decorated.

“The tattoo is lovely,” Rosemary said. She stood on the edges of the crowd, one ear twitching. All the children were terribly loud and the colors from their voices overwhelmed her visual field. Rosemary rubbed a paw on the side of her face, but dropped the paw when the motion failed to soothe the budding migraine.

“You should avoid direct sunlight and swimming for a month, while it heals,” Rosemary added. Her forked tail flicks, and one pair of eyes stays on the tattoo while another looks to Goldie. “Swimming with a fresh tattoo is asking for an infection. And excessive sunlight during the healing process is likely to cause loss of pigmentation.”

Then the healer looked at the kids. Oh, so many Roux children… she identified them individually based on their soul’s colors, and who their parents were by their species. Sometimes, she nearly convinced herself one child belonged to a different relative’s litter! It was all quite a lot to keep track of, mentally, and she hoped someone had a book to recordkeep the lineage.

“It’s not a decision to be made lightly. It’s a painful procedure and quite permanent,” she said. Unfortunately, she knew kids didn’t often respond well to being told no, but they deserved some actual information about the process. “You lot should wait until you’re fully grown, anyway. Tattoos are on the skin, so, naturally, they morph with the skin. Finn and Alexandre, you two in particular have a lot of growing left. You don’t want to get a cool tattoo, only for it to look icky later, right?”