Some may remember a painting like this from Qoheleth:
The painting: a landscape, perhaps the prairie just outside. A cloud-dotted sky, nigh photorealistic. And in the middle, a black square.
Not just black paint, but a black that seemed to eat light. A black the hurt to look at. It made Ioan uncomfortable.
“I think I see why you approached me,” ey said. “You are interested in the story, and want someone who lives and breathes stories.”
That grin widened, and was joined by a swish of a tail. “Precisely that. There is art to be had here. It is stressful and, if my suspicions are correct, it bears a message beyond just…what, a jape? A jab at the clade? There is a point to be made here.”
“The amount that you seem to differ from the rest of your clade is surprising. Are there no other artists?”
“Oh, we are all artists of a sort. Actors, mostly. A few sim designers. One of the other stanzas' lines painted this,” it said, nodding to that unnerving black square. “But yes, we are all quite different. Perhaps you will see some day.”
They also make an appearance in Marsh:
The three of them lived in a narrow brownstone of sorts, full of the dark wood and plush carpets that I knew well from Marsh’s house, though the walls were lined — in some places all but completely covered — with paintings. The vast majority were of landscapes skillfully done in watercolor or acrylics, but each of which was interrupted with a shape of black so deep that it seemed to eat any and all light around it. Beyond just reflecting zero light, it pulled greedily at light that even got close.
These paintings are by And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights from the fifth stanza and are based on recurring dreams.
Motes dreamed.
She dreamed and dreamed and dreamed, her mind wandering over her past, there in the dark, there alone, after A Finger Pointing left, there in her extra soft bed with her overstuffed duvet and all of her stuffed animals.
At some point, hours or days or minutes later, she slept and dreamed true. She dreamed that she was sitting in a field of well-tended grass that was nonetheless dotted liberally with dandelions, speckled with bumblebees. She dreamed that she had all the wonder of a child and that the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it, and just above, just in the distance, a hyperblack rectangle, a hole in the world that hungrily devoured all of the light that it could, lingered, and it was neither good nor bad, and even with its insatiable hunger, the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it.
And then she awoke.
Motes has an entire book about her coming soon! Keep an eye out~
