Imperial Nuisance, Stealer of Pants

Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.

Her name is Timnit Gebru.

She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.

The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.

The paper had not even been published yet.

Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.

The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.

This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.

The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.

The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.

Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.

Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.

The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.

In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.

The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.

In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.

The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.

Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.

This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.

The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.

The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.

Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.

She was making that argument from inside Google.

Then Google proved her right by removing her.

The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.

Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.

Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.

The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.

Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.

The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.

The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.

Gibrillont chuckled at the shift in his tone.

“Ah, I think they’ll be fine. She was the real bubbly friendly type. Haven’t met the others yet, though.”

He passed the two drinks to the woman waiting at the counter before drizzling a healthy amount of the rose syrup in a cup for Aymeric’s latte.

“If it brings more foot traffic in, you won’t find me complaining,” he continued.

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it. It’s been awfully quiet lately.”

“Thought you liked the quiet.”

“I also like being able to pay my bills.”

“Cheers to that,” Gibrillont said as he handed him his drink.

“Have a good one.”

“You, too.”

As Aymeric exited the coffee shop, he took a longer look at the moving van parked outside. A pair of people were carrying what looked like a massage table up the front steps as a third directed them. Idly he wondered which one was the woman who Gibrillont had met. As he turned to head back to open shop, he also wondered if he would meet any of them, as well. Only time would tell.

~

The next morning passed much as the previous. The shop was still relatively quiet in the early morning, maybe three other patrons sitting and eating. Aymeric gave his usual order and stepped to the side to wait while Gibrillont worked. A few minutes later, the door opened and a blonde woman in a red jacket walked in.

“Ah, good morning!” Gibrillont greeted her as he pulled the shot for Aymeric’s drink. “How’s the move going?”

“Well enough, most of the little things are in,” she said. “It’s getting everything unpacked that’s the pain.”

He nodded in sympathy. “I’ll be with you in just a sec.”

“You’ve just moved to the neighbourhood?” Aymeric asked politely.

She turned to him with a smile, nodding enthusiastically.

“New workplace, just there,” and she pointed to where the white van had been parked yesterday. “Me and some friends are opening a tattoo parlour. Are you local, too?”

“I am, I’ve been here almost 13 years.”

“Hi, I’m Lyse,” she said, holding out her hand.

“Aymeric,” he responded, shaking it. She had a surprisingly firm grip. “I own the flower shop just up the road.”

“Oh! I hadn’t even seen it! I’ll have to poke my head in sometime, I could use something green at work.”

“Please do, nothing like some greenery to brighten up a place.”

Gibrillont slid him his drink silently, and Aymeric thanked him with a nod.

“I’m off to open, but it was nice to meet you, Lyse,” he said.

“Nice to meet you, too!” she said with a wave.

Aymeric found himself immediately liking her.

~

Lyse held the door open for her as Kitali stepped into the little corner cafe. It was comfortable, with a few rows of stools along the back wall and a handful of paired seats along another. A lit glass case on the counter displayed a small offering of baked goods. The menu was printed neatly in chalk on a large board behind the counter above the coffee machines. All in all, standard fare.

“Have you tried the matcha yet?” Kitali asked, scanning down the list of drinks.

“No, not yet.”

“Hm.”

Lyse waved over at the tall black-haired elezen already waiting by the counter. He had a handsome profile, and a nice smile as he turned to Lyse, and some of the bluest eyes Kitali had ever seen. “Morning Aymeric!” she greeted him enthusiastically.

“Morning,” he replied.

“This is Kitali, one of my friends and coworkers. Kitali, this is Aymeric, the one I told you about.”

“Ah yeah, plant guy, right?”

He chuckled at that, extending his hand in a polite shake. “Yes, I am the local plant guy.”

Kitali returned the shake, noting with pride that he flexed his hand slightly after they broke apart.

“I’m sure Lyse was thrilled to hear that she’d have a florist nearby.” She turned to Lyse. “Are you going to break any more furniture with your plant habit?”

“I-okay, that happened one time,” Lyse spluttered, “and in my defense that shelf was taken off the curb, so.”

Aymeric was looking between them with a raised eyebrow.

“At our old place, she put so many potted plants on a single shelf that it cracked in two in the middle of one of her appointments,” Kitali explained. “You’ll likely have a lifelong customer right here.”

“Well, I’m not going to complain,” he said easily. He picked up the drink the barista handed him with a nod. “Good to see you again Lyse, nice to meet you, Kitali.”

As he exited the building, Lyse nudged her with an elbow.

“See, told you he was cute,” she said quietly.

“‘Cute’ is subjective,” Kitali replied evenly.

“But you’re not disagreeing.”

“No, I’m not.”

~

It was pouring rain when Kitali ducked into the coffee shop, shaking back her hood and wiping back the soaked hair that had escaped her ponytail. Aymeric was already waiting by the counter, similarly soaked, and they gave each other a nod as she walked up to the counter.

“What’ll it be?” Gibrillont asked.

“Can I get one dirty chai, one matcha latte, and one black medium roast,” she rattled off.

Gibrillont gave a nod. “You got it.”

She paid and sidled up to Aymeric.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” he said drily.

“What, you got something against free showers?” she joked.

He rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

“So I’ll ask you, since I haven’t gone exploring yet, is there anywhere good to eat within walking distance around here? I’m not interested in making anyone drive in this.”

Aymeric tilted his head in thought.

“The pizza place on the other end of this block isn’t awful. They usually have some sort of a lunch deal going on. And there’s a new sushi place a couple buildings up from me that I haven’t tried yet.”

“Huh, I haven’t had sushi in a while. Maybe I’ll poke my head in later.”

“Let me know how it is.”

Gibrillont slid him his standard rose latte. Aymeric took it, then looked outside with a mournful sigh.

“Good luck out there,” Kitali teased.

“Thanks, I’ll be needing it.”

~

Kitali pushed open the glass door and was immediately hit with a heady wave of floral scents. Rows of buckets in various sizes filled with blossoms of every colour sat in neat slots along the wall. Smaller vases already filled with arrangements sat on aged wooden shelves and tables. At the back wall, she could see mounted racks of patterned paper and ribbons on dowels.

She was perusing the premade arrangements when she heard the sound of plastic rustling, and Aymeric appeared behind the counter.

“Oh, Kitali, hello,” he said brightly. “Is there something I can help you find?”

“D’you do flower language bouquets or are these all just...pretty to look at?”

He laughed at her hand wave towards the vases.

“Some people like to leave hidden messages. We get a lot of customers in who are thrilled by the tradition. And some people just want the colours to look nice together.”

“A sale is a sale,” she said knowingly.

“Exactly,” he grinned. “So, what’ll it be for you?”

“How would I say ‘congratulations on the baby’ with flowers? My cousin is having a baby shower.”

He pulled a worn and yellowed book almost reverently from behind the counter and gently opened it to a well marked page. Pulling a sticky notepad from behind the counter as well, he trailed down a list of words with one finger, jotting down the names on the pad as he went.

“Surprisingly there’s not much to do with children in this one, but—if you’re alright with a smaller size, that is—there is moss for maternal love, crocus for youth, and starwort for welcome. That sound close enough?”

“I have no idea what starwort looks like, but sure.”

Aymeric walked over to the wall of blossoms and began searching through them. He made it the full length of the wall before frowning and passing through the plastic drapes, emerging minutes later with three small containers.

“I knew I had them somewhere,” he said triumphantly. “So this is starwort.”

Pinched delicately between his fingers was a small white flower, long thin petals branching out from the center. It looked like it would get easily lost in a vase.

“And these are the crocuses I have, is there a colour preference?”

He tipped the plastic bin towards her and there was a mass of purple, white, mixed purple and white, even some yellow flowers all rolling together.

“Could you do a mix of the striped ones and the yellows?”

“Certainly.”

“So how do you get moss in a vase like that?” Kitali asked, eyeing the fragments of dense green in their plastic cup.

Aymeric smiled, and pulled down a clear glass bowl that looked like one Kitali’d seen some of Lyse’s air plants in.

“With this,” he said. “And thankfully these other two are quite small, so getting a nice dense arrangement won’t look too imbalanced. Is this a good size, or do you want something else?”

“No, that’s a good size.”

He flashed her another smile and scooped everything over to the work bench. Dumping a small shovelful of soil into the bottom of the glass, he began layering the moss pieces end to end to cover the bottom. Watching him trim the stems and, occasionally with tweezers, inserting them into the moss was almost like watching someone paint. What started as a handful of flowers became a pleasing spiral of colour sloping gently from the centre of the vase, leaving a neat ring of bare green visible around the edge.

With a pipette, so as to not touch the flowers directly, he squeezed a small amount of water over the moss before setting it back down on the counter for her to admire properly.

“That was incredible,” she said, peering down to look at the cluster of blooms.

“Thank you. I do enjoy doing custom arrangements like these.”

“So what do I owe you?”

Aymeric’s gaze drifted upwards as he calculated.

“Shall we call it an even 50?”

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Are you undercharging me?”

“Not at all.”

His impish grin did nothing to erase her suspicions.

“I know how this works, you know,” she said as she pulled out her wallet.

“I’m well aware, that’s why I’m being truthful with you.”

The card reader beeped as he fit the vase into a small cardboard carrying tray.

“Now, how soon until you plan to give her these?”

“It’s tomorrow.”

“Well, a little tip to keeping these looking fresh is to keep them in the fridge, if you have the room. They’re far less likely to wilt in cold. And the moss should help retain moisture so no need to worry about watering for a few days.”

“Duly noted. Thanks again, Aymeric.”

~

Lyse looked up from her phone at the sound of the door opening. Her face split in a surprised grin.

“Aymeric, hi! Are you here to make an appointment?”

“I am, actually. First one ever.”

She squealed quietly with excitement. “First timers are my favourite! So, do you know what kind you want?”

“Um. Just a tattoo? Of some flowers?”

“Well, sure, but what sort of style do you want it in? We do several here.” She pointed to the walls, where dozens of framed pictures and sketches filled the blank spaces. “Or, actually, hang on, let me get the books out.”

She crossed to a shelf and pulled out three black three ring binders and laid them out on the coffee table.

“Have a look through these and see if anything jumps out at you,” she said.

Aymeric sat dutifully on the plush couch and opened the leftmost binder. The binder was full of laminated sleeves of pictures, either of tattoos or of drawings, all in beautiful black and white monochrome. As he flipped through, however, Aymeric felt that even the most detailed photos felt flat without any colour to them.

Setting the binder aside he opened the other two, just to speed things along. Both front pages were filled with colour this time, to his relief, and as he flipped through them both he found himself more and more drawn to the saturated, almost painted style of the one on his right.

“Something like these,” he said across the room, pointing and a swirling galaxy on the inside of a bicep.

“Oh, those are Kitali’s. Do you want to set up a consultation with her?”

He nodded as he closed the binders.

Lyse went to a calendar that was hanging on the wall and flipped it open to the next month.

“She’s open on the 13th of next month, the 15th, the 16th...any of those work for you?”

Aymeric opened his own calendar and checked.

“The 15th works. What time?”

“How does 1pm sound?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Excellent!” Lyse wrote a small note on the calendar. “I’ll let her know.” She plucked a small card off of the table. “And here’s our business card, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!”

“Thank you, Lyse. I’ll see you around.”

~

Aymeric paced nervously on the sidewalk in front of the house, flowers in hand, checking his watch yet again. He was still early, impolitely so, but his nervousness had forced Lucia to chase him out, promising she could handle any appointments without him. When it was only ten minutes to 1, he finally trudged up the porch steps and entered the house. The front area where Lyse was the last time was empty, and no one else was present, so he looked over the wall of art more slowly this time.

“You my 1 o’clock?”

Aymeric jumped, startled by Kitali’s voice. She was looking up at him from the doorway questioningly.

“Yes, I am, I hope I’m not too early,” he stammered.

She shook her head. “Not at all, have a seat.”

She gestured to the couch with her tail as she took a pencil and some plain printer paper from the desk. He sat once again on the couch, toying lightly with one of the petals.

“Lyse said you wanted flowers, yeah?”

“A bouquet, yes. As a memorial, for my mother.”

Her expression sharpened in understanding.

“And where are you wanting to have this done?”

“On my upper arm, right here,” and he circled the area with a finger.

She held up her hands in a loose circle to match before transferring it to paper in a light line of graphite.

“And do you have a reference-”

Aymeric held up the five blossoms to her.

“Oh, these are lovely,” she exclaimed, twirling the dahlia in her hands. “I don’t think I’ve ever had live references, mostly people just send me stock photos.”

She began arranging them out on the table between them.

“So these are the colours you want them?”

“Ideally, yes,” Aymeric said.

“Okay, let me get these photographed then, just so I don’t lose track.”

One by one they were placed on one of the blank papers and documented.

“So how do you want these to be arranged? Just in a bundle, in a vase, in a wreath…?”

“Um, bundled, traditionally, with a ribbon wrapping around at the base.”

She started sketching lightly on one of the papers, the loose lines slowly shaping into the outline of a bouquet. She was scrawling notes in the margins as she drew, picking up the flowers and turning them in her hand, and Aymeric was enraptured watching her work.

“Did you have a colour for the ribbon in mind?” she asked without looking up.

“Blue. Her favourite colour was blue. I have, I think, something close.”

He pulled his own phone out and opened the folder of all his favourite pictures of her. He opened the one with her in her big sun hat, wide blue ribbon visible against the woven straw. He turned and slid the phone across the table to her and she peered over.

“The ribbon on the hat?”

“Mhm.”

Another scribbled note.

“I can see the resemblance,” she said as she nudged his phone back to him.

Aymeric paused, toying with the case.

“I was adopted, actually,” he said lightly.

“You smile the same way, though. Your eyes do that crinkly thing at the edges,” Kitali said gently.

Aymeric ducked his head, grateful she was still focused on the paper and not him as he took his phone back.

“So, here’s what I’m going to do,” she said businesslike. “I’m going to outline all of these in black, and then go back in and do the colouring over that. All the lines will help hold the shape of these as it ages.”

“What do you mean?”

“As tattoos age, the ink pigments under your skin will start to break down and spread. So the lines will be nice and crisp while it’s new, and then get sort of fuzzy after a few years. And having all those outlines will make it look less like a jumbled mess of colour as they fade and spread.”

He nodded along at her explanation.

“So, what’s your time frame looking like? Do you want to tough it out all in one go, or can you split it between line work and colouring?”

“I can take as much time as I need to.”

“We’ll do it in two sessions, then. Line work, let it heal, come back and do the colour over it. How does…” she trailed off as she opened her calendar, “the 25th at 4pm sound?”

“That sounds perfect.”

“Good. So, since this is your first time, some prep to make both our lives easier. I want you to shave your arm so there’s no hairs getting in the way, have something to eat beforehand with plenty of protein, and wear a shirt that’s either button down or short sleeved. Lyse gave you our card already?”

Aymeric nodded, rapidly filing away her instructions.

“Great, I’ll see you then!”

~

The day arrived, with Aymeric in an old thrifted button down shirt and purple transfer ink on his exposed bicep. He sat reclined in the chair as Kitali laid out her supplies with surgical precision and tried not to look at the needles for too long.

“Nervous?” she asked when she caught him eyeing them.

“A little,” he admitted.

“You don’t need to watch if you don’t want to.”

He tried not to fidget as she finished laying everything out. She soaked one of the paper towels with the liquid and wiped down his skin, the scent almost minty. It chilled pleasantly as she patted the skin dry before coating it with another layer of vaseline.

“That smells nice,” he said to break the tension.

“What, the green soap?”

“Mhm.”

“Doesn’t it? I have a little thing of it at home, too.”

With precise movements, she locked one of the needle tips into place and the tattoo gun came to life in her hands with a low hum. Aymeric braced for the first touch as he stared straight ahead. It felt less like getting a shot, which is what he was expecting, and more like someone pushing the tip of a ballpoint pen into his arm and drawing a line with it.

“You doing okay?” she asked softly after the first few passes.

“I think so,” he said.

“I have a bucket if you feel nauseous, just say the word.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Not a lot, but it’s happened a couple of times, so I keep one nearby just in case.”

He exhaled slowly through his nose and focused on staying present even though his initial wave of nerves had worn off. She turned to swipe another fingertip of vaseline from the tray before dipping the needle into the well of black. Aymeric had a moment of confusion. Had she been using an empty needle this whole time? But, he figured, she knew better than he what her process was.

“So how did you become a florist?” she asked casually. “That’s not something you hear about everyday.”

“It was through a friend of my mother’s, actually,” Aymeric began, “who was looking for some summer help. He knew I liked to help her in the garden, so he offered me a part time job. After I was done with school I began working there full time. Several years later, when he wanted to retire and neither of his children wanted to take over the business, he passed it on to me.”

“Ah. He still around?”

“Oh, he is. He and his wife stop in every now and then, see how things are going.”

“That’s sweet. Coming to check in on the place, I imagine.”

Aymeric chuckled. “Well, it hasn’t gone completely to pieces, so I must be doing something right.”

They fell to silence again as Kitali focused in on a small cluster of lines. The low hum of the tattoo gun in her hand filled the space comfortably.

“How’d you get into tattooing?” he asked once the needles were no longer in his skin.

“It started as drawing, actually,” she said as she dipped the needles into the well again. “I designed a friend’s tattoo, and then a few others, and someone suggested I give actual tattooing a go. Got some stuff to practise on and managed to get an apprenticeship. That was……..what, 8 years ago now? And now I’ve worked my way here.”

“So, how do you practise tattooing? It seems like it’s a bit...permanent.”

She laughed quietly. “Yeah, drawing on a person is a lot harder than drawing on paper. But they do make false skin.” She wiped his arm clean in another smear of green-black ink and bright red blood. “The first live one I did was on a friend, just a small thing on his ankle. Somewhere easy to hide if it looked like shit.”

“And did it?”

“Well, he’s not afraid to wear sandals in public, so it can’t be that bad.”

Aymeric tried not to move under her hand as he chuckled.

The rest of the session continued like that, with idle small talk as she worked and him trying not to fall asleep in the chair. His arm was beginning to ache now, and he was keenly aware of the many paths the needles had taken across his skin.

“Almost done,” she assured him, “just have this last bit of ribbon to do.”

After a few more passes with the needle and a final swipe with the paper towel, now covered in blots of ink and blood, she sat back to douse another clean towel with the soap mixture. The cool liquid was a balm over the fresh tattoo and Aymeric sighed in relief. Kitali chuckled at his reaction.

“Alright, come and see how it looks,” she said as she stood, gesturing to the full length mirror again.

Aymeric sat up and stretched his legs, surprisingly relaxed for having sat in one place while his arm was filled with needles for the last hour. He turned to angle his arm at the mirror, and even though he was present for the whole process the fact that there were dozens of black lines covering his outer arm still surprised him.

“That is going to take some getting used to,” he said under his breath.

“Does it look how you wanted it?” Kitali asked him from the mirror’s reflection.

“It does,” he said distractedly, still turning it back and forth in the mirror.

“Let’s get you wrapped up, then.”

Pulling out a box from under the table, Kitali stretched the plastic wrap around his arm, doubling it over on itself before taping it in place.

“Leave this on for about an hour or two,” she said as she peeled the gloves off, “and then wash it very, very gently in some warm water. Don’t scrub, just-” she lightly demonstrated on his forearm- “brush away all that ick. Moisturise, but not too much, and don’t pick at the scabs if they itch. Otherwise it might scar and you’ll have ruined my very skilled and very expensive hard work.”

“Can I touch it at all, or use soap to shower?”

“Unscented soap, yes. Liquid soap is best, that way you don’t have to press a bar against your skin. You can either shower with it still wrapped, or wait a couple days once the bandage is off. Touch is inevitable, given where it is, but try to avoid it as much as possible. Loose fitting shirts until it heals would be ideal.” She pulled out a folded pamphlet and handed it over to him. “This will have more details for cleaning and care.”

He folded it and stuffed it in a pocket, and his hand brushed against his wallet.

“Should I pay you now?” he asked. “or, do I wait til it’s all finished?”

“I can do either,” she said. “I don’t think you’ll run off on me, but if you want to do half now then that’s fine.”

“I know I can pay some now, so I’d rather get it out of the way than wait.”

“Sure.” She went over to her desk and opened a drawer, then another, frowning. “Where did I put the fucking….”

She strode out of the room across the hall, poking her head in the door before ducking back out almost immediately.

“Lyse’s busy, and I can’t find the card reader, so I can do it with an app.”

“Not a problem.”

“How’s 150 sound?”

“I can do 150.”

She made an invoice, he scanned the code, his phone bleeped that the transaction was completed, and he sighed in relief.

“And,” she said, going back over to the desk, “here is my personal card, for setting up the next appointment and if you have questions not already covered.”

He gingerly took it from her and tucked it inside his wallet.

“I’ll see you soon, yeah?” she said with a warm smile.

“Yes, you will,” he said, trying to remember how to form sentences. “Thank you, Kitali.”

“Thank you.”

~

She had somehow beaten Aymeric to the coffee shop that morning, and so she was leaning against the counter waiting for her drink when he walked in. He flashed her a tired smile before ordering his usual rose latte. He mirrored her lean on the counter, folding his arms and letting his hand rest just below of where she knew the tattoo ended.

“Hey, how’s the arm healing up?” she greeted him.

“All the scabs are gone, I think, and nothing looks wrong. I tried not to ruin your very skilled handiwork,” he promised.

“Still putting lotion on it?”

He nodded dutifully.

“What’s your next couple weeks looking like?”

He blinked, staring off into space. “I think I should be free weekend after next? Let me-”

“You don’t need to look right now.”

“No, I’m thinking of it right now, I might as well,” he said as he unlocked his phone. “I-no, not weekend after next, that’s a holiday. After that?”

She tilted her head as she mentally flipped through the calendar. “That should work.”

Gibrillont appeared in her periphery with her drink and a smile.

“Have a good one,” she said as he disappeared back behind the espresso machine. “I’ll wait on you for a time, then,” she said to Aymeric as she left. “Once you’ve finished waking up.”

“I appreciate your patience,” he smiled tiredly.

~

Aymeric lay out in the chair as she lined up all the empty wells, the annotated paper sketch laying beside them. One by one she filled them and grouped them by colour before putting in the cartridge and locking it in place.

“Alright, let’s get these dahlias done first since those are the largest.”

The pen hummed to life under her hand as she dipped it in the first red, smearing a generous layer of the vaseline on Aymeric’s arm before getting to work. He was far more at ease this time, she noted, his arm more lax instead of bracing for each pass of the needles.

“Are you making your client bleed out over there?” she heard Thancred say from the doorway. “I’m seeing a lot of red.”

“No more than usual,” she joked back. “I know the sight of colour scares you more than most.”

“Ha ha,” he enunciated sarcastically.

His footsteps moved behind her as he peered over her shoulder.

“Gorgeous work as usual,” he commented. “Making it up as you go along?”

She shook her head as she straightened.

“He brought me live samples to match,” she said gesturing to Aymeric in the chair.

“Really?” Thancred asked him. “Where from?”

“From work. I had some laying around, and figured they’d do better than stock photos.”

“Oh! You’re the plant guy, right?”

“Is that going to be my official title now?”

“Blame Lyse, not me,” Kitali said without looking up from shading.

“Yes, I am the plant guy,” he said, addressing Thancred, “but my given name is Aymeric.”

“Thancred. Pleasure to meet you.”

She heard the clasping of hands as they shook.

“So are there any other artists lurking about or have I met everyone now?”

“Not all of us, we have one more coming. She had some lingering appointments to finish out at the old place. Some of which, I think, were supposed to be yours,” he added pointedly towards Kitali.

“Don’t you have an appointment to attend to instead of harassing me?”

“No, he had to reschedule. You’re stuck with me for a while yet.”

“How tragic,” she said, unable to stop herself from smiling.

After another dahlia’s worth of colouring, she heard the soft scuff of a chair being pulled up alongside her as Thancred made himself comfortable. Aymeric was silently reclining, seemingly lost in thought. Every now and then he’d turn his head to watch the progress before looking back out the window.

“You make it look so easy,” Thancred mused.

“What, like how you make plain black turn into photographs?”

He scoffed softly.

“You know where to get skins to practise on,” she reminded him gently.

“I know, I know. Still, it’s more fun to watch the master herself at work.”

Something buzzed in the vicinity, likely Thancred’s phone by his sudden jump.

“Ah, speaking of Shtola,” he said, standing.

She heard him greet her over the phone as he exited the room, voice echoing down the hall until it faded entirely. Aymeric was still silent above her as she continued. Blooms of red appeared under her needles, followed by the vivid yellows of marigold and chamomile, the delicate blues of forget-me-nots and periwinkle dotting the spaces in between.

“It’s like watching someone paint,” Aymeric mused, “except instead of canvas it’s in my skin.”

“Skin is just another type of canvas,” Kitali responded without looking up.

“And which do you prefer?”

“Linen,” she replied instantly. “Not nearly as much blood getting in the way.”

He chuckled softly at that, a small warm sound.

“I can see the appeal.”

“Wouldn’t give this up for the world, though,” she said after a beat. “Fabric and acrylic isn’t nearly as good a conversationalist as people can be.”

She put the final highlights at the edges of the ribbon and sat back to admire her work, still shining under the vaseline. Giving it a final rinse with a green soaped paper towel, she stood.

“And there we are. All done.”

Aymeric stood slowly, twisting slightly in place before standing off the bench to look in the mirror. She watched as half a dozen emotions flickered across his face, and she could see his eyes starting to well with tears. He schooled his expression into something more professional, but not before a couple of them escaped down his cheeks, and wordlessly Kitali held out the box of tissues by her work station.

Sniffling slightly he took one and dabbed at his eyes.

“I take it this is what that’s for,” he said.

“Yeah.”

With a shuddering exhale, he looked once more in the mirror.

“Is it everything you’d hoped for?” she asked gently.

“It is,” he said with a smile, “it is. Thank you, Kitali.”

She smiled in return.

“Let’s get you wrapped up, then.”

~

Kitali nudged the front door open, lunch in hand. Thancred was sitting with a client on the couch, the two of them talking animatedly with a handful of pictures spread on the table before them. She did her best to move past them quietly back upstairs to her own room to eat. She heard Lyse talking to her afternoon appointment and passed them on their way out as she reached the top stair.

A plain green vase was sitting on her work station when she arrived. The flowers inside it were almost overflowing, the heady floral scent wafting about the room as she approached. A single small card was on a string wrapped around the neck.

“Hey Lyse?” Kitali called over her shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Where’d these flowers come from?”

“Oh, those were delivered for you earlier,” she said, poking her head around the door frame with a serene smile.

“O...kay? Who were they from?”

Lyse just giggled and ducked back out of the room, leaving Kitali to puzzle out whatever hidden message was left.

The lilacs she recognised, those were fairly common, but the bright yellow blossoms on the long stalks and the small clusters of delicate white petals were unfamiliar to her. Out of curiosity, her lunch all but forgotten in the moment, she opened a new search page on her phone for ‘lilac flower meaning’. Scanning through the top few results, she could feel a smile creeping its way across her lips.

She flipped open the simple cardstock, and inside was a single word.