Chapter 2
"Now," she began, placing the freshly prepared palette in front of her sister.
"We are going to paint a world together, just like I did with Lucien.
We are going to start by just making a landscape —people and wildlife will come later."
A stool shrieked as she slid it next to the one that Elara sat in, a large hour glass in her hand.
The hour glass was made of a dark wood, painted gold and black.
One side of the hour glass was held by a carved wooden female figure, a sun crowned behind her head.
The other portion of the hour glass was held by a less feminine figure with a crescent moon halo behind their head.
The two figures were joined at the waist together, inseparable.
A lion, the symbol of her family, was wrapped around the centre, its tail and jaws clutching the two bars that ran parallel between the glass spheres.
The hour glass itself was filled with a black metallic sand that almost looked like gunpowder.
"This is a timer.
The sand inside is Luxin, we will be able to sense it from within the canvas as well as see it outside.
We are going to be in the canvas for twenty minutes today," she explained as she tipped the hour glass upside down.
"From now on, you will only enter the canvas if I or Papa accompany you.
You may only be in the canvas for twenty minutes at a time —that's twenty minutes out here in the real world.
Once we feel like we can trust you, once we feel like you can handle it, we will let you be in here a little longer, maybe even by yourself."
The scarred girl shrunk in shame once more.
"There is a hard limit:
Do not spend more than seventy two hours in the canvas.
After such time you will begin to experience negative side effects."
Her sister's expression soured, a look of resentment blending with sheer worry and anxiety.
"More than a week will have you coughing up blood...
two weeks will leave you bed ridden for a month..."
The scrapping of paint on the palette became faster, more frantic.
"More than three..."
The paint knife radiated a harsh clang as Sera slammed it flat onto the side table, the paints now sufficiently mixed.
"...will be fatal."
Elara simply nodded.
All of the self-defeating, miserable thoughts she felt were too dense to put down on the note pad, not that Sera would listen to them —or anyone for that matter.
She would simply scoff and carry on like always.
With no protests or comments, her sister reached over, wetted a brush, and handed it to Elara.
"The first stroke will never be like the last; it will always be forgotten, lost amongst all those that come after, yet it is important all the same, for it is this first stroke and the feeling you put into it that shall shape the base and foundation of the world that you paint."
Her hand trembled slightly, she had never painted her own world from the start before.
There was so much that she had taken for granted.
In spite of all that she had painted in her childhood —what little of it there was— it was seldom ever something she had thought up all on her own.
It had always been in imitation of something, simulacrums instead of essence.
She shook at the possibilities, in fear of what her own emotions might weave into existence, how her pain might be inherited by the world she will create.
"Don't over think it," Sera remarked, seemingly unaware of how those two statements might contradict one another.
"Just clear your mind, take a deep breath and envision what you want to paint.
It doesn't have to be what it ends up being, we can always make adjustments.
Just focus on how it makes you feel and give it a stroke."
As reluctant as she had been in the past to take advice from her sister —especially given how biting and derisive it often sounded— the young girl collected herself, inhaled the caustic air of the Atelierium, and let her mind drift.
Eventually, she found herself somewhere, she found something that called out to her.
Without a second thought, she let her hand reach out and caressed the fresh canvas with the tip of her brush.
Painting was an incredible power.
She could create anything she wanted, for herself or anyone else.
But she could never join with it, never truly become a part of it.
The painter will always be the creator, the narrator, the observer.
She could not forget that.
And that was the loneliest part of this gift.
Opening her eyes, she withdrew the brush from the canvas, a shimmering chromatic fissure sitting before her.
"Well, not what I personally would have done," Sera snarked.
"But it's a decent start.
Come now Elara, we only have 18 minutes left, let's head in."
There was something so frightening about blank canvases.
To the non-painter, it just looks like one, single, self-contained white square, nothing more, nothing less, as indistinguishable from any other unused object in a room.
But for painters, for those who truly understood the depths of infinity, what it really meant for something to be endless, it was a harrowing shock to the system each time they entered, like a splash of cold water.
Elara gasped as she frantically looked around her, instinctively trying to find something to hold onto, only for there to be nothing.
White stretching forever, so far distance didn't matter and depth could not be determined.
A firm hand clasped the sides of her shoulders and steadied her rapidly tilting gaze (had she been tilting her head?)
"Alright, calm, Elara!
Just look at me," Sera urged.
Elara's eyes finally locked onto her older sister as she gained her bearings.
Sera knelt down before (had she fallen over?) and gave her a look of concern with the slightest tinge of a reassuring smile.
"There we go.
I know, it isn't something you can ever fully get used to," she admitted, gesturing to the blank world around them.
"But you mustn't panic, sister.
Nothing here can hurt you —at least not yet.
We haven't made anything that can hurt anything just yet."
Elara winced at her sister's mischievous smile as her mind went back to the hoards of Wraithborn that had nearly killed her a dozen times over during her last foray into a painted world.
Sensing the soreness in Elara's response, Sera cleared her throat and helped her sister to her feet.
The sensation was bizarre, her feet formed themselves to the shape one would take if one were standing on the ground yet she could feel nothing, no give, no gravity, no rigidness —just air.
Elara felt herself stumble once again.
"Careful now," her older sister warned.
"Elara, is there ground here?"
Elara looked at her with confusion
Of course there is no ground!
Look around you!
She thought as she let out a wispy gasp.
"Elara," Sera grumbled, clutching her sister's shoulders once again she threatened to fall over.
"There is a ground if you believe there is a ground here.
So, believe it!
Believe there is a ground."
But—
"Elara, is there a ground?"
Yes.
And like that, her stance stabilised and the world around her returned to its upright state.