Patience Farseer - Blog Posts

craelar

4 months ago

An illustration of a Black woman tattooing her ankle while a pre-teen boy watches. The woman - Patience - has put her leg up on a cushion on the table between them, and is holding a stick-and-poke needle to her own leg in one hand, and a cloth in the other. She is wearing a green dress with the sleeves rolled back and a calm, focussed expression. Her hair is twisted into locs and pushed back over her shoulders. The boy - Fitz - is dressed in blue and leans on the table, his expression avid as he watches. he has shoulder-length curly dark hair and lighter skin than Patience.

When I expressed a curiosity about the tattooers' art, she refused to let me mark my own body, say I was too young for such a decision. But without the least qualm, she let me observe, and finally assist with the slow pricking of dye into her own ankle and calf that became a coiled garland of flowers.

There's barely one paragraph about what Patience's relationship with Fitz was like outside of the main events of the books, but I think so much about these lines about her tattooing her own leg while he watches. I love them, your honour.