The days pass quickly here, something both pleasant and dreadful. I do not relish the prospect of my return, as you know The day begins simply, then piously, and then simply but difficultly. Is that a word? Perhaps I need a Muse of Writing (I am joking, Mother). Spending hours in the process of painting is an unbridled joy, and I barely even notice the temporary pain in my thumb anymore. I am working on several paintings for the expo, to fund the All Saviors’ Day feast…
Those cliffs are terrifying. I don’t know how anyone goes down them carrying two buckets of water. Vaterin was pondering this as she veritably dashed through the catacombs, into the shafts of the old tourmaline mine. It is a quiet place. The dead keep their secrets, but they make no effort to pry into mine. Do I have secrets, or is listening to sermons twice daily turning me into an armchair philosopher. Oh, One God, Mother and Father would die if I came back ready to take holy orders and meditate upon the divine the rest of my life. Let’s not do that.
Her legs and arms burned, the buckets were heavy and couldn’t be jogged by her fast clip through the tunnels. After the watering would be weeding, though how weeds thrived when even the intentionally cultivated crops struggled in the sandy, salt-drowned soil was anyone’s guess. The College would spend less on paint if we didn’t paint the College itself every dry day that came. I wonder why we never paint the Chapel of Ariel. It never seems to need it, it doesn’t even have streaking despite being some-odd hundred years old… or more.
During individual prayer time, Vaterin felt no guilt at slipping away and cutting into her time of actual prayer for the quality and depth of her prayers, in order to go and pray among the dead of the catacombs. Mock philosophy aside, it is a quiet place. The ocean roars through the tunnels in a constant din, so much more peaceful than the creaking and breathing of praying in the dorms, or the high-pitched surf you hear in the Chapel. Not that the Chapel isn’t an intensely holy place, but it is noisy. With the catacombs it’s almost like… a distant roar. The echoes make it so that it doesn’t come and go with my breath but just suffuse me, until I’m praying and speaking with the One God and I almost imagine He is talking back in the noise… there I go being philosophical again. Like as not it’s the dragon of the isle roaring into the waves. What interest does the One God have in a striving—that’s heresy. Or blasphemy. I always get them mixed up. I really, really should not become a theologian. He cares about me because I am His child and if He really wanted to kick me from his shoes He would not have blessed me that I might portray Creation on canvas.
Eugh. Felspar Clay. He’s so convinced that his art is superior because it’s in three dimensions. I looked up “dimension” in the book that Marble found for me from the library. It seems like he’s missing the word “perspective.” We can portray three dimensions on canvas, just as well as he can. He’s certainly not portraying time with his sculpture. I don’t even know what that would look like! He says that his works are inspired by the “Paxite calculus.” It wasn’t in the book, so I don’t think it’s even a real art term. I went through the entire glossary, just in case it was somewhere weird like “sculpture, calculus” or whatever.
But that’s okay. He doesn’t talk to us much—us. Me and Marble. She’s a good friend. She still stands up for Writing Slate when Brother Pitch gets on their case, even though at this point she loses an hour of her evening copying over scripture. But yeah, Felspar’s work takes a lot longer to finish, so he spends most of his time working on it instead of harassing everyone else. He’s the only one working in clay, I wonder how Brother Pitch acquired the breadth of knowledge necessary to instruct everyone. Maybe that’s why he gets on Writing’s case so much. Maybe charcoal is just not something he knows much about so he gets defensive. Who knows.
But “us.” Me and Marble. As long as we don’t talk too late, nobody seems to mind us spending the evening with her painting by candlelight and me sketching her. I think I’m almost ready to make an attempt at painting her. Tomorrow. I remember talking last night…
“What made you want to try and paint entirely of and by candlelight?”
Marble shrugged with the shoulder holding her palette. “I wanted to challenge myself. I read a book” when does she find time to read books with all that they keep us busy with? “that talked about a man who retreated from the world and lived by night. He talked about the unique characteristics of night lights and it piqued my interest.”
“What does it look like in the daylight? I mean, how do you know you’re not using green for that brass of the Virtue statue?” When I paint you, I think I should paint you as you look in the dark. That almost sounds like one of those old Incarnate riddles. “What do you look like in the dark?”
Marble’s nose wrinkled in humor. I can read her expressions even in the dark. “I look like a more comfortable version of myself,” I guess. I doubt an Incarnate teacher would accept that. “You know, I don’t actually know. I’ve avoided looking at my canvas or my subject in the daylight. I’m thinking of asking that the College set up a special viewing room for this canvas.” She laughed softly. “Perhaps a Lord of the sort from that book will decide to purchase it, as it will fit with the aesthetic of her home.”
A storm came that night, and Vaterin tossed and turned in her little bunk. I’m not used to coastal noise. The weather was pacific in the sphere I grew up in, and Mother would always help me sleep when we traveled to check on the family investments… they do care about me. They just think that I should take over the family business, and I just… don’t want to. They should do like Marble’s parents and make another heir. Hah. She blushed, I think, when she told me they’d said that. Hard to tell with how dark her skin is.
“Vaterin. Vaterin!” Marble hissed from her bedside. Vaterin nearly tumbled out of her bunk—she hadn’t heard Marble approach.
“Marble, it’s the middle of the night! What?”
“Move over.”
“What?”
“Move over and whisper before someone else wakes up!”
Vaterin found scooting over easy enough, as she was already halfway out of her bunk with startlement. Abruptly, the slight form of Marble was curled up, facing Vaterin, hunkered against her. Vaterin didn’t realize Marble was wrapping the blankets around herself until she felt a draft at her back. “Marble, you’re stealing the blankets. What is it? Did you have a nightmare?” I’ve had a few myself. Mostly about ciphering or shipwrecks, but I’ve had them. It’s something to be away from home. But she’s been here a while…Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“It’s the storm.”
“The storm?”
“It stormed like this the night that the dragon flooded the family mines.” You would have found out about that days later. Why are you reacting like the storm is out to get you personally? Why do I meditate amongst the dead? Why am I so opposed to marrying the woman my parents picked for me? Why does Brother Pitch act like such a cuss. Now is not the time for questions.
Vaterin made sure the blanket was tucked in around Marble, and then put her arm over her. “It’s okay. It’s just a storm. We’re high up on a plateau. It can’t get us.” Marble moaned her discontent. “Do you want to go to the Chapel? We’ll say we were struck with the urge to pray, and then fell asleep like the Savior’s companions. They won’t punish piety. And that building has survived more storms than this one?” Vaterin realized she was beginning to babble, disarmed by Marble’s apparent panic. “Marble, it’s going to be okay.”
“Ohh… Vaterin, it’ll flood the tidal mill, it’ll flood… oh, Powers preserve us, the crops, Vaterin!” She’s worried about the crops? Or the mines? Or the memories?
“Surely they’ve weathered storms like this before. I’ve seen the fields, I’ve worked them, everything is well above the high tide marker.”
“But Vaterin, can’t you hear the rain? And the wind? When there’s this much wind, the waves get so tall! They can wash away entire cliffs!” And with that I’m feeling much the same way I felt when I dreamed about the boat I was on sinking. I doubt we’re going to get hundred-foot waves, but holy sarx is the concept unsettling. Breathe. One person up the crazy tree at a time. Breathe.
“The waves will not wash away the College. If it washes away the crops and the mill, they’ll rebuild. We’ll rebuild.” Logic is not helping. Logic never does help, when fear is talking. “Pray with me, Marble. The prayer of a righteous person has power. We’re two people.” Vaterin felt Marble nod in the dark. “Heavenly Father—”
“Heavenly Father,” Marble echoed.
Vaterin took a breath and began to recite a sailors’ prayer, modified for the occasion. ”Supreme over Your host of angels, by the Virtue of Barachia, by the Power of Therein, preserve Tourmaline Isle in the face of Your storm, over which You have Supreme,” hah. The Supreme Father has supreme authority. I just got that. Wondered why it was capitalized in the travel book, “authority. Let us not be as seeds in the breeze, but as chicks beneath your wings in the face of nature’s fury. Amen.”
“Amen,” Marble echoed, finally. “Thank you, Vaterin. I’ll go back to my bunk now. You’re a good friend.”
Feeling the warm spot in the bed that Marble had left behind, Vaterin thought to herself, a friend? Am I a friend? Or is there something else growing here? One more sorrow to count should I have to return to the family business, the family marital ties? Or am I holding on to the first person to come along and validate my desire to be a painter? She’s everything I aspire to be. She paints landscapes that are beautiful and accurate, evocative in a way I can’t manage even with my portraits. She’s at home on this little island, content to remain until she receives patronage, while I have only one season. But when we talk, I feel heard. And I think she feels that way too. Vaterin didn’t sleep much that night, and she felt like she could only partially blame the storm after all.
The next morning, at breakfast, Marble murmured to Vaterin, “Thank you. Gramma used to say a similar prayer for me, after I came to associate storms with my family’s financial straits. I haven’t slept that soundly during a storm since she passed.”
Well what do I say to that? What can I say? “I’m glad I was able to help?” That’s such a paltry statement in the face of the comfort she’s ascribing to me. “It’s from a sailors’ prayer. Did your grandmother sail?”
Marble’s face scrunched up thoughtfully. “You know, I don’t know. I imagine she went on ships, at least. With the coast adjacent, and her penchant for managing things, I can’t imagine she didn’t.”
The bell tolled for services, and after services was the daily hauling of spring water down to the crops. Vaterin stumbled off the dock, feeling like she had been punched in the gut, as she gazed upon the desolation before here. “Suffering Savior!”
“So glad you could join us, Lime,” the supervising Sister said. “You can set those buckets down. As you can see,” she indicated the storm-tossed acres of crops, “they’re not going to be needed.”
Vaterin set her buckets down numbly and walked over to Marble.
“At least it didn’t wash away the cliffs,” Marble said with a half-laugh.
“There have to have been storms before. They’ll manage somehow.”
“Oh, Vaterin, the water dragon! We’ve always paid tribute to Tourmaline to get her to keep the storms off our crops! Something must have—Sister! Sister Shale!” Marble flagged down the Sister supervising their chores. “Did something happen?! Did something anger the dragon of Tourmaline Isle?”
The Sister, herself looking stunned, turned to Marble and shrugged. “I wouldn’t be privy to such things. Ask Father Sauer, or the Mother. Or find out with the next sermon. I’m sure they’ll have—I’m sure they’ll have a solution by then.”
It was with heavy heart that they went to the live study hall. Vaterin and Marble had long since contrived to sit next to each other, and Vaterin recalled her optimistic hope of painting Marble today. She still had the same focus and poise as she painted, but everyone in the room seemed shaken by the failure of the crops. No formal announcement had been made as to what would be done, but when the entire student body was responsible for tending the crops, the disaster could hardly be kept from them.
Nothing for it but to bear it. Wait, that’s not the idiom. Nothing to it but to do it? That’s not applicable. And I’m dithering. I may as well try to paint Marble. Maybe it will make her smile. Sarx, maybe it will make me smile. After I consoled her that the storm wouldn’t get us. She said the dragon protects the crops from the storms, is this a second instance of draconic pique ruining something in her life? Vaterin put her splayed fingers over her heart in the God-Star and prayed, One God, please let there be some explanation for this that doesn’t paint the defenders of humanity, the founders of the Wholist Church, in the fickle light of one who would idly break a compact with the One God’s people. I have to believe in the providence of dragons. So much is founded upon it.
With a quick invocation of her angel which frankly surprised her with its success, so much did she rush through it, Vaterin started drawing with charcoal from her sketchbook, marking her canvas with outlines to fill with paint, ignoring Brother Pitch’s tiresome heckling of all things charcoal. I need the outlines, this time. The shadows, the light, both of them could so easily become a mess. And if I want to make Marble smile, this needs to be good. As she worked, Vaterin gradually found that she was relaxing. She set her palette down briefly to make the God-Star once more. Thank you for your Peace, Lord. May this work out for our good and your glory.