Roja: Introductory Story

“Make sure you wash and moisturize that! I’m not gonna give you any discounts or sympathy if you screw up my work!”

Roja Primae closed the door to her shop, sighing slightly and shaking her head. Kids. She stuck her tattoo kit into the cleaning autoclave and turned it on to sanitize them. Ever since she was a teenager, the sabertooth had been interested in the tattooing process, which essentially zapped the skin, fur, scales, and feathers of whoever was getting one so even when molting or growing out their outer later, the marking would still be present.

She locked the door and dimmed the front lights, heading to her practice drum studio in the back and playing an intense, punk rock style solo. She closed her eyes as her mind wandered, designs flashing in her head as she kept the intense, high-speed beat going. Her mind kept wandering: designs morphed from simple geometric, to urban, to space… A focus on that corvette she saw at the space port. She gave a gasp and stopped playing, grabbing a nearby sketch book and scribbling down the design eagerly. That was it!

Roja got up and checked her paint supply. The wide color variety drew her in as she picked up similar colors and compared them, tossing some in her bag, discarding others, filling up the sack with golds, silvers, blacks, purples, and blues. She slipped out of the back door of her studio, making her way through the city. The perfect spot would certainly be the concrete wall on a hill overlooking the space port. They’d love her design and wouldn’t take it down, and it’d be a bit of a greeting from the less-posh, less-corporate, more creative side of the city!

She worked fast. She had to. When ships took off or landed, their forward ports would often scan along the wall, and she didn’t want to be caught too early. The clicks of the cans and the aerosol spritzing filled the air as she huffed softly, panting and coughing every so often before she stood back after nearly an hour, interspersed with fast ducks out of sight when the loud hum of a ship filled the air. She finished up with a soft smirk on her face, finishing up with a signature of her face in a chili style in the corner before packing up and slipping off.

She put away the cans of spray paint in her studio and checked the time. Crap. She had been out too long, hadn’t factored in a need to sleep. She got some coffee brewing and unlocked the autoclave, pulling out her tattooing set and prepping for the day. No appointments, but she did notice a few folks already congregating near the entrance, going over some flash-designs she had hung in the window. She smiled, loving this kind of life and work, as she grabbed a cup of coffee and unlocked the shop door. “Come on in, there’s plenty of time to use you all as canvas!”