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Storms don’t rattle the manor like they would a smaller home, but their wrath can still be felt by the windows and the flickering of very new electricity. Renoir had been incredulous about even the small lamps they’d chosen to test the circuitry, so familiar with the gaslamps of his childhood. Aline had said he was already turning into an old man, shaking as fist at any innovation that confounded him, which he’d resent if he didn’t concede that it was partially true.
As it happens, thunderstorms tend to make such lights flicker, potentially even burning out the fragile bulbs. They’d gotten into the habit of shutting them all off when the weather turned, lest any of them jump at said bulbs suddenly snuffing out, or worse – shattering.
Thunder had woken him up, though he wasn’t sleeping heavily to begin with. Sleep has never come easily to him, even when he was a child. His mother used to say his body simply favored the night, even if the rest of the world operates by sunlight. It’s a far more saccharine sentiment than the reality – he’s regularly plagued by night terrors.
Though, terrors is a strong word at this point in his life. He no longer fears the images of destruction and death that manifest so easily in his mind, for he knows they’re nothing more than phantoms. In fact, he sometimes takes inspiration from them for his art. Still, all the fortitude in the world doesn’t keep his body from stirring awake when a thousand knives fall from the sky and eviscerate him.
He goes to turn in bed, intended on reaching the journal on the nightstand where he sketches messy images of his dreams. He stills, though, now cognizant that Aline is still very much asleep, curled up alongside him, her head and a hand resting on his chest. Despite moving very little, her eyelids still twitch in the dark, her voice gossamer in its whisper.
“Your heart was beating fast,” she says, not opening her eyes. “Were you being chased by unfathomable horrors?”
“Mm, I was being very fathomably stabbed, actually.” He mutters back, raising an arm line her shoulders, leaning his head down to kiss the top of her head. “Apologies for waking you.”
Her shoulders shrug against his arm. “The storm has already woken me twice,” she says, then smiles, tapping his chest lightly with her hand. “And I’m certain Verso has been pacing outside for about five minutes now.”
“What?” Renoir turns his head toward the door of their bedroom. Sure enough, through the deluge outside and the rumbling thunder, he can hear small footfalls, back and forth, closer to the door than further away. He just barely catches the anxious whine of Monoco, one of their dogs.
Sometimes he wonders if, among her many astounding skills, he should add supernatural hearing to his wife’s talents. “He doesn’t want to disturb us, does he?”
“He wants to be brave.” Aline says simply, then turns away from him, toward the edge of the bed. “I’ll take him to bed.”
“No,” Renoir hooks his hand, catching the roll of her body by the shoulders to still her. “You’ve been traveling for days. You deserve some rest.” She’d only gotten home late yesterday afternoon, spending time in London with the developing Painter’s Council there. He’d chosen to stay, their children still too young for them to feel entirely confident they won’t get themselves trapped in Paintings.
In the darkness, her smile is mischievous. “That is not the attitude you had earlier tonight.”
“That was mutually assured destruction,” he counters lightly, his chuckle kept low. “Now, I insist you rest.”
“Very well, sir, I’ll acquiesce once again under your unerring persuasion.” She says, though she still swings herself around, slinging and arm around the back of his neck and pressing her lips to his. He returns the gesture, taking a great deal of willpower to keep it brief. When she pulls away, she holds him there a moment, speaking more softly. “Be kind.”
To someone else, this comment may seem troubling, that a wife would assume her husband to be unkind. This is not what the phrase means between them. Kindness comes in many forms, with soft hands or with callused ones. Aline is quite capable of being both nice – politely sweet with the right level of compliment – as well as kind. Renoir can be kind, but he would freely admit to anyone that he’s failed in the past at being nice. There is an intensity to him that he can’t easily switch off, so even if he performs an act of kindness, the energy he gives off can translate something entirely different. Their oldest daughter took the blows of this dichotomy well, but Verso – he takes more after his mother, his heart tender, his eyes wide and bashful.
It is not his responsibility to adapt to you, Aline had told him, you must adapt to him.
He ruminates on this as he retrieves a pair of trousers and an undershirt from the floor, donning them before approaching the door. As soon as he gets close, he can hear Verso’s footsteps skitter away, nearly quiet enough to avoid detection if not for Monoco’s clanking collar tags. Renoir opens the door just in time to see Verso’s bedroom door smack shut.
If not for the immaculate shape the manor is kept in at all times, the relentless rain and occasional flash of lightning would cast the place in an entirely frightening aura. The dark marble absorbs the night, the cuts of gold looking like lacerations. Renoir’s steps have a slight echo in the quiet halls, and he knocks lightly on Verso’s door before entering.
It’s almost a perfect mimicry of sleep. Verso had managed to jump back into bed and yank the covers over his head. It’s marginally less successful than Monoco, who’s already curled in the corner on his own bed. That dog is surprisingly okay with thunderstorms, though Renoir can only assume it’s because Verso found him as a puppy covered in mud in an alleyway, eating the remains of someone’s lunch out of a wastebin. Both he and Clea, surprisingly, tried to hide the dog from him and Aline for a week, but one of the maids eventually confessed they were keeping him in one of the hidden rooms behind a canvas. A dog who grew up on the streets is typically far less terrified of mother nature.
Verso, on the other hand, flinches under the covers at the next crash of thunder outside.
Renoir keeps the door open with his foot as he leans back into the hall, plucking a candle and its holder from a cadenza within it. A set of matches from the drawer, and he lit the wick and walked over.
“I know you’re awake,” he says lightly, setting the candle down on the nightstand.
“No I’m not.” Verso mumbles under the covers, an attempt at humor that falls flat with the quiver in his voice.
“Ah, so you were sleepwalking earlier?” Renoir shrugs, reaching for the candle. “I suppose I’ll head back –”
“Wait!” His son sits upright, flinging the covers aside, then pulling them right back, sinking a bit onto the mattress. “Don’t go…”
Renoir’s eyes soften, retracting his hand from the candle and sitting on the side of the bed. Verso has pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and averting his eyes. At ten years old, he edges into the awkward phase of growth where he’s neither a terribly little boy, nor a young adult just yet, already starting to get taller but still maintaining a boyish high pitch to his voice. Renoir may be a trailblazing artist, but he is not immune to the fundamental stepping stones of parenthood, one of them being wondering how the hell ten years passed so quickly.
“What are you afraid of?” He decides on the question after stopping himself from launching into a practical explanation of storms that would appease Clea’s exacting mind.
“It’s loud!” Verso replies, his voice muffled against the arms he buried his head against. “It’s going to make the house explode, or something. Or the ceiling will fall down. O-or maybe a tornado!”
“A tornado?” Renoir can’t help but chuckle. “Tornados don’t form in Paris, Verso. There’s too much in the way.”
“A tornado would blow everything out of the way.” The boy mumbles more quietly, then lifts his head and looks off to the side. He digs in the blankets, producing a plushie from beneath them and hugging it. Aline has sewn it for Verso’s ninth birthday, unawares at the time that their child would make a massive rendition of the creature in his first Canvas.
“Can I go in my Canvas?” Verso suddenly asks. “Esquie could just punch the storm and make it go away!”
Renoir is acutely aware, after meeting Verso’s friend twice now, that he very well could punch a storm and make it go away. Esquie could do anything in the Canvas that Verso’s expansive imagination could think of, though even as a child, the boy had some understanding of narrative tension. He’d create entire stories and adventures of Esquie defeating increasingly ridiculous foes, always pulling some new power out of nowhere, or overcoming the odds in some clever way. The Painter’s Council was wary even of this, as Esquie – and even the other creatures Verso has made called ‘Gestrals’ – are somewhat sentient creatures that they caution against the creation of. Aline dismissed their concerns. They are the dreams of a boy, harmless and unaware.
“Mm, I suppose you could.” Renoir replies, and feels a pang of guilt when his next words extinguish the brightness in his son’s face. “But the storm would still be here when you come back.”
Verso frowns, then scowls. “That’s stupid. Why can’t time be normal in a Canvas?”
“Because a Canvas isn’t normal.”
“Can Maman make it work different? Because Maman’s the best Paintress in the world?”
“I’m afraid your mother’s skill does not change the nature of the Canvas.” Renoir leaves out explaining that they tried, as that would pull too far from the topic at hand, which he pulls back gently. “Verso, you can’t run away from things that frighten you. This storm will pass, as everything does, and another storm will likely come, and that one will pass to. You have to endure some things, even if they make you uncomfortable.”
Verso is quiet for a moment, so deep in thought he does not flinch at the next roll of thunder that passes, a flash of lightning briefly lighting the room. His voice is a mumble, “can’t you make it stop?”
Renoir shakes his head. “My power does not extend far beyond the inside of a Canvas, son. I can’t wave this away, and neither can you.” He says. “Some things you just have to face.”
His son doesn’t seem convinced, or if he is, he doesn’t like it. He brings his knees back up to hug them, his increasingly mangy black hair dropping over his eyes. The plushie remains pinned between his chest and his knees, letting out a gentle woooo sound in protest. Renoir still isn’t sure how Aline managed to get it to do that. In that same vein, his mind draws to what Aline would say in this instance. She’s always had a way to ease Verso’s mind, which has a tendency to wander and remain squarely in the million stories he dreams up.
An idea comes to him. He brings his own knees up, folding his arms over them. “Do you remember when you introduced me to Esquie?”
Verso looks up, surprised by the change in subject, but his face lights up. “Of course I do! You both fought a dragon! A really big dragon!”
Renoir distinctly remembers not being prepared for the dragon, and neither had Verso. An exuberant imagination creates incredible wonders in a Canvas, especially when the Painter barely knows how to control themselves. He took it in stride, though, as was expected, even if he was briefly panicking on the inside. It was, in fact, a very big dragon.
“Esquie wasn’t afraid to meet me, was he?” He says, “and he wasn’t afraid to fight the dragon.”
“Esquie doesn’t fear anything!” Verso insists, now sitting fully straight, bouncing a bit on the bed. Another crash of thunder follows a flash of lightning, but he’s fixated now. The plushie tumbles between them on the ruffled sheets. It lets out a soft weeee when air breathes back into it. “I Painted him that way, even if he forgets stuff sometimes. A lot of times – all the time.”
Renoir retrieves the plushie gently. “Often, what we create is a reflection of ourselves, or what we want to be.” He says, setting the plushie between them so it’s ‘sitting’, something the creature quite likes to do. “You make Esquie brave because you want to be brave yourself, don’t you?”
“Well…yeah.” Verso’s shoulders slank, his head tilting looking at his father. “But I can’t Paint myself right?”
“Not in the way of our power, no,” Renoir continues. “But as much as we spend time Painting impossible things, the roots of them are still in the possibility. Bravery is not impossible, son, it’s only evasive. You won’t always succeed, but if you’re trying, then that’s a small success. You only get better if you try.”
Verso ruminates on this with a surprising level of consideration on his small face. “So I should…try and punch the storm?” He gives him a wide, toothy grin.
Good lord, he’s already being sarcastic. That does not bode well for when he’s a teenager. Renoir accepts it for now, for he can tell his son is already more at ease. “You can try and sleep through it, first.” He says, stretching his legs and standing up, dragging the blankets back toward Verso. “Once you’ve mastered that, then we can consider manipulation of nature.”
“Okay!” Verso scoots himself forward beneath the covers, pulling the plushie back under with him. “I’m going to dream about Esquie grabbing lightning and throwing it! Like Zeus! He laughs at thunder, and so do I!” He points at the window, “HA!”
The sky returns the favor with a particularly loud crash of thunder, which causes him to swiftly drop down and yank the comforter over his head. Renoir can’t help but chuckle, patting Verso’s form underneath the blankets.
“Learning how to be humble is also a reasonable virtue,” he says, letting his hand slip away after squeezing his shoulder. He blows out the candle and heads to the door, opening it halfway when he hears a shift of fabric.
“Papa?”
He stops, looking back, seeing Verso’s grey eyes blink in the dark.
“I’ll be really brave one day.” He says. “Like you and Maman.”
His smile in return is small, and he’s glad Verso is too young and the room too dark to see the somber hint to it. If only he could explain how much terror he feels every other day. “I’m often afraid, son.” He says, “I have just learned to manage it.”
If Verso has any insight on his words, he doesn’t voice them, just nodding and curling up under the covers. This time, when the storm roars outside, he doesn’t flinch. Renoir watches him for a moment, his goodnight mingling with the darkness in its whisper.
He makes his way back to his own room. Aline has turned to her side, her eyes closed but he can tell she hasn’t fallen completely asleep yet. He crawls back beside her, wrapping his arms around her waist and tugging her against him. He lets out a breath, as if the small moment of parenting winded him – in a way, it had.
“He didn’t run out yelling for me, so you must have done alright.” Aline says, adjusting so more of her body can lie flush against him.
“I did not consider the complications of one of our children being able to bring his imaginary friends to life and quite literally look up to them.” Renoir mumbles, already closing his eyes as well, his chin resting at the top of her head. “How do you navigate doting women in high society when they ask about motherhood?”
“Deftly, even under intense scrutiny, darling.” She turns her arm, managing to blindly tap his cheek. “Lying is quite easy when the truth is ridiculous. Besides, we’re not the only Painters with children, and even with that, being frightened of storms is not unique to ours.”
“I can think of a few actually unique things that make the mundane things more difficult, somehow.” He mumbles, but his body is relaxing, his lips brushing her hair. “You were right. He just wanted to be brave.”
She sighs softly, already falling asleep again, as is he, though he still hears her voice hazily hanging in the darkness, like from a far away place.
“Don’t we all?”