Post by Nina on Dec 24, 2023 12:33:36 GMT -5
Was it because she talked too much, that the newcomer teased about biting off her tongue? Nina kept a smile on her face. Idioms from different cultures could be disconcerting at first, but she just needed to take it easy. And Qori had asked her about her painting! Nina's eyes lit up.
“Wait here.” She said.
The girl was almost running as she returned with an unfinished woven basket, and knelt besides it. The contents rattled unsettlingly. She handed Qori a painting, holding it gently by its edges. She'd kept some of her recent creations in the garden to dry, she explained. The log pile, she added pointedly (which existed, she did not add), made a decent improvised set of shelves.
(On the way back, Nina had grown suspicious, that Qori's effusive enthusiasm was meant to imply doubt about one's chances of survival in the new world with such an impractical calling)
The first painting was of the sea, as seen from the cliff. The sky looked as delicate as an eggshell, and faded to the side into the unfinished white of the paper; the sunrise was a spilled yolk. In the foreground, a branch of one of the trees they had seen was scattering red petals. In the background, the glass roof of the tower had caught one ray of sunlight, like a lighthouse. It was a moment of time, pinned to paper. Or rather, two – as the stiffness of the paper would reveal, the back held an older creation. A tree, with dappled light raining through its leaves, and a tiny Nina for scale, her blue-clothed figure, bent over her sketch, barely reaching the tree's roots.
The other paintings were smaller, shapeless and/or arguably not paintings at all. Strips of bark, carrying long landscapes that one unwound like scrolls. One captured a vertical section of the cliff they had just climbed, with its twisted, hardy trees. There were wave-smoothened rocks sprouting painted flowers, and butterflies which seemed about to take flight from the inside of shells. There were pieces of fired clay, and plaster, and wood, and some did not seem so much like paintings as splatters of colour.
“Oh, sorry.” Nina chuckled, rubbing the back of her neck. “I've just been experimenting with pigments and bases, oh, and mordants, of course, and-” She stopped herself. “Ignore those.”
“Wait here.” She said.
The girl was almost running as she returned with an unfinished woven basket, and knelt besides it. The contents rattled unsettlingly. She handed Qori a painting, holding it gently by its edges. She'd kept some of her recent creations in the garden to dry, she explained. The log pile, she added pointedly (which existed, she did not add), made a decent improvised set of shelves.
(On the way back, Nina had grown suspicious, that Qori's effusive enthusiasm was meant to imply doubt about one's chances of survival in the new world with such an impractical calling)
The first painting was of the sea, as seen from the cliff. The sky looked as delicate as an eggshell, and faded to the side into the unfinished white of the paper; the sunrise was a spilled yolk. In the foreground, a branch of one of the trees they had seen was scattering red petals. In the background, the glass roof of the tower had caught one ray of sunlight, like a lighthouse. It was a moment of time, pinned to paper. Or rather, two – as the stiffness of the paper would reveal, the back held an older creation. A tree, with dappled light raining through its leaves, and a tiny Nina for scale, her blue-clothed figure, bent over her sketch, barely reaching the tree's roots.
The other paintings were smaller, shapeless and/or arguably not paintings at all. Strips of bark, carrying long landscapes that one unwound like scrolls. One captured a vertical section of the cliff they had just climbed, with its twisted, hardy trees. There were wave-smoothened rocks sprouting painted flowers, and butterflies which seemed about to take flight from the inside of shells. There were pieces of fired clay, and plaster, and wood, and some did not seem so much like paintings as splatters of colour.
“Oh, sorry.” Nina chuckled, rubbing the back of her neck. “I've just been experimenting with pigments and bases, oh, and mordants, of course, and-” She stopped herself. “Ignore those.”
