something happened, esquie tells him. near the red woods.
nevrons? verso asks, laying back on the shoreline.
and esquie shakes his head. no, mon ami. something else.
esquie continues: i don't know who they are. it wasn't renoir or aline or clea. not even alicia.
and that was all it took. because to reach the canvas would require reaching into the dessendre estate. which means something is happening outside—out where the real renoir and aline sit at the canvas, maybe even side by side, both battling in the depths of the canvas while outside, their bodies are immobile.
so they fly. leaving verso on one side of the gestral vlilage, crossing through it and ignoring the gestral who always tries to pull him into buying hair dye. walks faster. not sprinting, not enough for attention, but purposeful. out of the gestral village, into the expanse of green, and then further still, to where the leaves turn back to scarlet. verso doesn't approach with weapons in his hand. but it doesn't matter. he could summon them to his hands in a second, chroma-made, the same as the piano he plays less and less.
on approach: verso doesn't know this person. there's no expedition uniform, so it's no stray member of the last expedition. this is someone else.
and that's terrifying. the only people who have ever been in this canvas are his other self, and his family. and who else could enter the canvas except those who can make them? people who don't care what they do to this world. the fractured world around them is evidence of it.
"you." verso's voice cuts through the quiet. in the distance are a few nevrons. not close enough to interfere. stopping a few feet away. hands loose at his sides. "who are you? you're no nevron. and you're not an expeditioner. are you—"
calm. calm, despite it all. "are you another fucking painter?"
