Painters

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Scene Title Painters
Synopsis And in her heart she knew something was wrong. She went running through the orchard, screaming, "No, God! Don't take him from me." And by the time she got there, she feared he already had gone… She got to where he lay, watercolour roses in his hands for her. She threw them down, screaming, "Damn you, man! Don't leave me! With nothing left behind but these cold paintings, these cold portraits to remind me."
Date January 15, 2009

Eagle Electric

Perfection is not an…


It's quiet beyond the doors of the lab now, and against better judgment, Odessa Knutson makes her way into the remains of the throne room once occupied by Kazimir Volken.

The rain patters loudly on the roof and drops heavy droplets onto golden hair through a broken skylight. Odessa looks up, letting rain pelt against her forehead for a moment as she registers the broken glass scattered about, now carefully avoided by black heels. The quest leaves her shortsighted in the darkness of the warehouse, even left without illumination from a moon too shrouded by dismal clouds.

So much dust.

And ash.

Odessa looks about herself slowly at a floor in need of sweeping. And mopping, if the wet sound of her next footsteps indicate anything.

Two vague shapes and a dark puddle.

The doctor kneels by the first, no stranger to death and decay, and gently turns the body enough to discern the sunken features of a man she can't quite recognise as Kazimir Volken. Recognition only takes hold because it's the only thing that makes sense. She rises.

A second shape and the pool gets thicker. But the rain doesn't seem to be leaking in from above any more so than in any other portion of the warehouse. Perhaps a low spot in the floor.

Shock registers a boot and a tattered pant leg left with too much substance to be anything other than a severed limb. What happened? A bolt of lightning followed swiftly by a startling crash of thunder and Odessa registers the puddle she stands in for what it is.

Blood.

Oozing life staining shoes, now the signifier of death. Odessa approaches the body. Her first thought is Elias, who visited her earlier and shared with her his plans for mutiny. Had he been caught? In her heart, she knows it is not de Luca.

The style of dress is too familiar. It begins an ache in her chest, like a fist squeezing around her heart. Upward, she turns her head to face the sky and the rain falling as thick as black oil.

Because she cannot bring herself to look down.

“No, God,” she whispers to an entity she's never put much stock or faith in, “don't take him from me.” Only a cruel being would do such a thing.

Slow breaths, deep and calming. Odessa sinks to a crouch, careful now not to trail the hem of her heather grey dress in the slick crimson. She examines the corpse, feelings of dread welling within her. There's no face left to study – to identify. Caved in. Gone. She's seen worse. There's bits of skull and tissue. It reminds her of Chinatown. Thick black hair matted by blood and brains and meatier things. That's what happened here, isn't it?

But it can't be what she's thinking. She refuses to believe it. There's no proof. Not him. It can't be him. It could be anybody.

Some paint. Wu-Long would break shit. Odessa would adroitly stitch back together in an attempt to mend the things that were broken. Artists in their own rights.

Ever since she was a young girl, the need to know would never leave Odessa be. And so, with great care, Doctor Knutson peels away torn bits of cloth. What's left of the corpse's shirt.

A second flash of lightning brings life to horror. Tattoos. Beautiful and unmistakable as the man whose skin they adorn.

Odessa falls to her knees, blood splashing dully around her, seeping through the fabric of her skirt and tinging her knees. Her breath hitches, half a gasp only escaping her lips. Five seconds pass before the mournful wail befitting of a banshee – or perhaps of Wu-Long himself were to be the one giving the attribute name, a siren, both lovely and terrible – finds its way from the painful and aching knot in her stomach, through lungs choking on fear and anguish, and past a broken heart to the world that wronged her. Over and over again she screams at the sky and the may-as-well-be prison surrounding her.

The cacophony echoes off the walls long after she's finished. And for once, Odessa doesn't see the need to manipulate the flow of time to mask her pain.


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January 15th: By the Sword
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January 15th: Almost Got'im
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