The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1236: Finger Paints (Part Three)

Ashlynn watched quietly from the side as Nyrielle struggled against her memories. Part of her wanted to reach out, to offer words of comfort or at least a reassuring touch. The rest of her, however, worried that Nyrielle was too deeply lost in her memories to recognize what was happening around her.

Already, her lover had gone silent, but that didn’t mean she’d stopped painting. Her hand danced across the palette, gaining speed as she forgot about teaching in order to focus on the canvas in front of her.

Yellow blended with brown and a faint touch of crimson on the tip of Nyrielle’s third finger as she filled in the shoreline of her painting, but it quickly became clear that her plans for the painting had changed when her other hand returned to the bottles of pigment for more crimson and yellow.

The number of colors on her palette exploded as she began working with both hands, blending multiple shades of green before creating a soft lavender, rich violet, and pale canary yellow. In Nyrielle’s mind, she heard the lecturing tones of her second teacher, as though Shubnalu had stalked into her bedroom to chastise her yet again.

"Time takes everything from us, bit by bit," the short, elegantly dressed man said as he scowled at her painting in disapproval. "Only we are everlasting, but even we are imperfect. Once something is lost, it is gone forever. Trying to bring back what is gone is a fool’s errand, and the attempt will only lead to more losses."

"No matter how much paint you waste on these silly, childish smears of pigment, your mother will never see another one," Shubnalu scolded, clicking his tongue in disapproval. "No one can take her place and praise you like she did because no one will ever mean it the way she did. The Abyss has taken her from you, so give up on this foolishness of imagining things that aren’t real and see the world as it truly is, here and now, before that’s gone too..."

Nyrielle’s hands were moving faster now, using dark brown with faint touches of crimson to create large boulders on her shore before using the sharp points of her fingernails with green paint to form the shapes of bushes and tall grasses, clinging to life where the stones could shelter them from wind and waves.

Shubnalu was right. The chest of memories was gone, and she would never add another painting to it. Her mother would never praise her again, would never lovingly walk through the tower-top room that Nyrielle had taken over as an art studio, gazing at a month’s worth of paintings to help her daughter pick out the ’best’ one to add to the collection, just like she would never pick out one of the paintings to hang in her own chambers where she could look at it more frequently.

Her mother was lost forever, Nyrielle thought. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t paint flowers for her anymore. Her fingers moved faster now, blurring with inhuman speed as she built up layers of different shades of purple until the bushes clinging to the rocks of her painting resembled her mother’s cherished lavender.

"You can’t pretend like you still care about her, not in front of me," Shubnalu’s voice scolded as Nyrielle added a few bright spots of indistinct yellow flowers at the base of the bushes. "You’re trying to pretend that you’re painting for Orla, but you’ve barely left any room for her in your painting. You’re confused, unfocused, dashing from one idea to the next."

"This is why you are weak, and why you struggle to hold on to even a small domain," her demanding mentor chided, whispering directly into her ear. "Half measures and half-hearted attempts to cling to a humanity that you never possessed, mimicking feelings you never really had will only result in more loss. The things you have now will slip through your fingers while you chase after the things that are already gone until you have nothing at all..."

Nyrielle could still hear his voice, but she tuned it out as she grabbed a rag, dipping her fingers in turpentine to wipe the paint off her fingers, replacing the bright colors of her mother’s favorite flowers as she returned to the greens, blues, and whites of her beloved’s crashing waves.

It was true that Orla was gone, and she would never see this painting, never add it to the chest that held so many memories, or display it on her wall with pride. But Ashlynn had come crashing into her life like a wave, bringing with her the realization that, while no one would ever love her the way her parents once had, that didn’t mean she was doomed to spend the rest of her life unloved or unable to love again.

Shubnalu had been right about more things than Nyrielle liked to admit. In that sense, he’d been a good teacher, one whose voice echoed through her thoughts even now. But about some things, he was very, very wrong, and just like the unbounded sea and sky, Nyrielle refused to let the dusty old ghost from her past force her to walk the path he’d walked for more than a millennium.

Slowly, she was finding her own way forward, and the future didn’t look nearly as dark and clouded as it once had. Perhaps it was Aspakos’s fault, she thought, with a wry smile forming on her lips as she finally tuned out the echoes of Shubnalu’s voice to finish the painting. She’d started with the intention of painting a simple, starless sky, but as she looked at the woman sitting next to her, with that tender look of concern and worry, she couldn’t leave the sky so empty and desolate.

Nyrielle’s nails shifted slightly, becoming wicked, claw-like points that she dipped into bright white paint before flicking them rapidly at the sky of her painting, filling it with the stars of infinite possibilities that awaited her and Ashlynn.

"I’m sorry," Nyrielle said, giving Ashlynn a guilty look as she finally pulled herself free of the memories that had overwhelmed her. "I was supposed to be teaching you, but..."

"It’s fine," Ashlynn interrupted, wrapping her arms around Nyrielle’s arm and pulling her lover close. "This is part of you," she said, looking deep into the vampire’s eyes as she watched the memories recede. "This is part of what it is to be you, and I love you, all of you."

Ashlynn was only a tenth of Nyrielle’s age, and in the past year, she’d learned how strife and struggle cast a shroud over her memories. Being separated from everyone she knew before coming to Lothian March, being unable to return home, at least for now, and cut off from the world she knew, had given her the slightest taste of what life must have been like for Nyrielle.

But if a simple stew or a painting of home could pluck at her heart and pull tears from her eyes after just a year away, what must it be like for Nyrielle after more than two hundred years? Her lover had lost much more than Ashlynn had ever had, and there were whole centuries of memories that could sneak up on her at the most unexpected times.

A year ago, Nyrielle might have been able to ignore those memories, or at least ignore the feelings that came with them, but ever since Ashlynn had restored her ability to feel, it became harder and harder for the vampire to pretend that those memories held no sway over her.

Ashlynn understood this as much as she could, so when she saw Nyrielle falling into her own world, she said nothing until the moment passed. Now that it had, she welcomed her lover back with a tight embrace before stretching up to give her a light kiss on the cheek.

"So, tell me about your painting," she said, marveling at the level of detail Nyrielle had been able to create by using the combination of the tips of her fingers, her fingernails, even the side of her hand, and her knuckles in some places.

What had started as a simple sky, ocean, and beach had transformed into a beautiful nighttime vista where waves crashed onto a beach dotted with the brilliant colors of beautiful flowers. Nyrielle had captured everything from the churning foam where waves crested to the changing shade of the shore where wet sand gave way to dry.

Ashlynn had seen stretches of the coast that looked somewhat like this, where dune-grasses clung to life above the point where high-tide reached, but she’d never seen such beautiful flowers decorating the beach.

Yet, when Nyrielle painted it, even without all of her brushes and the refined techniques to use them, Ashlynn still felt like it could be a real place. But real or not, it was a place filled with feelings, pressed into the canvas along with the pigment on her lover’s fingers.

"And tell me about the memories that inspired it," Ashlynn added gently. "That is, if you’re ready to."

"My mother loved lavender," Nyrielle started, leaning into Ashlynn’s warmth as she began to explain. "So, when I was learning to paint..."

It took time to explain, but Nyrielle left nothing out, from the chest filled with memories to the harsh lessons she received at Shubnalu’s hands. Nyrielle let all of it out, pouring out the feelings in her heart like paint from a jar as Ashlynn soaked up every word.

If they had time, she would help Ashlynn to finish her first painting, but already, she could feel Marcel drawing closer. He had finally left Lothian City after gathering what information he was able to collect, and soon, they would learn what had brought about Bors Lothian’s death, and the many things that were unfolding because of it...