oh what a let down, a shame! [augustine]

Gwen was losing muse. It was fleeting, barely on the tip of her paintbrush, which didn't seem to be working as well with holding paints as it was before. Usually a visit to Amon would revitalize whatever inspiration she'd lost but this time, nothing had seemed to be helping. The canvases piled and leaning against the wall in her apartment hadn't had anything added to them in three weeks. Tegwen had an unfinished piece left on her easel, a painting of a woman with little details left to include.

In her painting, the woman was laying in bed, only a sheet covering her body. Her head and arms lay over the edge, limp. Her teachers had said that she ought to put more life into her paintings and give people something to really talk about, but Gwen laughed. She couldn't do that, she'd told them. Everyone was dead. This woman, who Gwen had named Meridith, had been murdered by her lover in the middle of the night. The lover, who remained nameless at this point, had a wife. Meridith had wanted to get married, and that didn't sit well with her lover. So he strangled her in the middle of the night. Everyone in her paintings had stories - they had lives and names and reasons they ended up where they were.

Maybe her paintings did have life. Take that, Modern Renaissance teachers.

Gwen couldn't bring herself to finish the painting. She could stare and stare and stare for hours but when it actually came to getting paint on the canvas, it was nothing. 

It lead her to her short list of contacts. Her short list lead her to someone who wasn't really a contact at all, but rather someone she had briefly met a few times when she was younger. He was an artist, a great artist who Gwen was sure struggled from time to time. She would talk to him, and he would explain his muses and what inspired him and she would no longer be struggling. His name was Augustine Mohr, and Gwen had arranged a meeting with him a few weeks prior.

Gwen had made plans at a small, but high end bar, hoping that the tab wouldn't completely slaughter her bank account. After all, she still had to eat sometime.

The heels on the girl's feet made clicking sounds as she walked across the venue's floor, her skirt brushing against her legs. Augustine had beat her there - she hoped he wasn't waiting too long. She hated keeping people waiting, unless she knew them well enough. "Augustine, hello!" She said, to her dad's former trainee. "Thank you so much for meeting me here, it really is quite a pleasure to see you again." Gwen spoke as if the two had ever become close at all, as if the last time she'd seen him had been just the day before as opposed to over ten years ago. "Let me get you a drink." She was totally gonna kill her bank account.

@Augustine Mohr

Augustine Mohr had no problem with being alone. Happily, he sat by himself at a corner booth of bar near his office with one hand on his drink and other on his knee, studying the the cube of spherical ice in his short glass of whiskey that was melting at an agonisingly slow pace. Every now and again he took a sip and watched the matter teeter from top to bottom through the amber liquid, noting the condensation that had now appeared on the bottom of the pristine glass and was dripping to the stained wooden table.

He was early - painfully early, even - as usual, to a meeting with Tegwen Gittins, the daughter of his former partner and mentor, Edwin Gittins. The two colleagues hadn't seen each other since before Augustine had gone rogue when his family was murdered in the war, so to say that he was surprised to hear from his daughter was the understatement of the century.

As far as he knew, their meeting concerned his career so he could only assume the woman was an aspiring model of some sort. He found that ever since he was discovered in his new career as a designer that people seemed to appear out of thin air, ready and willing to ride on his coattails into the limelight of the industry, masking themselves as old friends and family members. He had learned to avoid this sort of thing usually, but the inevitable guilt that came with ditching his once partner had nagged him until he had decided otherwise.

With every opening of the door Augustine's eyes tore away from his studies in anticipation for the almost-stranger that he was meeting. Although it had been years since he had seen Gwen, he was certain that he would be able to pick her from the growing crowd. As suspected, the moment the young woman passed through the threshold, he knew it was her. Sitting up straight, both hands wrapping around his glass, he offered a wry smile in response to her far more jovial one despite the ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach indicating that it was essential he be careful with this one.

"Gwen?" He half-asked, unsure if he was in a position to not be calling her by the name that her parents had given her and using the nickname she had signed her owl with instead. As the blonde made her way toward him, Augustine fought the inevitability of his gaze travelling down to her exposed legs and instead averted to her face. Much to his disdain, that had only proved to be just as distracting as the former. This was definitely not the girl he had met many years ago through her father.

"Not a problem at all," Augustine replied earnestly in response to her thanking him for taking the time. "Pleasure is mine," He continued as he stood up in greeting and gestured to the other side of the booth for her to have a seat. "Nonsense" The wizard shuffled aside to let her have a seat as his gaze peered around the room for a barkeep to replenish their drinks. The young redhead that had served him earlier appeared quickly. "Another for me," He touched the side of her shoulder thankfully. "What will you have Gwen?" He turned to his guest.

Once the employee had taken their requests and left for the bar, he slid into his seat with a smile. "I must say I was surprised to hear from you," Augustine stated plainly, never one for beating around the bush. "How is your father?" He asked, genuinely interested in what had changed within those few years of his absence.

Gwen made herself comfortable on the side of the booth opposite from Augustine. Her bag quickly found a spot next to her on the booth, her legs crossing themselves at the ankle while she smiled at him thankfully. "I'll have a whiskey neat." She nodded, resting her hands in her lap. "Thank you."

"My father?" Gwen was surprised to hear about the man who'd raised her, although once she'd thought about it she realized that it probably wasn't outlandish. Ed was, after all, the reason that Gwen had known Augustine had existed. She wished she could answer the question about her father, although she hadn't heard from him since a letter he'd sent in the war, and she hadn't actually seen him since she'd left Wales for her art school. They hadn't been happy with her decision, and the less they talked to her, the less they had to deal with her life choices. "Edwin?" Gwen asked. "I haven't spoken to him in three years."

She was going to leave the conversation at that - Augustine didn't need much more information than that, did he? Gwen then realized he might have been asking for more of an update than actually just seeing how her father was doing, and decided to indulge him. "I think he's still in the same department, actually. I got on his bad side when I'd decided to go back to school as opposed to taking an internship. He and Bronwyn I think... are probably doing okay? I have no idea to be honest. They may hate my entire being." Her tone was light and playful, even though she wasn't joking in the slightest.

"I've seen your work - I actually enjoy looking at your design-work and I've been to a few runways here and there with your features." The twenty-three year old painter had started to get excited, her hands clasping themselves together while she scoot closer to him. "Everything is beautiful, class work really. It's actually why I'm here - your work." She nodded.

Gwen dug into her purse, pushing things aside in order to get to the notebook that sat in it. "I just..." The blonde struggled to get her words out as she pulled her book, flipping through it immediately to find the sketch of her newest piece. "Your muse seems to be eternal, with design after design after design -" Gwen's hands were waving around like a mad woman. "You never stop and everything seems to be just as good as the next if not better but I just..." She shook her head, trying to figure out where her thoughts were going.

Tegwen stopped to compose herself before continuing on. "I'm struggling." She pushed her notebook towards him. "It's unfinished. I've hit this wall where everything seems to be going wrong and nothing is making sense artistically and I just need..."

What did she need? Gwen had come into this not completely knowing what she intended to ask Augustine. Did she want to know his muses, where they came from, how he used them? Did she want to know how he brought himself back up from a wall? "I need to..." Gwen forced herself to push words out of her mouth. "I need to bring back the enthusiasm I had for Merideth before I hit this... block."