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Nova had turned to painting since his ascension.
Very few things brought him pleasure now that his life was dictated by shades of grey and red; he couldn’t admire the city’s architecture without being disturbed, the air of the outside world did not clear his lungs in the way it did beyond the stone walls, even his old passion for writing had been corrupted by some kind of block – his words only flowing when used in the aid of vialism, writing sermons to be read to those he was tasked to oversee.
He hadn’t considered himself to be much of an artist before. Supplies were sparse and often thought to be contraband by his predecessors, but Nova’s usurpation of the city left him with unquestioned access to whatever he wished for.
Maybe there was a part of him that wished for concrete evidence of his old life before the memories were lost to time, of the rolling hills he had once thought of as his salvation. As misguided as that belief was, Nova found it hard to deny the beauty that existed beyond the concrete that kept his citizens contained, the colours of the changing seasons brighter than anything he’d ever seen before. Even the manufactured hues of his time as a public figure paled in comparison.
A portrait he had painted of himself hung on the wall of his bed chambers in an attempt to finally make the space feel like his own, rather than something he had simply inherited from a man whose face in Nova’s nightmares still caused terror to light his nerves on fire. The brushstrokes were thick and deliberate, a certainty shown in the way that the artist had depicted himself.
Nova was on his knees in the painting, hands clasped in prayer as his face was tilted towards the skies of paradise, his eyes doe-like and pleading for something undefined. Was it freedom from the burden placed upon him? Or simply a prayer that he would deliver when measured up against those who came before him? Somewhere along the line, the intention behind his prayer had muddied, but it existed somewhere in the essence of his creation.
A crown of antlers sat upon his head. The pointed tines showed traces of a blood-red, a reminder of the power Nova wielded and the sacrifices he had made in the process. That same shade had dyed the grey robe he wore in the painting red from the shoulders down, leaking from twin stab wounds that still caused his real body pain. He looked like a martyr.
In the far corner of his room sat a pile of canvases hidden by a dust-sheet, each one depicting a memory of Trench that had become fuzzy over time. There was always something missing, something not quite right with the landscape; a colour that had lost its vibrancy and its place in Nova’s vision. The orange campfire seemed too harsh, missing a softer colour that turned the flames from a violent inferno to a sign of community and rest. The faceless figures lining the clifftops had empty spots over their green clothing, blending in with the grass and rocks, doomed to be eternally unfinished.
The landscapes at the very bottom of the pile were full of angular shapes and defined lines, nearly photographic recreations of the sights beyond the wall. If Nova closed his eyes, he could imagine that he was back there, washing the grime off his body under cool streams of a waterfall, a second pair of hands cleaning his hair of sweat and dirt. Over time the view had shifted – the trees that once held individually blended into a jumbled mess of leaves, and the paintings developed a sort of haziness to the brushstrokes, as though they were being painted from the memory of a memory.
They seemed to lose their colour too. The bold greens shifted, dulling as time progressed until the canvases on top of the pile were almost totally grey. Still, that one colour stayed missing, the one that used to whisper ‘covering you’ in the night as Nova’s sleep was tormented by things he’d rather forget.
One picture of Trench was permitted freedom from the covered pile, left to lay on the Bishop’s desk each day as he swore that he’d eventually get around to hiding it. It was a charcoal drawing of a forest at night, with a shadowed figure lingering in the background. Bishop or Bandito, Nova couldn’t tell, but he did remember how the figure beckoned for him to follow, and that there was a deep seated knowledge in his bones that he’d do nearly anything the figure asked.
Whoever it was only existed in the hues of charcoal, unable to be identified by a distinctive colour.
Most of Nova’s paintings these days bore the same similarity.
Then there was the faceless figure.
Countless scrapped canvases of a figure shrouded in fire, the light from the torch in his hand obscuring his face in a mess of shadows. Nova had spent hours upon hours trying to bring forward the man’s face from the back of his mind, to lay his image down in oils so that he might connect the stranger to a face he had seen in passing – perhaps a humble citizen, or staff that tended to him in his tower, or maybe one of his fellow bishops before their faces became obscured by veils and black smears.
No matter how many times Nova tried, the face was never quite right.
Something was always absent. Those whispers in his mind grew louder with this memory of a muse, a tugging in the Bishop’s soul that felt like a nearly-severed connection to an entity that he couldn’t fathom. He felt haunted by it, a phantom that served only to remind him of what he had lost, and what he could no longer see. The petals of sunflowers reduced to the same grey that surrounded him each day, those mystical tones of the evening sky lost to the passage of time, the ‘X’ shape across the figure’s chest that was left blank in every single portrait.
There was one thing Nova could remember, however. The man’s eyes.
They carried a sternness to them, something that said he had seen many lifetimes, each one weighing heavily on his conscience. Behind that though, a softness lingered. Nova wondered if he had known it once, a look that softened just for him, brimming with affection for the simplest of things.
The way he stumbled over the chords of a song knowing he was being watched, a longer-than-necessary rant about something miniscule that had bothered him, an appreciation for his quick wit and sharp mind, when he smiled for the first time in what felt like years, and the laughter that followed it.
Nova couldn’t be sure that any of this had truly happened, but there was something about the man with the torch’s gaze that felt like more than a distant dream.
Sometimes his eyes were painted in an earthly brown, with a mirthful reflection that twinkled like the stars in the night sky. At other times, they reflected the flames of his torch, glowing a vibrant orange like the eyes of the seized vessels that Nova was all too familiar with.
The Bishop cast a glance to his latest discarded portrait of the man, the crinkling at the corners of his eyes being the only indication of his glee, the rest of his facial features left to the interpretation of the individual mind, covered by wisps of smoke and licking flames.
He only ever remembered those eyes.
It had been nearly a week since Nova’s paintbrush had dipped into hues of green and brown; a new apparition occupying his attention instead. The Bishop somehow already considered it to be a friend.
“I’m impressed that you see me so clearly.” It spoke, observing how Nova spread black paint around in the shape of curls on its head.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because. I figured you had shut yourself off.”
“It wouldn’t be worth my energy.” He dipped the brush into the paint once more. “I have much more important things to attend to.”
“Such as?”
This companion was persistent, digging for conversation where Nova would prefer none to be found. The silence had grown boring, but now that it was occupied by some strange conjuration of the Bishop’s mind, he rather discovered himself longing for it once more. Yet another cycle he found himself within.
“Such as my masterpieces. Or composing my next speeches. The assemblage looms on the horizon, I must not leave my preparation until the last minute.”
Nova swapped brushes, reaching for the one coated in shades of peach to touch up some details on the painting’s face. His gaze flickered in a triangular formation, pink lips up to its prominent nose, following a path to its right eye before moving over to the left, and then back to where he started. He compared each feature to the real apparition before him, deciding that the red paint below the figure’s eyes needed to be brighter – a red that better matched Nova’s robes.
“You place too much importance on these… festivities, Nova.”
“Pardon?” The Bishop halted his brush.
Moments like these were common between the pair, a tension of unknown origin creeping into their conversation, like an old grudge that hadn’t been shifted. It bled into Nova’s depiction of the figure; its shoulders forced back so it appeared calmer, its brow almost permanently furrowed. It did not wear relaxation well, hypervigilant towards any creaks of the old doors and distant scurrying of critters in the walls.
Nova wondered what crimes he had committed as his previous identity to cause a potentially vengeful spirit to latch onto his soul.
“I’m just sayin’, maybe you’re overcompensating for something.”
That one word ran down Nova’s spine like lightning. “I think you’re deluding yourself.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. You are.” His reply was curt. “And you speak out of turn.”
“I’m speaking exactly when you want me to, Novey.”
The Bishop scoffed at the nickname. “Must you always be so… frustrating?”
“It’s why you keep me around.” The apparition’s voice was far too affectionate, as though their conversation was more of a lover’s quarrel than a budding argument. It moved from where it lingered at Nova’s back to return to where a chair had been set out for its comfort, a red velvet chaise lounge with unquestioned origins.
Nova watched as the apparition settled, legs kicked up on the seat as its black cloak acted like a blanket protecting its modesty. Everything the figure wore was black, from the cloak to its top and pants, and the black scarf-collar-thing that covered its neck. The only colour it possessed was the pale peach of its skin, made to flush almost rosy by the accents of red in its hair and under its eyes. Perhaps it would appear frightening to someone else who may have stumbled across it, but Nova found comfort and familiarity in its appearance, feeling the bite of cold wind and the scent of sea-salt in the air every time he laid his eyes upon it.
“I don’t think I have any choice in that.” Nova added a shining glint to the nose rings on the figure’s face.
“You do. More so than you realise. Like you said, shutting yourself off wasn’t worth the energy.”
“What do you get out of this meaningless conversation, oh mysterious phantom.”
It chuckled, a bemused sound that felt like the embers of a campfire in Nova’s stomach. “Do you think I’m a ghost?”
“You’re changing the subject. Answer my question.”
“Fine.” It rolled its eyes. “I simply wish to understand the man that you are now.” That final word didn’t register in Nova’s mind. “Since I replied, you’re gonna answer the question that I asked next.”
“It seems like the most logical assumption – for you to be a ghost, that is.”
The maybe-ghost reclined further into the chaise lounge. “And what logic led you there?”
“Well,” Nova began, cleaning off a paintbrush on an old rag. “For one, I have no clue how you got up here. You seem to know my thoughts and have some sort of rebuttal prepared for whatever I might say–”
“–A match for your quick wit, perhaps?”
“If that’s what helps you sleep at night. Or, what helps you rest eternally, passed on to the protection of paradise. Many people have died in these towers, I would not consider it strange for a lingering spectre to haunt my abode.”
Nova stepped back from his painting, glancing between the canvas and its subject in comparative looks. He nodded to himself, and picked up the red-coated paintbrush once again, defining more curls by the nape of the apparition’s neck.
“I also–” He hesitated, voice dropping quieter as though the thought embarrassed him. “I also do not believe I would be able to touch you, spirit.”
“Have you tried?”
The Bishop spluttered. “No? Why in Dema would I–? What makes you think–?”
The apparition stood once more, circling where the canvas stood on its easel, coming to rest behind Nova yet again. One strangely firm hand settled on his waist, the other came to stabilise his shaking grip, guiding the paintbrush to the painting. The figure directed Nova’s movements, leaving highlights of bright red behind in their wake.
It only served to confuse Nova more; the unexpected realness of the hands on his body swayed his opinion to the spectre potentially being real, yet the unnerving coolness of its chest against Nova’s back conflicted that thought. All he knew was that he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted the moment to end.
“Does this answer your question?” It asked, voice low and breath puffing against Nova’s ear.
“What are you? Man… spectre… a figment of my imagination?”
“I am whatever brings you comfort, Nova.”
He felt like his heart, or what remained of it, was being tugged in two separate directions – one through the streets of the city, down alleyways and hidden away in spots where the prying eyes of vultures would not see, the other was led through the forests he used to frequently paint, sticks and leaves crunching under his feet as the night sky began unveil the stars above.
There was something deep inside, however; that old voice calling out that both trails led to the same road. Cold with winter snow in the ditches, a burning car flickering away in the distance. Or perhaps it was more like a valley, with high rockfaces and streams that lapped at his boots, soft petals raining from above.
Nova’s hand was lowered from the canvas.
“There, I think our masterpiece is completed, don’t you?”
He considered the thought, and found himself agreeing. His new muse, in all its black and red glory, brimming with an intensity that Nova still couldn’t place. It was alluring.
The thing looked like a commanding leader, with the kind of dignity that Nova craved. Its shoulders still did not rest easy in the painting, as if the burden of leadership persisted despite its attempt at rest. The Bishop knew that this wouldn’t be his last painting of the figure, already imagining further compositions and ideas to spend his days getting distracted by.
Closer portraits of its face, paintings that showed the skin underneath the dark clothing, perhaps one where the blanket-like cloak could be traded for Nova’s bedsheets–
He shook the thought from his mind.
Not now.
“I am satisfied.” Nova spoke, attempting to keep his wavering tone level.
“Do I make a good subject?”
“You make a talkative one.”
It smirked. “Is that a bad thing?
“We shall see. It depends whether the words you spill are of any substance. It has been mostly questions so far.”
“And yet, you said that I seem to know your every thought, so what use would I have for questions?”
“Another question, but this time one that stumps us both.” Nova replied.
“Then ask me another one of your own,” teased the figure “and we can even the score.”
The Bishop considered his choice before asking. “I know barely anything of you. If you shall not give me a definitive answer to your origins, maybe you might have a name that I can call you by rather than deliberating the differences between ghosts and apparitions and spectres.”
“Well, seeing that you seem so stuck on that train of thought,” It stepped out from behind Nova, turning to face the Bishop as it looked him up and down. “You can just call me Spooky.”
Nova tried the name out on his tongue, feeling how each of the letters twisted like the curls on Spooky’s head. “I can work with that.”
He picked the canvas up off the easel, careful in how he manoeuvred it so as to not scrape or smudge the drying oils. Nova set it down beside one of his other paintings, the one of the joyful eyes and face obscured by smoke and flames.
When he turned around again, Spooky was gone.
It stung briefly, that it had vanished without so much as a goodbye, but something deep down told Nova that Spooky would return soon enough, with many more questions and way fewer answers. The familiarity tugged at the Bishop still, wondering how he felt so connected to this strange being, how his heart seemed to trust its intentions despite Spooky’s hazy origins.
Maybe if Nova had been more observant, he’d have looked at the two paintings side by side.
And maybe if he had, Nova would have noticed how both canvases shared the same pair of eyes.