Ashes of the Painted

Chapter One

Year 59 A.P.

“I have to decide.”

The words bounced softly off the tiled walls of the cramped bathroom as Vox gripped the porcelain sink so hard it creaked. The strain snapped flecks of ink from the braided cords wrapped around his forearms. Red and black droplets swirled through the sudsy water, giving it the appearance of iridescent blood.

For the first time, two of the five district gangs were about to sign a treaty to merge, disrupting the carefully held balance that had stood for decades.

Every other district is going to be against us after this… Can I really go through with it? Vox thought.

A distant Pale siren blast was cut short by a knock on the door. Vox barely registered either sound over his pulse thundering in his ears.

“Vox, must the walls crumble before you leave that godforsaken bathroom?” Linum’s rich voice called.

Vox dried his hands and blotted bile from his lip, he managed to call out, “One moment.”

He had to keep it together for them, Vox thought.

Smiling, he opened the door. In the hallway stood the familiar figure of Linum, beard just beginning to grey, formal clothes so thoroughly splattered with paint they became a fashion of their own. At his side, a thirteen year old boy who looked nothing like his adopted father flicked quick strokes of color onto the stone wall.

“Look, what do you think?” Vito asked, tugging at his father’s arm.

Linum glanced at the work and smiled. “Good work, Vito. Tweak the shadows next time. They’re pointing the wrong way. If it’s a style choice, that’s fine so long as it’s deliberate.” Linum ruffled the boy’s blond hair.

Vox crouched to inspect a vivid graffiti phoenix. “You keep trying to teach me to have a critical eye for art, but I still can only see perfection,” he said, poking Vito’s stomach, “though you need to stop painting on my walls. We’re in the Wordsmith Ward, not the Painted Corridor, boyo.”

Vito’s shoulders drooped, though Linum and Vox’s laughter broke his embarrassment.

“If they bother you that much, you could always erase them,” Linum reminded Vox, gesturing to the dozens of murals from his children collected over the years.

“But that would be destroying something beautiful,” Vox sighed.

“You never quite did understand, did you, brother?” Linum asked.

Linum snapped open a brush case and dashed strokes across the wall. Raising his hand the rainbow bright cords hidden under his sleeves thrummed alive and puffed out with sprays of pigment.

The fresh paint lifted, peeled away, and swelled into a bird, not photorealistic. No, this was the kind you remember from your warmest summer afternoon, Vox thought.

It beat its wings and sailed off. “Art’s fundamental nature is temporary. Sometimes we have to paint over a canvas to make something even greater,” Linum said, giving Vox’s shoulder a pat as Vito ran after the bird.

Vox paused. Looking up, he found what he knew he would see, a starving tendril of the Pale’s fog curling over the wall before it reached too high, burning off and retreating.