![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The closer winter got, the slower business was. It was understandable, they all supposed, given the layers the people dressed up in, which didn't really allow for a new tattoo or most new piercings to breathe properly as they healed. So the Lotus sat mostly quiet, save for the piping of music from the speakers overhead. The tapping of fingers on a keyboard was counterpoint to quiet chatter from elsewhere in the building, words mostly indistinguishable without an ear pressed to a door.
The front of the shop was occupied by one of the apprentices, who was trying to arrange schedules for appointments that would be coming in and who they wanted to work on them, and across the room from her, in a wide, comfortable chair in what was only loosely known as the waiting area, a young man slouched with a tall sketchpad on his knee and a fistful of colored pencils that he was switching between as he sketched and colored with one leg slung over the arm of the chair. He had a pair of headphones in, and was mostly ignoring the door.
