Work Text:
Everyone in town talked about him. Sometimes it would be with open derision and scorn. At other times it would be in hushed whispers behind heavy doors. Of course he was not the only thing that they talked about. Like all good citizens they spent most of their time complaining about the politicians, children and how everything was just so much better back when they were younger. He was the topic that would come up in those breaks in between the weather and sports.
His father had been a rich man. So rich that, when his father died, he could devote all of his time to art. He had never gone to school or had any more formal training than anyone else who was forced to attend carefully constructed art classes in slate grey schools. The urge to create was so strong in him that he slaughtered the white canvases with paint. Sometimes his art was beautiful and soothed the soul. At other times his art tormented the viewer with promises of sickening truths.
They said that his artistic skill was unnatural. There was talk that his mother was a witch or succubus. It was true that she had come to town without warning and the marriage had happened with the suddenness of a clap of thunder. She was dead now, but her magic lived on in him. He did not use spells or charms. His magic came to life in his painting. Of course, all of this was completely untrue and only superstitious old women believed it. It was just a coincidence that the very modern men of science clung to their crucifixes when his name was mentioned.
Many women, and even some men, came to his home. They pressed their painted lips to his and professed their lies of love. There were women in red, women in blue and women in green. All were as lovely as the classical paintings of old as they tried to claw their way into his bed. He let them come. None of them really wanted him. He would have been content if they had at least been after his art, but no, all they wanted was gold without measure.
He painted all of them. He painted everything he loved and he especially painted everything that he hated. Whenever he truly captured something he hated in paint, the painting would capture what he hated from the world. One by one the beautiful women in all their colors disappeared and soon everyone forgot about them. He knew where they were. They were right there in his paintings. They should be happy, they would never grow old in paint.
The last one had tried especially hard to force the shackles of marriage onto him. She had smiled, pressed her flesh to him and said that she was pregnant. He was not about to believe her lies. So when he painted her into a corner he danced with joy that another one of those women was gone.
The painting with that woman changed over the weeks and months. He continually painted and repainted her with a progressing pregnancy. In the end the painting depicted her holding a small blonde baby with his blue eyes. The day he finished that he bought a special canvas. He began painting without rhyme or reason, always it would be a little girl in a steadily progressing age. Off and on he worked on it, sometimes abandoning it for months. When he slept he thought he could hear it crying for its father.
His painting took on a whole new fervor. Now he painted with the thoughts of a little girl in his head. Even when he painted his friend, a juggler, or an ant, he had the little girl in his thoughts. Everything became linked in his mind as things for the world of his painting child. She would need people to be her friends, books to read, a world to play in. It was impossible not to think about her as he painted. Even things he did not want to be associated with her became connected. His older pieces were not safe either. Even the hated paintings that he kept locked up in the darkest part of his house became part of the family for the little girl.
His techniques became more absurd to those that knew him. He insisted on painting his Fabricated World in a room with mirrors on every wall. While he painted his Fabricated World, his mirror self painted its Fabricated World. He saw it not so much as a painting as a door. Which side was the real side and which was the Fabricated World? They both were.
In breaks he painted the little girl, growing steadily older and taller. He finally had a title, no, he had a name for her. His last act as her painter and father was to name her. A painting of a little nine year old girl in a green dress with the name Mary scrawled beneath it.
All the magic he was born with had been poured into his paintings, leaving himself with nothing left in his soul. There was nothing left for him to paint. Even If he could find something he no longer had it in him to lift his paintbrush and imbue himself into it. His body was found slumped in a hard, wooden chair by one of the few maids he employed. The body was dead, but he was far from gone.
His soul, his magic, his painting, they were all the same thing. They were the world that his paintings and sculptures lived in. For the first time he could see the daughter conceived in one world and born in another. The world would do anything for her, providing for her items to amuse herself and books to read from. It would write messages for her in blood and paint. The precious, beautiful daughter who would never grow up or ever leave was the princess of this world.
Over the years she grew lonely and developed a desire to see the world that her father had lived in. The world was not happy about this, it feared going into that world would kill her. Still, it did not like seeing her crying when she thought the paintings and statues were not looking. It begged her to not try and leave and promised her that she would meet new friends soon.
It began to draw humans into it through the Fabricated World. It drew human after human into itself. Some got to play with Mary, only to horribly reject her when she was revealed to not be human. Thus, when the little girl in red and the young man in blue wandered in the world gave its child a yellow rose and told her not to reveal the truth.
The world hoped for the best as it watched the events unfold. Yet, it could not escape the feeling of unease it felt since the days it had been a living man called Guertena.