“Yeah, paint,” she said.
Paint made me think of painting doors. Or painting walls.
“Like, painting on a canvas.” She lowered her data tab, then slipped it into her jacket’s pocket. “I never really used to paint landscapes. I was always so focused on painting stuff with, like, deeper meaning. Something that had some philosophical message. Or a political one. But sometimes I’m just so freaking tired, Rivven. And sometimes, at least these days, I think it might be nice to just paint a peaceful, snowy scene. To depict theway the light might hit a tree by a pond.” Her eyes searched my face. “Do you know what I mean?”
I did not have the faintest clue what she meant. I wished I did. I wished so very badly to understand her.
But she was always so generous. And she must have seen the lack of understanding in me. Because she smiled at me and said, “I’ll show you.”
Back at the saloon, she immediately went up the stairs to the bedroom. I hesitated at the bottom, unsure if I was supposed to follow her. Logic told me that it was my room, and that I had every right to go up the stairs after her.
But something that did not belong to logic, something that seemed only to belong to Shiloh, held me back. Because her privacy, to me, was worth protecting. Her trust like the shell of an egg. And I did not dare do anything to break it.
Luckily, she came back down almost immediately, a small bag in her hands.
“We’ll go in the dining room,” she said. “There’s more light in there, with all those windows at the front.”
She went right to one of those windows and began to unpack the bag. Small, bristly brushes with wooden handles came out first. Then, about a dozen small tubes, each with a different square of colour on the front. After that, a book with white paper.
“I didn’t bring a palette,” she said. “Do you have a plate that you don’t mind me getting dirty?”
I’d give her as many plates as she wanted. For any purpose that she wanted.
I retrieved one for her, as well as a cup full of water after she asked for that as well.
Then, with rapt attention, I watched as she squeezed the little tubes, ejecting thick, richly pigmented ooze onto the plate.
“I likely won’t need all the colours,” she said. “Some white, some green, some brown. That might be enough to get me started.”
Once her colours were arranged on the plate, she turned on her data tab and opened the image she’d taken at the pond. Then, she placed the data tab on the window sill where she could see it, and propped her book open to a blank white page beside it.
And then, she started to paint.
I watched her in perfect silence, afraid that if I made even the tiniest of noises, I would spook her. Like she was some rare and perfect creature – one that most people thought only existed in the realm of myths and dreams – had wandered into my midst, and I could not afford to scare her away. My very breath seemed to stall in my lungs when, as she worked, the pond and its trees and that light – exactly like the light we’d seen – came into vivid shape on the paper.
When she paused to step back and examine her work, her head tilting slightly, I finally dared to speak.
“You are brilliant.” The words sounded guttural and strange to my own ears. But they were so very true. She’d taken nothing but pigment and paintbrushes and had created something real. Something beautiful. Something that, until this moment, only existed on her data tab screen and in our memories.
And now it was here, in a new and startling form. In that tiny paper rectangle, there was the pond we’d spent the afternoon at.
She’d put so much artistry, so much care, into that little slice of our life. That singular moment of the light coming through the clouds and hitting trees, the pond mostly excavated from the snow, a shovel in my hand and a broom in hers. A moment that would never come to pass again.
“Oh, well,” she looked at me and laughed, but it was not a happy laugh. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would.”
I was not an educated man. I had not been in a real school since before my conviction. Perhaps I was just too ignorant about it all to know what was talent, what was skill, what was brilliance, and what was not. But I knew what spoke to my heart.
And this did.
Shiloh did.
“Not brilliant enough to ever make it really work.” She breathed out slowly. “I thought, one day, I might be able to. My daddy thought so, to. But…Life happened, I guess. Daddy died. I never got to complete the training I was supposed to. And I never secured a patron.”
“A patron?”
“Yeah.” She returned her gaze – and her brush – to the surface of the paper. “AI has been able to create any image imaginable for centuries. But some people are still willing to pay a premium for human-made art. If you can stand out enough – if you have something to say, a style, a voice, something special – you might be able to get financial support from someone who wants to pay you to paint. That’s a patron. I tried for a few years. I’ve got profiles all over the place, on various forums and apps that are meant to connect artists with patrons. Never got an offer, though.”
