| Ficbit Challenge 5
Five -
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| He didn't have the original, of course. That was lost to time, and
to Nisan, and even when it had been around he'd feigned indifference to
its existence. Only feigned, of course. Only feigned. In truth he'd always
been desperately fascinated as Sophia's form emerged from the white canvas
and coalesced, first in broad blocks of color, then in increasingly delicate
brushstrokes.
The night before the portrait was slated to be unveiled he had let himself into Lacan's studio and taken a picture of the portrait, and its electronic image had remained with him ever since, hidden away. He talked to it almost every night. After his work was done, when he was alone, he'd pull up the image onscreen and talk to her, talk to Sophia, telling her everything: his hopes, his dreams, his fears, his successes, his failures. Hundreds of years ago her expression had been kind and benevolent, Sophia's own gentle beauty overlaid with Lacan's overwhelming love for her; but the image that Krelian spoke to was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, on and on, and by now Sophia's face could have held almost any expression at all. He preferred it that way. He preferred being able to study Sophia's unreadable features and read whatever he liked to within them. This way, Sophia always agreed with him, the remnants of her painted eyes gazing favorably on Krelian's schemes. Once, and only once, years after the real Sophia and everyone else who had known her was dead, Krelian had dimmed the lights in his room and haltingly told the portrait of his feelings for her, how he'd loved her, how all he'd wanted was to be worthy of her even as Lacan had cringed and slunk away. He'd barely looked at the portrait then, stealing glances out of the corner of his eye, as if it were the real Sophia sitting there beside him. When he was done, he dared to meet her eyes. Some trick of pixels and paint caused her to weep, just then. Krelian had frozen, then gently shut off the viewscreen and sat in the dark, finally coming to terms with two ideas too monstrous to be borne: the first, that maybe she had loved him, and the second, that maybe he hadn't ever loved her at all. He fell asleep, there in his chair. The next morning the first gray hair had unspooled at his temple, and within a year the blue was entirely gone, taking with it the last of the Krelian that Sophia had known. He still talked to her every night. The oldest habits are the hardest to break. |
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