Caravanserai [Abalos Spa]

[Dominique]

Name: Chloe Foster
Date | Time: June 12th, 5 PM
Wearing: Tan coloured Spa uniform with brown sash and white loafers
Location: Abalos Spa
Tagging: Pelin


She wasn't anything if not dedicated, and it showed in the way her fingers seemingly danced over the back of Pelin's hand as she rubbed the cream into her skin. The light pressure increased on the softer parts of her hand, applying more and more of the sample lotion to the girl's roughened fingers, offering proof that she was a hard working young woman, who had risen to the challenge of adversity time and time again, facing it with her head held high. Chloe thought she deserved a gentle treatment too, feeling, perhaps not consciously but definitely instinctively, that Pelin hadn't been offered quite as much kindness as she was giving others. It wasn't even about pity, either; Chloe treated people with the respect she intuitively thought they deserved. Clearly her intuition thought very highly of Pelin.

"I'm glad you consider me your friend," she said, a demure look in her eyes that accentuated the small blush upon her cheeks. It really did mean a lot to her, and Chloe didn't think she could return the compliment and do the sincerity Pelin had displayed justice. "I think you make a pretty amazing friend yourself," she said with a girlish sort of shyness that didn't really fit her now, but that had suited her well enough when she was a teenager. Chloe let her gaze rest on the way her fingers gently pushed along the length of Pelin's hand, again and again, and only occasionally did her eyes flit up to assure Pelin that she meant it. She had moved her focus to Pelin's fingers now, and gradually turned the applying of lush cream into a little hand massage. People underestimated how sensitive hands really were, and how important it was to look after them. You could relax an entire body by relaxing palms and fingers, just as effectively as feet and toes did. She worked diligently, taking her time with every single digit, working from one knuckle to the next, applying pressure where needed and making sure that no part of them was anything if not shiny and soft.

"Your fingers are beautiful, you know," she remarked, her voice with that serene quality to it that she focused on just a little bit more whenever down here in the Spa. "Do you think you would let me paint them sometime?" A sweet little sigh escaped Chloe, and she looked visibly relaxed, even if it wasn't her on the receiving end of the little treatment. "I haven't done this in such a long time," she mused, wistfully almost. A breathless laugh followed that statement, and Chloe looked up at Pelin, briefly pausing the rhythmic movements of her hands. "With a friend, I mean. Back in London, before I graduated, I used to practice on my friends all the time. I'd treat their hands first; you can't put Henna on dry hands. I suppose that even then I already knew the business world wasn't for me. It's what made it so easy to leave my dad's company in the end, you know? I haven't regretted making a career switch, not for a single moment."

Her eyes briefly clouded over as she thought back to her home, her family. "My parents were so upset when I quit, packed up my bags and left. They wouldn't talk to me for weeks, months even. It was a little hard to tell given how I was on the other side of the world. They know I'm here now though, and they've been sending me cards. Cards with such stiff little notes on it, you'd laugh if you read them." Chloe smiled faintly that time, the sentiment not quite reaching her eyes. "I wonder when I will go back. I think it'll be a long time yet."

[Honeycrisp]

Name: Pelin Arwan
Date | Time: June 12th, After 5PM
Wearing: Red scarf chased with gold, grey abaya, sandals
Location: Abalos Spa
Tagging: Chloe

Without immediately commenting on the revelations Chloe shared, Pelin simply sat and enjoyed the massage that Chloe was blessing her hand with.  Chloe's hands were so deft, so confident that it was like she was touching her own skin and feeling it.  No wonder Caravanserai had hired her; smart, truly gifted with massage, and as beautiful as the white Iris with the brush of black upon their core that grew wild in the mountains of Pelin's home.  When Chloe paused, Pelin offered up her other hand without waiting to be asked.  Only then did she give the thoughts in her head life as words.

"Sometimes when the heart hurts and doesn't know what to say then the words they-" she searched her limited vocabulary to try and express herself properly."The words, they sound wrong.  Different from how the heart writes them and wants them to be heard.  Your Bav, your Papa," she translated.  "He probably sees so much of your Mama in you that you leaving is like a piece of her going away.  And he doesn't know how to keep you and let you go at the same time.  I think maybe he is in love with you like he is in love with your Mama and his heart aches that you are away.  But he is trying," she reassured Chloe without even knowing more than a passing bit about their relationship.  Torn away from her own family but having grown up in an intimate, interconnected web of relationships that only those in developing countries without modern distractions could understand Pelin understood more about families than Chloe.  Even if it didn't translate perfectly into the exact situation with Chloe's it was still something the other girl needed to hear.

With her free hand that had been made soft by Chloe's work, Pelin reached out and stroked the back of it across Chloe's cheek then repeated the movement with the palm, letting it rest with her thumb just below Chloe's eye.  Insistent pressure asked Chloe to look into Pelin's face.  "If he didn't care, he wouldn't write.  If you didn't care it wouldn't hurt.  "We say 'A kind word will warm a man through three winters'.  Write him back with that kind word, Chloe.  It will bear fruit in time."

[Dominique]

Name: Chloe Foster
Date | Time: June 12th, 5 PM
Wearing: Tan coloured Spa uniform with brown sash and white loafers
Location: Abalos Spa
Tagging: Pelin


She was caught off-guard by the touch, which was so gentle and so full of warmth. It suggested that Pelin was feeling more at ease with her than Chloe had thought, and she felt glad for it. But moreso, she was surprised by the words that Pelin had spoken, which were so painfully accurate that she could feel a sharp sting at the core of her chest when merely considering how true they might be. She hadn't seen her parents in over two years now, and maybe, just maybe it did more to her than she had allowed herself to feel until now. Chloe didn't realise that it had even brought her to tears, not until she could feel the tiny splash as it landed on the bare skin just above her collar. It had been a lonesome tear, one that had rolled so quietly over Pelin's fingers. Immediately Chloe pulled away, looking embarrassed.

"Goodness," she said breathlessly, which Chloe didn't think was a word she had ever used before. But good ol' English swearwords would take away from the sincerity with which Pelin had spoken, and if there was anything that Chloe was certain of right now, is that she did not want her to feel like Chloe didn't take her seriously.

Picking up a tissue from the table, she dabbed at her eyes, looking a little uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, uhm..."  She shook her head, causing the whirl of black curls to waver about her hear in an unkempt fashion. An apologetic smile tugged at a single corner of her mouth, and Chloe looked up at her newfound friend, already regretting having pulled back so abruptly. She really hoped Pelin hadn't taken it as a sign of rejection. "I guess it bothers me more than I care to admit,"  she said, glancing off to the side as she tried to regain her composure. "I don't know if the truth is as rose coloured as you told me, but... perhaps it's worth a try."

Chloe hesitated, then asked, a little shy almost, "And perhaps you'd help me write it..?"