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 Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 7:23 am
Wisp started behind her friend; she took the stairs two at a time, which was perilous to say the least. Her curly hair was bobbing. The gears intermeshed together in a daunting way; being inside a huge mechanism was a weird feeling, vaguely claustrophobic. "I guess there's no bellringer," she said, "maybe the ropes are, like, pulled by a lever or something? I mean it all looks ro-bot-ic!"
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 7:51 am
"I think we should still look," replied Ophelia. "Maybe there's someone at the top?" There was a bit of a scared shake in her voice, but inwardly she was trying not to be thrilled. If this world had an inhabitant, then it was proof that her powers were growing. You had to reach a certain caliber as a world painter before you could paint worlds that had actual people living on them. (Returning to Gaia being another story entirely.)
Her shoes clanked against the stairs as she climbed. This was so... so intricate! She'd never managed a world like this before! These clockwork parts, the way they all fit together - it was so perfectly crafted. There had to be someone here.
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 7:49 pm
It was intricate. The first thing that wanted to bust out of Wisp's mouth was this is a little creepy, but thought better of it -- it was Ophelia's painted world, and it would've been unduly mean to call it creepy. "It's kind of quiet," she said, her own voice piercing the muffling silence. "Maybe we should call out first, like, if there's someone -- hell-ooo-ooo-ooo," she called out. "Hiiiiya."
Her voice drifted down the staircase.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 6:43 am
It might have just been the wind or the echo, but it certainly sounded like there was a reply.
Ophelia quickened her pace up the stairs. She usually had a pretty good sense of whether something was good or not, and she wasn't getting any feelings of danger yet. After rounding a final corner, a door loomed in front of them. It was cracked open.
Ophelia looked over at Wisp, knocked once, and pushed it open. "Hello?" she called. She stepped through into the next room. The clockwork continued here, clicking and spinning. But there were also signs of habitation - a few wrappers from different food products strewn about, a stack of paper covered in scribbles in a language she didn't recognize.
"Hello?" she called again. There was movement off in the far corner, not the same kind as the clockwork. She looked closer. It was-
-It was a man. The darkest and tallest man she had ever seen, unfolding himself from a crouch in the corner. As he moved forward, light fell across his face and it seemed to Ophelia that he was relieved.
"Where did you come from?" he asked. She tried to place his accent. It sounded a bit British, but then again she had no basis to recognize Australian other than from Steve Irwin, and he didn't sound like Steve Irwin.
She looked at Wisp, and then back to the man.
"From Tidewater," she said.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 6:40 pm
'Tidewater'? Wisp didn't quite understand; she had opened her mouth to say, from Gaia, only Phelly had gotten it in first. She'd looked at the man with a Clear Superhero Gaze, to try to see whether or not he was threatening, but he didn't seem to be. Just Australian. Which probably wasn't the same thing, after all, but she rested her hand on Ophelia's shoulder just to show the guy that she was her friend.
"Are you the bellringer, mister?" she said. The ticking and spinning was awfully loud. "Are you the only one here? Mondo lonely."
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:00 pm
The man shook his head. "No," he said. "The bells ring on their own. I'm simply a lost traveller." His brow furrowed. "Tidewater?" he asked. "I know that world. Are you girls..." he trailed off.
"Are you students of Prosper's?" he asked.
"I am," nodded Ophelia, and looked back at Wisp. "She isn't. She's just a friend." Knowing that this man knew her father and that he knew their world made her feel a bit relieved. That meant that he was also a world painter. He couldn't be bad if he knew Prosper.
"Did you paint your way here?" he asked.
She nodded again.
"Is it still wet?" he asked. Ophelia thought for a moment.
"It might be," she said, "But we've been here a while."
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:06 pm
"Man, I love this crazy world painting thing you have here," Wisp told Ophelia affectionately, inutterably off-topic. "It's like, swish! bam! and I'm like, whoa!. If I hadn't been the crazy heir to the Rainbow of Light I definitely would have wanted to be a world painter only I mainly would've like wanted to go to worlds where unicorns are all neon colours and stuff, like, Unicorn Planet."
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:30 pm
Both painters regarded Wisp strangely for a moment. Finally, the man said, in hushed tones, "I've been stuck here a few months now. There's no paint in the city. I've looked."
Ophelia thought for a moment.
"I have watercolors and some paper in my backpack," she said. "Do you have any water?"
The man nodded and retreated back into the clockwork of the room. She studied him for a moment. His clothes were travel-worn, but they were modern - ripped jeans and a traveling cloak. How, she wondered, did he know her father?
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:36 pm
"Wow," said Wisp, impressed. "You're totally rescuing a shipwreck -- well, not a shipwreck, but like, same thing almost just with world painting. Imagine being here for months. What did you eat, mister?!"
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 2:18 pm
"Canned rations," said the man, returning with a bottle of water. "They're nasty, but nutritious. The city's full of them." He twisted the lid off the bottle and took a swig from it before setting it down. "No paints, though," he sighed.
Ophelia set down her backpack and took out a plastic case of watercolor paints, a thick pad of paper, and a box of brushes.
"You're a resourceful girl," laughed the man. He selected a brush, dipped it into the yellow paint, and then it was like watching magic. He was so fast! Within minutes, a grassland was taking shape. Ophelia glanced over at Wisp and smiled.
This was a master at work.
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:21 pm
Her friend had obviously much the same appreciation: she took in each stroke with hungry eyes, obviously watching it all take place, trying to see each lightning-quick stroke. Her eyes were shining with excitement, and she nudged Ophelia with her elbow, both of them sharing in it; he really was a master at work.
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 4:32 pm
Flat-topped mountains in the distance took shape next, and then came the sky, a dusky purple color. Somehow he even made stars in it.
This was a world painter possibly even more accomplished than her father, thought Ophelia. A master could work quickly and clearly with any medium. Prosper was fast, but he wasn't this fast. It had only been ten or fifteen minutes when the dark man leaned in close to the glistening paper and spoke to it.
"Dreaming," he said. The image warped and then sharpened. She could see the individual blades of grass waving in the breeze.
He seemed like he was about to leave, so Ophelia spoke up, breaking the quiet calm that had settled on them. "What's your name?" she asked. "How do you know my father?"
The man smiled at her. "Joshua Baobab," he said. "We studied together." He held a hand out over the portal and nodded to it. "I'm forever indebted to you, but I really must be going," he said, and pressed his palm to the picture. In a flash, he was gone.
Ophelia sat down and dug through her backpack again, pulling out another sheet of paper.
"We ought to get going, too," she said to Wisp. "I think my dad might get home soon."
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 7:42 pm
Her friend seemed to agree; she walked around the room a few times, looking at things, arms folded tightly across her chest. She seemed to be thinking deeply; she kept looking at the picture of Dreaming until the photo-real effect wore off and it was simply a beautiful, portal-free painting, with the paint quickly drying. She never could have done anything like that, and she worked for speed too -- but she was a graffiti artist, and her art was for messages.
"This has felt really special somehow," she said meditatively.
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Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:00 pm
Ophelia nodded thoughtfully as she dipped the brush into the opened bottle and then into the brown paint. "It did," she agreed, working in long brushstrokes to create the walls of the study. "Like we were meant to come here and help him."
She hummed the theme from Harry Potter and painted the walls a while longer before moving on to the beach outside the windows. "I'm glad we came here, Wisp," she said. "I'm glad you came with me and I'm glad we went up the clock-tower together."
After watching Joshua paint at such lightning speed, her efforts seemed like a snail's pace. It was at least a half an hour later when she finally declared, "Tidewater," to the painting. It rippled and sharpened into a window into the study. She began to put away her paints, put the cap back on the water bottle and tucked it into her backpack beside them. She looked at the now-dry picture of Dreaming and decided to take that, too, just to prove this had really happened. And maybe so she could go there someday.
When Wisp walked past again, she reached up and took her friend by the wrist.
"Let's go!"
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Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 8:48 pm
Hand-in-hand, both girls reached out and touched their palms to the painting: there was hardly any time to admire it before -- in much the same flash of light that Joshua had left in -- they were back in the place that was apparently Tidewater, out in the studio where Prosper and Ophelia painted, none the worse the wear for their short adventure. In fact, Wisp crowed like a rooster, jogging on the spot in excitement, and -- unusually -- made little prismatic lights of two colours, green and yellow, a halo of short-lived sparkles.
"That was fantastic!"
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