ORIGIN

Imp was doing his absolute best to create a masterpiece. He was perched just outside the palace, on a little hill of grass, an easel laid in front of him and a complete mess scattered around him. It wasn't that he wouldn't clean it up; Isra'd have his head if he didn't, and anyway, he just wasn't like that. Usually.

The mess included paint-stained white cloth, two buckets filled with water, haphazard piles of paintbrushes and at least two dozen paint dyes in little pots. Three artists' palettes--already dabbed with various ranges of colors--were present: two in the grass, one clutched in Imp's rainbow-spattered forelimbs.

For once, his work didn't include a load of weird genitalia. He'd sort of gotten over that--mostly; an artist had to move on, after all. Not that he didn't sometimes revisit his origins, of course. (There was a new painting in his "studio" with a made-up Gembound sporting a very not-safe-for-work hat.) But right now he was struggling to capture the essence of the Palace, with a twist. While its columns and alabaster facades were just as elegant as the real thing, he'd tried to give it a formidable, almost ominous, appearance. White stone plunged into darkness at the edges, the sheer walls and razor's edge lines severe.

That being said, it was clear that he was having serious trouble. Regular lighting and color was hard for a new artist to capture; Voidlight was another beast entirely, and though he was struggling to simply paint what he saw, he found that his mind kept interpreting the colors as though the light were white. The result included yellows where they shouldn't be, purples that got way too dark, and pinks and blues that looked more pastel and cheerful than Void-like.

"Damn it," Imp said aloud, to no one in particular, and sat back. He dropped the paintbrush from his jaws, spitting it into his pile, and sat back. He looked from the palace to the canvas, then back, then at the painting again, before informing it dourly "You are fucking ugly." He sighed. "I think I need a break."

Imp turned, jolting and swearing a hissed "Fffff-" under his breath, cut off as he realized he'd banged into the side of the easel. He turned, catching it with a wing, then grimaced and steadied himself.

He then blinked back to Calazeth, about one second passing as he got over the surprise of a voice next to him, and Calazeth's bizarre (but, admittedly, really cool--maybe Imp could paint him later) form. "Hey!" he answered brightly, before looking back at the canvas. "-This? This is shit. Shit. That's what this is. -I mean, it's the palace. Or it's meant to be-... Oh, you mean--like, have you never seen art? It's a painting!" he offered brightly. Feathers ruffled with pride as he fluffed himself up, adjusting his scarf. "I'm the palace artist. Imp! -...Is my name!" he added, realizing maybe the word 'Imp' on its own told this stranger nothing.

A moment later the fluff-throated pride had passed and he was glancing back at the palace again. ...Maybe Calazeth had been asking what that was. Imp scrunched up his nose. "That's the Palace. I'm an artist, so I make paintings. This is meant to be a painting of that," he went on, pointing from one to the other, "except I don't think I can get the stupid lighting right."

Then he turned back to Calazeth, blinking. "Never seen you around before! New to Cepheus?" he asked, grinning.

"Poop on--no, what-" A blink (of all four eyes) and Imp laughed, as he realized. "It's just bad." Further clarification applied.

He flexed his wings, turning to regard the palace as Calazeth spoke further; his gaze snapped between canvas, building and then Calazeth again.

His expression, and tone, quickly grew incredulous. "Why paint it?! It's ART!" he cried, disbelieving. Then, more calmly, "Like-... you can interpret it differently, y'know? Stuff can look different at different times of day, different weathers-... Mood can change, y'know? Like, I was trying for..." and Imp gestured weakly at the canvas, and sighed. "...Forbidding. Never mind. It sucks, like I said. But you paint stuff to EXPRESS yourself!" Enthusiasm quickly replaced his brief forlorn moment. "And you can hang it on walls. The walls in there were white as fuck," he added, looking at Calazeth again. (Four eyes again blinked.) "So you hang art in there and it breaks it up a little. Or--I could show you paintings of OTHER caves and you could maybe see places you've never seen!"

"And good to meet you! 'Calazeth.' Cool name," Imp decided. "Palaces are for lots of shit. There's a theatre in there. And a good kitchen. A ballroom, with some music. Well-... one music." The singular record, novel as 'music' was, had become grating even to Imp, who had for cycles rejoiced in playing its single song on virtual repeat. Loud and repetitive and annoying was sort of his jam and even he was getting sick of it by now. "Good music, though, and the theatre's got some good shit. I mean-... I guess that's not what the palace is for?" He squinted off at the building. It... wasn't really something he'd considered. It just was. It was a building. With people, and food, and stuff. "Aethril mostly lives there. The Valkhand? She's the one who appointed me," he added, with a note again of pride. "And Isra--she owns Cepheus," he added, blithely wrong. "There's rooms for visitors and stuff. I could show you around inside, if you want? I need a break."

He started to cap his paints, because while he liked to show off, he just wasn't feeling it right now. Then he paused, squinting, and looked at Calazeth. "-Wanna try?" he asked, on a whim. The paints and brushes were still arranged, and as far as Imp was concerned, his painting was a total loss. Though there was a reluctance to let others touch "his" artistic stuff, at the same time that artist part of him wondered if another Gembound--maybe an amateur--doing a couple colorful splashes across the canvas might add just the life it needed.

"Three-tier?" Imp parroted, even as he moved amiably aside to let Calazeth have a go at the painting. It took him a minute to realize what the stranger had meant. He took up position behind him, and to one side, watching from a couple feet off over Calazeth's shoulder. And Imp showed no disapproval of the wild splashing of blue--maybe he didn't care, or maybe he was too caught up in what he began to say:

"OH! Theatre! -No! Oh shit, you gotta see it if you haven't! You can watch MOVIES. And shows! -Nest Nannies kinda sucks whenever Nemean's in it, because she's still a traitor but there's some good shit too. And you don't SEE music. You hear it! Like-... LALALALA," and he cleared his throat before breaking into proper song. He imitated the record that played in the ballroom: "Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy--but here's my number, so call me maybe! It's haaaard to look right, at you baby, but here's my number--so call me maybe!" He, of course, put WAY too much flourish into it, but he could apparently hold a tune, so there was that. Then he cleared his throat again.

"Kitchen's for food. So if you like to eat, that's where it's AT." Where -what- was at, he didn't clarify. Probably food. "Or the const-... Consh... Concession? Concession! Stand!" He coughed. "So you can do food AND a show. It's good. -So lemme know if you wanna see any of that."

He then fell silent, squinting at the blue splashes. Art was art, and he'd INVITED Calazeth to wreck it so it was hardly something he'd get annoyed about, but he had to admit it didn't help him figure out where to go next. Maybe black against the blue-? It'd look... abstract, like some kinda statement.

"Cool," he said at last, with a shrug. "It's fun, right? You could always come by and paint with me some time. Takes awhile to learn. This paint doesn't even wash off with water, you gotta use the weird stinky liquid to clean it." Oils were a pain. "So you mentioned Ursa? That where you live? You have any problems with the--what're they. Drones? The big white bug guys? -Don't you get cold?" Imp asked, peppering Calazeth with questions as he moved to cap his paints.

It took Imp a couple of minutes to pack everything neatly up, and then fold it back into the blanket kept in a little basket he used to carry everything. It wasn't a perfect system; he usually had to make multiple trips, especially for the easel. He left that, for now; the paints were more valuable anyway. It was a pain getting more.

"Good they don't bother you!" Imp answered cheerfully, oblivious to the possibility that Calazeth himself was a drone. It never occurred to him. "Still seems cold as shit, though." Deep wisdom imparted, he slapped the lid of the basket loosely closed and squinted up. "We can catch a show right now, if you want! Depends on what's playing," he added. "Nemean's one of the masters. She boiled another Master alive for awhile--Master Farina, the one who made me cool--but she's a traitor. She's free now. Might be around the palace somewhere," he added, sounding unconcerned. "Real tiny, buzzes her wings, pink and gold and really you can't miss her. Drinks a lot."

And, ah yes, the question of food was a good one--at least judging by the way Imp's face lit up. It wasn't just an absent stare, lost in the memory of feasts, though. He looked, if anything, suddenly excited to potentially share this food with a stranger. "Oh, you GOTTA try it. There's corn dogs, they're not real dogs though, which is good, because there's a dog in the Library, and that'd be weird, and there's cotton candy which is like spiderweb but sweet like berries and fuckin' delicious, and there's popcorn, which I guess is corn? -Nedies makes corn--but this stuff's poofy and dry but like, buttery and salty. It's really good. And in the kitchen you can get soups and roasts, and whole-ass cakes if you ask really nicely. -You ever had a cake-?" Imp asked.

He continued jabbering about food for a few moments, until at last he'd managed to flip the basket's handle upward, catching it in his jaws. Then he blinked four eyes at Calazeth and, words muffled by his grip, asked: "Wa'a 'ee a 'ow?" (Which translated, probably mostly understandably, as 'want to see a show?')