the sight of the bus emptying out onto the sidewalk like spilled milk against a granite counter top. She groaned as she rose and began following suit of those in front of her. Single file drove her nuts, today she learned that she did not enjoy single file. Once she had been free of the line and the strange vessel that had brought her to the massive limestone stairs, she was free to go at her own pace. Ornate structures lined the way that she strode- lions upon either side of the colossal proverbial carpet. Gold decorations trimmed the entire estate it looked to her and as she entered into the main hall, she couldn't help but feel infinitesimal in comparison.

"Please, follow this way if you are a part of the tour! We have a tight schedule and we will onlybeabletoblahblahblahblahblah...."

Her tour ended the moment she stepped off the terrifying ferry into a world unknown and her own adventure started the minute she took in a deep breath of the city air. She felt naked without her Banshee Shriek on her, but she had been advised to avoid any weapons while in the Outer Realms. To drown out the fading noise of others, she pressed play on the device that she had been loaned.

Whether it had been by instinct or simply a learned reaction she had separated herself from the mass of people and drifted into what felt like the most isolated portion of the building. As she walked she took quick note of the shifting environment- how sleek and modern architecture looked as though it were being fooled by father time. How season began to play in reverse, were she by chance watching a raindrop reform and fly up high into the sky. Polished floors began to show signs of aging wear and tear, the brass had not been tended to in some time and some of the light fixtures had been left abandoned with scaffolding. Unfinished replicas of older design remained stagnant and paused like their entire lives had been removed from the cycle of nature. Columns that looked as though they could have been made from pearls remained as busts below and mere wire frameworks above. In a weird way they reminded her of herself.

Following the waving path she soon found herself in what looked as though it could have been an exhibit on its deathbed. Translucent tarps hung scattered around floodlights that remained on regardless of how the electricity bill must have skyrocketed. A reliquary of lost art lined the walls on either side of her as she crept along the eerily symmetrical passage. Most of the lights above the works had either been flickering or poorly dismantled, that was most until she found herself at the end of this particular hall. The wing had been devised like a bent chariot wheel. Spokes became arms that bent and curled similar to that of a spiral galaxy. The central hub was where she had decided her path and now she had reached the very end of the arm, per say. Before her was something beyond enthralling and it slipped into the Autumn night with her breath like a bandit with a heavy coin purse.

Light scattered across the canvas and fooled her eyes as to whether or not she might touch it with her fingertips and fall right into the scene. A setting sun set its majestic golden aura across the warm dancing fields of grass. Men worked their rowing atop their simple caravans on their natural highways, careful when passing under the landbridge that joined the metropolitan grasslands. In the distance a cohesion of nature and man was identifiable but sparring of unnecessary details. Showered in the sun's radiance she drew closer, yearning to lay in that field, to wave to the men rowing and to simply sleep below the darker clouds, knowing somewhere on the other side, someone too was scratching at her window. How she would give up the pain and the adrenaline and the questions; just to bathe in the colors of the fall and to allow that warm dusk wind to carry her aloft.

The sound went silent within her ears and although none were around to ruin this for her, she pressed play once more.

Just a little longer. I'd like to pretend I was there.

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Humming halogen tubes were her lullaby tonight in the cell that she slept in. Her cot was squeaky and consisted of a mattress on aged coils, one that she had taken much pleasure in bouncing on until she'd been directed to stop by the guard. For a few hours she'd rested her head against the pillow staring up at the ceiling thinking of how she'd ended up in this elementary detainment center. There was no magic here and she could only wonder how they managed to keep the most dangerous criminals behind those flimsy bars.

Memories were nothing more than patches of colors at times for her. Abstract peripherals that lingered wafting somewhere in her subconscious like glaciers in the arctic; you only really notice them at night when your ship collides into one. Gio had given her very specific instructions on avoiding trouble in the Outer Realms should she ever venture into them. He said that it would be a massive headache to bail her out depending on what kind of trouble she stirred.

"They're just pictures..." She sighed out settling her eyes against the lids while balancing her left leg over her right knee.

Of course she had gone and been captured by the authorities for "attempted theft of art", which she had received a very thorough verbal lashing about. She tried to explain how she wasn't stealing history but instead giving it a nicer home. With ghosts that would admire such works. Really, it was going to be better for everyone in the long run. That was of course excluding the museum, the people that attended to see the paintings and all of the investors and money that went into acquiring the paintings. It seemed reasonable to her. Kind of.

Restless didn't begin to describe these hours or any of the several past nights in the manor. She could feel the tides sweeping out from under her feet. A vacuum sucked them and the air out from right under her and into the black of the night. She'd been tirelessly wandering and only now had she gone to the museum, yet she had been to countless more in her search. She slipped from the cot and took her position in the corner of the cell. Blue clay had been left from some type of infrastructural work that had been done, maintenance she might have guessed, as well as a white piece of shattered chalk. One of her recent escapades had left her with a music box that she had been concealing on her person and managed to slip past the guards at the station. She set it down next to her and allowed it to keep her company while she began scraping against the white cinderblocks that lined her stockade.

Countless hours were spent long into the night mixing the blue with the white and finding the careful balance between the two. She could feel it like a ship drifting in the arctic at night, how she had spent that blackened millenia before waking. She felt it again and she wanted a sun of her own to keep her warm.

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Today had been similar to those past and those yet to be. Mercurial to the touch, presently she had finally been able to grasp with the strange nature of time and sat down within the protected shelter she had forged for herself in the foothold of the tower. Between her and the hard at work fire elementals and any else who may peruse through her stronghold was the thick black cast iron gate that barred all from entry into her cocoon domain. Security was not something she much needed or spent any time at all considering; how could one really imagine it when your dwelling place resides within an active volcano? Coping with the attention that she had been unable to fully escape came in several shades of pastels and over multiple canvases by now. The gate was not present to keep anyone out for if that had been the case she would horde all of her works thus far and kept them within the cocoon. The gate was a lock on some distant removed reliquary that should always remain undisturbed except for she who holds the keys.

Time confused her. Present confused her. Here she was laying out her paint upon her arm, (which was and always would be her palette) trying to grapple with the idea of present. As she swirled the tip of the brush against her alabaster skin she perverted the original state of each shade. Whether they should grow lighter from her own hue or when the light that was held suspended at the low-ceiling of the pit swung with the most recent tremor to strike the tower, something she attributed to the volcanic nature, and dust fell into the lighter shades taking them a step closer to black, she accepted it as it was. Mistakes did not exist on her canvases as she didn't believe crossed her path in life. Briefly she had realized she'd been walking since awakening on that beach off the coast of a wide salty basin and at the outskirts of such a lush untouched oasis. However she could recall days long past where the sensations she felt now: hot, cold, pain or euphoria might creep back along her spine and offer her a phantom high(or low).

Here she sat driving the dividing force against the off-square rectangle that would house this feeling. How she struggled to understand what it meant to be 'present'. We only exist in the now, she reaffirmed herself, yet she had existed before now. She could recall being swallowed in the eternal sea. Future Hope would be painting as was past Hope and as was present Hope, well, now past Hope too. Another tremor had her grasping a hold of the wooden stool she used and caused a brow of her's to lift in slight agitation. They had been growing worse recently and she found it hard to remain grounded, yet she had not heard any talks of it around the Isle, or in Rhy'Din. This confused her greatly because now she had ruined quite a few dishes and if not for her loose definition of painting, perhaps she had ruined a few artworks due to it.

As the confusing state of time continued as did she. It began to take form before her and elicited a slight tipsy turvy of her lips. Not a student of any modern or past philosophy it was quite often she found herself requesting no feasible outlet for her internal conundrums- but rather spent her time in her cocoon forging personal windows that she might look back through in days to come, months or years even. That cast iron gate was to keep her stirring mind within the hallowed bastion until her stained glass museum could be left to settle until her next perverted thoughts could be channeled thus.

Topical as it may be time had been on her mind and leading her astray when she would like to be focused on other things as of late. How would she approach the new year for the denizens of Old Market? How might she finish out her reign as the Diamond? How might she find the source of the tremors on the Isle, or perhaps raise awareness? If she did find it, how could she resolve it were it something as integral as the volcano? Surely, she could not mimic Jesse and blow it to smithereens. (Could she?) A firm shake of her head removed that second thought swiftly with a surgical precision. A few strokes of shading and she was finishing this window, just a little lighter shade to help the panes come through in depth.

Love. An enigma she remained once she set down the brush and viewed the mini-art upon her left cord of tendons and muscles. Time was still a concept that bent her brain in pretzel loops and contorted her view on life. Yet struck similar to a bird on a concrete wall she had encountered something that managed to lift her over this monstrous hill that cast a shadow on nearly everything she had done. A past that contradicted her present paled in comparison to the aspiring fire that grew with each day inside her. A remembrance of his warm embrace could trump the cold eternity. She as she sat now could channel the butterflies skittering inside her onto the canvas and her desires and the thought of a fortnight or two instilled a twinkle in the pale eyes that would eventually blossom before them. Love in her naive mind had trampled over the bizarre nature of this infinite-headed hydra that couldn't keep its jaws off of her life. It broke through the barriers she had felt, as only she had prior. And it was beginning to make it trivial.

Another tremor struck and she fell forward, catching the canvas as it fell from the poor easel she had set it upon. Her left arm trailed off on the corner and shed a blur of gray along, pulling from her instant anger at herself. This confused her further. She did not have accidents in her works, so why had this happened? Why had he been in that study? What was he doing there before she had showed up? A seed had been planted within her mind and she could not understand why it had been risen to the surface at that minor slip. She shook her head and secured the window beneath her arm pit. The sound of the cast iron gate groaning could be heard as she shut it beneath her and made her way to find this most recent window's place along the spiral staircase.

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"Under the sun
Where I want to be
That's where I'll run
It's time for me to leave

Could it be, the rain
I'm drifting, away
This is where I leave you
Farewell

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth
And the Earth was without form and void
And darkness was over the surface of the deep
And the spirit of God moved over the surface of the waters
And God said,

Farewell."


How the red and yellow and every shade between shed upon the canvas in a state of pure lacrimosa. Each and every violent stroke of the brush against the off-white/beige backing had served as an extension of the pent up frustration that had sent the volcano into a stir so many a time. Rage. Agony. Futility. What festered within the bowels of the tower had been dug its final grave and as she continued to assault the fleeting white that remained she felt some pain beginning to well around her eyes. Salt in taste, wet in texture, the warm trails eased down her cheeks as she settled with the brush in her left hand resting loosely against her right arm.

Was this all there was meant to be? It had not taken her long to gather her things, those that were important to her whether it was the elaborately folded tea containers courtesy of Ahni or the collection of paintings to-date. As she sat for what she considered to be the last of the installment of surreal windows into what resided within her chest, tucked underneath the breast and above the ribs, she was swept under the tides of the unknown. She'd watched herself become who she was while living in the Tower of Fire and poured it into the imperfect, not-square window before her. It wasn't perfect, it was crude and it could not come close to encapsulating the grotesque pain in her chest that lined her sobs. But it would have to do.

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((Eclipse by Carmen Guedez))