I was challenged by @glitter-goblins to write and post something in an evening, no matter how short and rough, so. Blame them for this.
~
Despite how old and well-loved his Canvas is, there’s still more than enough room to create new sceneries to those who know how. He may not be as skilled a Painter as his father or mother, but it’s still child’s play to nudge aside old artworks and carve out a place for something new. It’s his Canvas after all.
Granted, this new place won’t just be for him.
(He’d argued with Maman today. An old, well-trodden argument; turned bitter and sharp by stress wearing at them both.)
He starts with the centerpiece, of course. A giant tree, bigger than any building. He sketches it up tall, then frowns and reshapes it outward, limbs spreading wide like a pair of skeletal wings.
(He loved Maman with all his heart, truly. But for all of their shared passion for music, Painting would always be first for her. She would never understand why any would choose to prioritize a ‘lesser’ art form; much less one incapable of creation.)
He brushes viridian leaves across the branches, but frowns. Maman loves the verdant greens of her garden, but he cannot make it look right. He tries golden-yellow, vivid red, even the bright white of her Chroma. None of them satisfy him.
(He sees the rift forming between her and Alicia, day by day. He loves his sister’s prose, but is acutely aware of the tensions rising in Paris, tensions she seems willfully blind to. But he can hardly push her to Paint - not when he himself often struggles to find any passion in it.)
(He can lie about many things, but not this.)
In a fit of melancholy, he Paints them blue. Blue is how he so often feels these days - that, at least, they share in common. To set the leaves apart from the sky, he lights each one aglow with a vivid, fiery light, until the whole tree is ablaze with a frigid corona.
(He’d been frustrated, struggling with a composition. Maman had offered a seemingly innocuous suggestion: take Alicia and Paint together. He’d snapped. The conversation had turned heated.)
He spreads the blues out and down, sprouting foliage that glows with the same ethereal light around the behemoth’s roots. As he works outward, he lets the colors fade into warm, earthen tones of green grass and trees, letting his mother’s preferred colors wrap around his own fantastical ones.
(Emotions ran deep and wide in their family. Caught up in anger, he’d said things he regretted. They both had.)
Judging it complete, he settles down at its base. Conjuring a piano is almost as easy as breathing by now; he knows the keys almost as well as he knows the backs of his own hands. Better, in some ways.
He doesn’t play any piece he knows. Rather, he paints his emotions in music. His anger and frustration crash against each other in painful dissonances, then fade into soft, harmonious chords. Sadness. Regret.
Love.
He senses her arrival before she materializes behind him. She is a skilled Paintress, the most skilled in all of Paris, but this is still his Canvas. He lets the music fade and waits.
Silence hangs between them, heavy and painful. Verso is good at weaving lies when he needs to, but when it comes to expressing genuine feelings? He struggles just as much as he knows she does (loathe as she is to admit it).
Aline is the one to finally break the silence. “A masterpiece, Verso. One of your finest works.”
His mouth twitches. “I thought you might enjoy such a piece.”
He can hear a hint of amusement in her voice. “I thought you had outgrown the idea of bribing me.”
“Au contraire, Maman. A peace offering, not a bribe.”
“Verso-“
“I’m not giving up Painting, Maman.” He keeps his voice steady and even as he speaks. “And I’m not asking you to understand, either. But music speaks to me in the same way that Painting does to you. I’ll not be dissuaded from it.”
A long sigh, then Aline steps up and sits down onto the bench next to him. “I would never ask you to give up music.” She murmurs, “Never. Not in a hundred years.”
“But you would prefer that I turn more time away from it and towards Painting.”
“I…” She sighs again. “Perhaps.”
“Maman.”
Gently, she reaches out and runs her fingers across the keys. “I spoke… sharply.” She admits, “And perhaps… I let emotion rule my tongue.”
He slides his own hand over and grasps hers. “I as well. I… I regret much of what I said.”
Somehow, nothing more needs to be said. When he releases her and lowers his hands to the piano again, she joins him. It’s a well-practiced duet, one that both of them know by heart.
The beautiful, inexplicably beautiful month of March is slow and unhurried, where you can consistently observe every new change in nature. A half-asleep month, an indefinite month, a month of struggle, beauty and darkness with cold at the same time
