[Flashback] Salvation Waits at the Ocean Shore

[Chaelnomyl]

Season of Winter, Day 80, 487 AV
Three days after Chaelnomyl's 14th Birthday.
Origin and significance of the paintbrush she carries.

It was a few days past Chaelnomyl’s fourteenth birthday, the cold of the night pushing through her fur as she sat on the shoreline of Akvatar and stared out towards the moon in the sky. The sand was digging into the space between the fur in her spotted tail as she lay stretched out on the beach, supported only by her elbows. The roll of the ocean as it crashed against the shoreline was the only sound: Abura’s activity, what little there was, could be found high in the sky. The only relatively accessible thing that anyone would have been interested at down there was the chair lift, and given the frigid temperatures the island was capable of at night… She doubted they’d be getting many non Akvatari visitors that time of year.

It was always so quiet around her birthday… None of the odd traders really seemed to come to visit, and the Akvatari were always left to their own devices. Her mother had given her a new set of painting tools three days prior as a present, namely because Chaelnomyl’s ability to manipulate colors into something pleasing really seemed to pique her interest. She was thankful – as thankful as someone named for their depressive state could have been. Her mother understood her as well as anyone could have, though… And so in thanks, Chaelnomyl had thought to paint something to give to her mother as décor for their home. It was nearing the time when she would leave and the Akvatari’s mind had turned towards life beyond the shores of Akvatar, to the lands the traders came from, or went to at length. Even now, she sat on the westernmost side of the island, looking out across the expanse of water to where they would come from.

A canvas was sitting before her in the sand and the set of paints were laid out on a blanket next to her – to avoid the invasion of sand particles, of course. The first step of any painting, as she had been taught so feverishly in class as a young pup, was to study the scene and see it for the basic shapes it truly was.

Holding her paintbrush up at arm’s length in front of her, Chaelnomyl tried to level out the lines and divide the scene she saw into pieces so that her attention would be better focused.

[Chaelnomyl]

Obviously, the horizon was the most important part. Reaching for a pencil, Chaelnomyl lightly drew a semi straight line across the canvas to serve as her tentative horizon. It would, of course, be broken by waves and the outcropping of the scenery, but she was focusing first on the background and completely ignoring the foreground. The moon was a circle, and so that was easy enough to block out on the canvas. Light pencil etchings formed a perfectly round circle, stars were little more than small circles in the sky as well. There was heavy cloud cover that night, and so she drew a myriad of light ovals across the top part of the canvas to partially camouflage the light of the moon and the stars. It would be easier to accomplish with actual coloring, but painting was a series of steps that had to be executed correctly.

It had to be broken down into multiple parts. Rough parts. The frame of the actual drawing would be the edge of the water from where Chaelnomyl could see it, through the outcrop of land that extended from its base, across the beach and the rolling of the tide, and ending somewhere off to her right where the island swept back inland. On the lower half of the canvas, below her horizon line, Chaelnomyl began to block out the visible part of the shoreline and the way it curved off towards the right. The corner of her painting would, of course, be filled with the dark water instead of with sand, just as she viewed it from her current position.

The Akvatari adjusted herself at length, pulling back up into a more “seated” position, with her tail curling around her off to the left. A small frown appeared at the corner of her lips as she realized that the left side of the painting did not accurately capture the slight rise in elevation on the hill, and that she should instead change that for a more blocky shape that could be smoothed out later. Adding in a rectangle for the hill, and three more for the rocks that extended away from the shore’s curvature out towards the sea, Chaelnomyl looked long and hard at the edge of her sight, where she intended the drawing to end. Something was missing.

Putting the pencil down for a moment, Chaelnomyl fluttered up off the sand - careful to avoid kicking any onto her canvas – and crossed her arms, right hand coming to cradle her chin. A long, hard stare watched the moon’s illumination of the hill and then it hit her – the top of the hill looked more like a triangle. What’s more, there was a triangular shape forming at the edge of where her painting would end, off in the background. That must have been it.

[Chaelnomyl]

Back onto the sand, Chaelnomyl found herself quickly sketching in triangular shapes that would eventually become the low rise of rocks or slight rises in “hill” type places, if one could even call them hills, across the canvas. There was not much rise to them, honestly, they just kind of looked like someone had … pinched at the land and brought it up a little bit. Perhaps Ivak had a little humor during his rearrangement of the world she had heard a little about. Probably not.

Hills now properly accounted for, Chaelnomyl began the tremendous task of tackling the water. Near the horizon, a few lines were blocked out to indicate the wave over the actual line that separated the sea and the sky. On the line for the beach, she also drew a few waved lines that would eventually become the actual tide. A few dots were sprinkled here and there between it and the line that was the actual beach line was drawn out yet again to remind her of how the water was very thin and the sand could still be seen through it.

Picking up one corner of the canvas, Chaelnomyl propped it up with a few sticks she had brought from home after digging them into the sand, and then fluttered back to take a look. Everything seemed to be lining up decently so far. The cloud cover overhead was fairly thick and looked a lot like fog. She’d have to add a bit more to what was already blocked out there, but for now… the Akvatari fluttered off, leaving her things where they were as there didn’t seem to be anyone around and the wind was fairly still. She was heading to the sea for a quick snack. Or a late dinner, to be more precise.

The fish would be a bit out to sea, so Chaelnomyl fluttered a bit away from the shore but not so far that she could no longer see the shore. With a quick twirl in the air, the Akvatari artfully dived under the water and allowed her small frame to maneuver around in the moonlight until she saw the glitter of scales near the surface of the water. A powerful thrust of her youthful tail kicked her off in that direction, and with her growing strength she overpowered the fish. Carrying it back to land, she thanked it quietly for its service. She ate on the edge of the blanket and allowed her fur to dry before she went back to work, to avoid dripping on the canvas or even in the paint. Sand clung to her tail and naturally, the Akvatari began to preen it out as best she could. She’d have to go for a bit of another dip later to remove the particles that missed her finger’s once-over.

Reaching for her paintbrush this time, the Akvatari pulled the paints closer to her and began to look through her pallette and dabble a bit on the edge of the white blanket to see what would look best and match what she was seeing before her as closely as possible.

[Chaelnomyl]

Eventually, the Akvatari settled on a dark blue color that would be the night sky and began to pull it across the canvas in long, delicate strokes. She was careful to avoid the outlines of the hills and not extend it over the horizon line too far. They, of course, needed to blend together, but she didn’t want the sea to be exactly the same color as the sky. That would defeat the purpose.

Each set of strokes mimicked one another – first, left to right with her delicate flicks of her wrist, and then right to left. She started at the top of the frame and began to work down. When she reached the moon, Chaelnomyl made sure to carefully paint circles around it to represent its presence in the sky. She would later be going over it in lighter colors, and accenting its brilliance with whites to give it a glowing effect. When she was finished, the sky was a mat of dark blue and navy hues. She dipped her brush into a cup of water and wriggled it around to free the remaining paint, then wiped it off on the cloth before picking up the next shade of lighter blue. Beginning at the moon, Chaelnomyl began to paint out from it to blend in the new color, giving the appearance of light.

The strength of the new blue color would diminish as Chaelnomyl got further and further towards the outside, and finally settled on letting the very last bits trail in softly around the horizon. The sea would, after all, be reflecting the light of the moon.

Rinsing her brush again, Chaelnomyl picked up the lighter blue she had just used to highlight the sky, and began to paint in the area that would be the waves of the sea. She was careful not to let it bleed over into the rock formations she would be painting in later, but had decided to tackle the sea first since blues were lighter than browns, and thus any stray marks would be easily coverable. These strokes tended to keep more to the same direction instead of the back and forth motion she had used previously. Chaelnomyl also made sure to direct them into little peaks here and there that could be outlined with light blues and whites later to give the appearance of waves and activity in the water. This was not, after all, a tranquil pond or something like that and it was important to keep that in mind, even as she was laying down the base colors.

When the main two colors for the sky and the sea had been laid down, the Akvatari fluttered back from her painting and admired it from afar, glancing up at the sea behind it to make sure she still had the perspective right. It took a bit, but once she was satisfied, she returned to her cloth and began to ponder the base color for the rocks and the sand. They would be close, but the sand would be lighter. Idly, Chaelnomyl’s mind wondered what she would call it when it was done. Mother had always said they were “children of the sea and the sky”. Perhaps she could relate it to the idea of family, perhaps the next painting she did could contain a cradle. Maybe somewhere in the future she would be famous for portraying that portion of their fairytale history in art, and everyone would know their story… and her name.