ORIGIN

Imp had--after a cycle or so of work--finally finished his newest series of paintings.

He was almost out of his own dyes--and the paints provided by the palace's resident Valkhand wouldn't last forever. But what he'd done with it, well. He was here to look them over, now that the last of them--earlier that day--had dried.

They were a series of canvasses--square, and not all that big, maybe eighteen inches per side. But they each represented a different cave. He intended to hang them along the walls of the main hallway through the palace, as he thought Aethril might like. Orion had come out good, he thought: a mostly abstract set of starlit colors in swathes of crystalline shapes. Cetus was dark, moody, misty and brooding, with dark lines cutting vertically through a representation of murky fog. Polaris--well, he'd added a little glow to the blue streak of the Spire about two-thirds to the right. And Ursa was white-on-white-on-white, various shades and hues of pale meant to be the painted slopes of mountains and snowdrifts.

They were, for the most part, not only recognizable but fairly aesthetically appealing. And now--sitting back in his iridescent artist's beret--he examined them.

"Fuckin' awesome," he breathed, gaze travelling over his work. There was something satisfying and even soul-mending about setting out to create art, and then not only managing it but ending with a result he was happy with. He'd created, and as an idiot kid he'd never have considered it. Sure, he'd drawn a bunch of genitals and graffiti on the walls, but this-?

It'd taken being blind for a time to appreciate finer works. He'd have thanked Nemean, if he didn't hate her fucking guts.

Now that he was an idiot adult, instead--and had new eyes--he was really coming into his own.

Now I just need a new subject, he thought, excited possibilities unfolding in his mind.

He jerked around so fast he almost fell, blinked as his eyes found Fulgur, and broke into a grin. "HEY!" he cried, wing-waddling rapidly over and then standing aside. "No, come in! Come in--can you fit? Don't knock over the paints!" (There were jars of these along shelves and the floor--many of them empty.) "Or knock into the paintings!" But he was already grinning, sizing Fulgur up with fascinated glances. "I think I said I could paint'cha, yeah? You still up for that? You'd make a badass painting," he promised.

His gaze slid around the room, picking out, in sharp focus, which colors he would use. Pink--obviously. Grays and whites, blues--oh, but the swarm? And what about a background-...

He grinned back up again. "So how you been, anyway?" He paused, craning his head back to try and see Fulgur's back. "You still got that, uh, beady bag thing the Tailor gave ya? They seem pretty cool."

"Fuck-... shit..." Imp swore and winced, hastening to pick up the knocked-over bottles--even if they were empty. He didn't seem to hold it against Fulgur in the slightest, though, instead scuttling out of his way. "Oh yeah, hell yeah I've been busy. Crazy busy! Mistress Aethril--she's the Valkhand that runs this shit--wants paintings for the palace walls. So that's what I've been working on!"

He hustled about, gathering up materials, and more importantly clearing a bigger space for Fulgur. He glanced up at the bag again as he did. "That bag is cool. Mimosa seems nice! Fuck, uhh... Try here?" he offered, sweeping a row of blank canvasses carefully away from one wall.

"And you okay to get painted now-? You'd have to sit still awhile," he warned. "Or if you have to go and take a piss you can come back, obviously. But you gotta pick the same pose-... Anyway, tell me a little about yourself," he suggested, grinning back. "It's gonna take me a little bit to mix up the right paints. You can tell me, I dunno, what you do for fun, what kindsa things you like and don't like... your favorite colors! I can maybe use some ideas! It's good to get to know your subject," he confided, as though he were a master painter and not some guy who'd drawn a few sets of genitals and a couple of caves.

He set about mixing paints, meanwhile--the oils and pigments in various jars, adding to what he'd already set aside. Imp picked out a few brushes, too, and a couple of canvasses that he thought might fit, cheerfully over-energetic all the while.

Once he had everything set up, he turned with a quizzical glance to Fulgur. "Thanks! And uh. Mimosa-? Yeah, tell 'em I said hi! I see them around, sometimes. But you didn't tell me about yourself!" He turned using a clawed foot to lift his largest canvas, which he set atop an easel. He then used jaws to drag a little table over to it, all with that same frenetic energy. As he started to lift up all the appropriate pots of paint onto the table he turned, glancing at Fulgur again.

"What kindsa things do you like to do?" (And here he lifted a pot in his jaws, another in his feet, hobbling over to put it on the table.) "What are you AFRAID of, what do you LOVE, what do you WANT in life!" These were all asked with dramatic flourish as he finished getting everything into place.

One taloned foot fixed the beret more firmly atop his head and he peered, bright-eyed, back at Fulgur. "It's so I can get the right mood," he explained. "I've gotta capture YOU! Not just the-" and one foot came up to frame Fulgur between his talons, Imp squinting at him, "shape of you, but who you really are! -Y'know?" he asked, and he sounded utterly serious. That wasn't to say he didn't pause to stare at the indicated Hydra painting--but it didn't seem to be quite enough for his artistic sensibilities.

Then Imp lifted a brush in his teeth, waiting, staring at Fulgur expectantly.

Imp listened with total intensity, at first motionless, then nodding along. That might have been reassuring--a sort of professional attentiveness--had his followup response not been a breathy "Oh, fuck yeah."

Apparently, he had whatever he needed to work with, now--and he started in at mixing some other colors, talons working hastily at the brushes and pots. Despite the sheer bird-of-prey-like size of the claws, he seemed familiar with such manipulation of his tools--but there was the occasional bit of clumsiness. Now and then he'd knock something over, or--worst--make a mistake as he started on the actual canvas.

For example, he began with a backdrop--a teal one, smeared here and there with hints of pink. It was abstract--no shape to it--and that was because he intended it just to be the base coat on the canvas. Fulgur was to be painted atop it. But as Imp dipped the brush into darker paints--the slate-blue blacks that touched Fulgur's hide--he slipped, slashing a dark line entirely down the canvas. "Fuck," he said, and then paused, that big foot midair as he stared at what he'd done. It didn't have the air of horror about it, though; more... calculation. "I make mistakes all the time. I figure it's cool to uhhhhhh. Use them!" "Incorporate," he meant, but he couldn't think of a good word like that right then. He glanced at Fulgur, finally sliding back into conversation instead of that silent intensity of purpose he'd been painting with. As he did so, he went back to painting--adding paler splotches beneath the darker lines. "I get you. I'm gonna make you EXIST. Like, a big graceful, uh. Thinking. Thing." Again, maybe not very reassuring, but Imp seemed certain of himself. "The sort of shit Gembounds'll stop to look at and be like, whoa! Who or what is THAT! It's so fuckin' cool! ...But yeah I get you. You want people to know your NAME, you wanna make an IMPACT... But like, in a good way!"

Finally, Imp paused to take stock. He had a basic Fulgur-ish sort of shape: pale and dark against that lighter teal gray with sunset-like streaks of pink. And he had the first hints of the clouds of little bird-like creatures--unshaped, as yet, but tiny dark splatters on the canvas. He'd incorporated his unhappy little accident, so that rather than centered on the canvas like a child's drawing, Fulgur was angled sweeping in from the bottom left to take up the bulk of the image at a three-quarters view. The air it held, though yet far from finished, could best be described as 'majestic.' Majestic, and yet unthreatening, like a whale serenely drifting through a sky. "Whaddya think so far?" Imp asked, glancing to his subject.