Title: Painting
Characters: Northern Italy (Young)
Notes: I have a strong belief that the Renaissance stayed with the boy, even after its light had left Italy. It was a comfort to paint such beautiful pictures. Set after the Holy Roman Empire leaves.
The swish of a paintbrush, a stroke of red appearing onto the colorful canvas. The small hand guided the brush across the surface, the small sound the boy's only comfort. The master of the house had saw it fit that he paint once in a while, to keep the young child happy. Besides, it was no good to have a servant moping about the house. So the boy painted things he had seen, in dreams and in reality, visions of colors and dancing lights. The trees he painted seemed alive under his fingers, the fall leaves whirling right off the page. Yet they stayed perfectly still, as still as the canvas they were painted onto. The boy smiled at his work and turned it aside, both to dry in the breeze and to start on a new one. This one told a story.
First he sketched it, then he lined it carefully, and at last he colored it with paint. Within the frame held two boys, one dressed as a servant and the other a philosopher. They were sitting in a field of flowers, all different blotches of colors that had struck out in his mind. The smallest of detail was added last, when the layers of paint had dried. The most significant one, the boy thought to himself as he carefully painted it, was what the boy in black held in his hand. A crown made of the flowers around him. His face was flushed as the other boy's hands held his and the crown, smiling bright. The boy dropped his arms and smiled, watching the memory replay itself in his mind.
It had been one of the happier times before the other boy had left.