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 Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:21 pm
Dari turned toward the stairs. Maia had never even been in the basement as far as he knew, so how did she know he was down there? It was only dimly-lit... huh. Well, whatever.
"One moment, please." He gave a few finishing flourishes, looked the painting over, and called over his shoulder, "Alright, come down."
The basement was Dari's workspace. He had all sorts of paintings for entirely abstract to strikingly realistic, some of earth, some of his home planet, some of nothing at all, all stacked against the walls. A dehumidifier hummed in one corner.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:30 pm
Maia waited, then came down when invited. She looked around. "I thought I might find you here," she said. She'd looked in the living room. Painting? Dari painted? Her eyes landed on the painting he'd been working on.
"Oh wow. You're really talented!" She admired it, then turned to look at Dari. "You're a brilliant artist."
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:33 pm
"Thank you," Dari said with a little smile, "I painted this one for you--" He looked at it. "Well. Of you." It was a small canvas with a familiar blonde, freckled selkie on a familiar beach on a familiar rock, draped in but not wearing an over-large seal pelt, something like a nautical pinup save the sexual charge. Dari didn't see sex. He just saw beauty in a friend.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:37 pm
She studied the painting again, and smiled at him. "You catch every detail," she said. "How long have you been painting?" He was just as much a master in painting as Toby was with cooking.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:41 pm
"A few years," Dari said. "I had to master my limbs before I could start putting things to... well it's fabric, not paper." He looked around the room. "You can look through if you'd like."
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:46 pm
Maia looked to the paintings, back to Dari, and went closer to them. She looked through them. "How old are you, Dari?" she'd never asked. "When's your birthday? I could make you a cake."
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:49 pm
"Technically my birth date is the night of the crash, so Toby and I decided it should be in early March instead, when I was finally fully-formed." Dari hooked his feet into the rungs of the stool he was sitting on and watch Maia go through.
"So that would make me six. I believe it'd be seven and then some if we went from scraping to now, but I'm not certain."
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:53 pm
"I like that better too," The night of the crash had to be a hard birthday, Dari'd lost everything--but that had been the day he'd been born. She looked to him at his age, her eyebrows raising in surprise. "You're mature for your age," she observed. But then, Toby was immature for his. Age didn't really matter when you were immortal.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:55 pm
"Age isn't as big a factor with my people as it is with yours, or any others perhaps. It's all in whether you have the right components. You can create a wholly formed being or a little baby blob." He shrugged.
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:44 am
Maia reached for Dari's hand. "Age doesn't matter much with us, either. After a certain point, anyway." She looked around again. "These are all beautiful, Dari," She said. Had Toby seen them? He'd never mentioned their best friend was a talented artist.
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:47 am
"Of course it does. You can just put a little fleshling on a platter and expect it to survive. At a certain point, I'll agree." He laughed a little. Undoubtedly 'fleshling' was Toby's word.
"Thank you."
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:08 am
Fleshling sounded like something Toby would say. They really were like twins, weren't they? "Your stuff could be in a museum, it's so good." It was! He paid so much attention to detail.
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:10 am
"Really, you think so?" Dari asked. He might have made a go at selling them if he wasn't such an odd-looking sort. Of course some of them were far too personal to share, but there were some he could part with. Not this one, no.
"You can have this one, if you'd like. Once it dries."
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:17 am
"I do," Maia looked up from the painting she was admiring. "You're really talented. Have you shown anyone else these?"
He was offering her the painting he'd done? "Really?" She hugged him. "Thank you!"
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:25 am
"Not really. Not unless someone we know shows an interest in art or asks about my hobbies." Of course Luca had asked, but it'd never gone far enough to show him any paintings. Luca seemed more the book type.
He laughed at the hug. "Of course. You're welcome."
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