The Artist and His Muse
DISCLAIMER: I would never claim I own more of Sword of Mana than a game cartridge and considerable fandom. If I did own it, I think we can safely say certain things wouldn't have gotten censored out, it would've been possible to save most (if not all) of the tragic cast, and you would've been able to kill the real villain. (/glares at Goremand)
NOTE: In this oneshot, the hero and heroine go by their official names, Matt and Rose.
---
Rose woke bright and early that morning, refreshed despite the fact that her traveling companion Matt had spent the night snoring like a horde of Dudbears going at a redwood tree with chainsaws. It probably had to do with the fact that she'd got to sleep in a real live bed for once, instead of in a sleeping bag on the ground. Hence, once she'd finally fallen asleep, it'd been a better sleep. Or something.
Whatever the case, she'd gotten up early, and Matt hadn't. Which meant she could spend the morning exploring the town of Wendel without him getting snippy about where she decided to go or who she wanted to talk to.
The two of them had arrived yesterday afternoon to find that the Wendel Cathedral where she was planning to meet up with Bogard, the knight who'd taken care of her for the past ten years, was closed for interior renovations and that it wouldn't be open again until night on the next Mana Day. They still had today and all of tomorrow to wait. Matt had gotten annoyed about this turn of events, but Rose didn't mind. It seemed like all they'd been doing lately was pushing through dungeons and fighting monsters, not to mention trying to avoid the notice of Dark Lord's Heretic Hunters. If they got the chance to sit and relax in real civilization for once, Rose wasn't going to turn it down.
Besides, there were plenty of things to do here, too.
Rose got dressed and headed downstairs, retrieving breakfast and exchanging a "good morning" with the innkeeper. Resting fairly sure that Matt wouldn't be up for a while and so she was free to do whatever she pleased, she headed outside to look around.
It was early. Few of Wendel's citizens were outside at this hour, although there were some men and women meandering around, probably heading to wherever they worked. There was a couple standing beneath a tree and talking, and an old man fumbling with the keys to one of the stores.
And—Rose stared for a moment, hardly believing her good fortune—there was the silver-haired Mavole she'd met yesterday, sitting on a park bench and apparently feeding the flock of birds settled on the cobblestones before him while not bent over something she couldn't see. She'd wanted to talk to him more before, but Matt was apparently still irritated with the entire Mavole race after their encounter with Isabella and Count Lee, and he'd hauled her off before she'd gotten the chance.
Well, Matt wasn't around to get in her way now. Good. Skirting around the birds in an effort to keep from scaring them off, Rose headed towards the benches to say hello to—Devius, she remembered his name was.
Before she'd even gotten the chance, however, he glanced up at her, a spark of curiosity lighting his otherwise impassive expression. "Good morning, and hello again," he said in a low tone, also apparently trying not to frighten the birds.
Something of his directness, or the fact that he'd sensed her presence before she'd had the chance to be polite, had Rose blushing. "Um—hello," she replied, smiling. "Would you mind if I—?"
"Of course not, as long as you wouldn't mind taking over for me here." He pointed to the soft leather pouch he'd been scattering seed from. "I'm not the best at multitasking."
"Sure." And, trying not to let her happiness be completely obvious, Rose sat down next to him, taking a handful of seed and tossing it lightly, watching the pigeons and sparrows and robins hopping after it with a giggle. Beside her, Devius said nothing, but she heard the faint scratch of pencil on paper, and she wondered what he was doing.
They sat in relative silence for a while longer, Rose tossing seed to the birds and Devius working at whatever he was working at. However, one of the few townspeople wandering around got a bit too close to the flock, and they flew off skittishly, scattering feathers all across the ground.
"Aww…" Rose made a face at the passerby, who'd walked on, completely ignorant that he'd just broken their comfortable silence.
"It's alright." Devius, too, had looked up, and was watching the feathers drift to the cobblestones with that same impassive expression. "They are wild birds, after all. They're prone to startling easily." He turned to Rose with a hint of a smile playing at his lips. "I'm actually surprised they didn't take off when you got close."
Something about the way he was looking at her made Rose go bright red. "Oh, uh… we had a lot of birds in the village where I'm from, and I didn't like scaring them, so I guess I learned how to move without doing that. Um—you like birds, don't you? You were feeding these ones, and you have birds in your room at the inn…"
"I suppose." Devius pushed his hair out of his face, tucking thick silver strands behind one pointed ear in an artful gesture. "Usually I work with domesticated songbirds, or birds of prey. They're far less frightened of people as a whole."
That was when Rose got her first good look at what Devius had been concentrating so fiercely on. "Oh my—" Before he could do much more than blink at her, she leaned over the sketchbook he was balancing on his crossed legs, staring enthralled at the drawings of the birds she'd been feeding that coated the page. "These are amazing," she told him, pointing. "I can't believe you can draw this well! I've never seen anything this good before!"
"You're… interested in art?"
"More music, but—these are just soooo good!" Rose kept staring at Devius' sketches, gaping. "I've really never seen anything like them!"
"Please." He turned slightly away. "These are amateurish at best; without the proper time to devote to even a sketch or study, I—"
"Yeah, I know you're obligated to self-deprecate since you're the artist and it sounds really conceited if you acknowledge you're good—but really, be honest with yourself! These are awesome!" Too enthralled by Devius' work to be shy, Rose smacked him on the shoulder. "If you're calling these bad, I'd hate to see what you'd rate as good! Can I look?"
He sighed and put his palm to his face. "…If you want."
Rose accepted the sketchbook from him and carefully turned the pages back to the beginning, slowly examining every page. Most of the drawings were of birds, she noticed—birds of all kinds, some merely sketches while others were meticulously shaded in charcoals, protected by thin sleeves of delicate paper to keep them from smearing. There were more of adobe buildings and desert skylines, and a few of ordinary townspeople going about their daily lives. Turning the next page, Rose found herself looking at the rough sketch of a woman's face. Even though the drawing was unfinished, there was real depth to her eyes—they had both an absence and a warmth that made Rose's chest hurt.
"Who is this?" she asked, turning to Devius and pointing to the woman on the page.
"…" Devius glanced at the sketch, then away. "That's my mother."
"Your mother? Really? She's so young-looking. I'm surprised…" Rose turned the page to find more drawings of Devius' mother, quickly sketched pictures of her at a windowsill, or with birds or butterflies decorating her arms and hair. There were few fully finished drawings—apparently she'd never stayed still long enough for Devius to do them. And maybe it was just Rose's imagination, but every sketch seemed very sad to her.
After the drawings of Devius' mother ended, there was a beautifully detailed charcoal of a young man in black pants and a black sleeveless shirt reclining at an angle in a chair with his face rested on the heel of his hand. He had very long, feathery-looking hair, and Rose could just see the pointed tips of his ears poking through. For some reason he seemed familiar to her, although she couldn't think where she'd seen his face before.
Perhaps seeing her frown, Devius explained. "This is my younger brother. It's rare that we're able to see each other often, as we're both nobles and we have our duties to our lands to consider. Still, we visit every now and then."
Rose nodded and flipped through a few more pages of birds. "I haven't seen any pictures of your father in here…" she said a little hesitantly. "Did something happen?"
Devius was silent for a moment. "Young lady, are you aware of what happens to a Mavole and human who intermarry?" he asked then.
Rose shook her head, looking up at him. He had a very distant, closed expression, but his eyes had gone very dark.
"There's a geas on our race, a powerful compulsive spell, that forbids full-blooded Mavoles to marry humans. If they break the geas, they first become physically ill, and then the disease spreads to their mind. They will slowly lose all self-knowledge, as well as their memories of their spouses and children. My brother and I are half-bloods. When my mother first became ill, my father was desperate to save her… when he discovered there was nothing he could do, he separated our family in hopes that being away from him would cure her. It hasn't; it's just slowed the progress of the disease. My mother no longer remembers her husband, and there are times she doesn't even recognize my brother and myself.
"But to have done what he did, to turn his back on his family and his problems… to the rest of us, it seemed like he was abandoning us. Families should not be split apart. People who love each other should always be able to see each other if they want to. It's cruel to make that kind of decision for people who aren't allowed any say. So, because of this, my brother and I are estranged from our father. I haven't seen him in years and I don't even know if he's alive… and I don't particularly care. Even if he were suffering at this very moment, I doubt I would be able to forgive him."
"That's…" Rose looked down at the ground. "It's so sad. I guess… I can understand where you're coming from, if only a little bit. I never really knew my father, and I found out about ten years ago that the woman who raised me wasn't really my mother. I was brought up with Mana believers, and because that was the time when Dark Lord became active…" She let the sentence hang, banishing painful memories. "It's hard… not being able to be with the people you cared about, the people who took care of you. It's not right, just like you said. It's not right."
"…" When Rose glanced back up, she saw that Devius was giving her a long, considering stare. "…I wasn't sure at first, but… I have the feeling that we're not so different, you and I."
"Maybe not." Rose blushed a little and looked back down at the sketchbook in her hands, staring intensely at the graphite etchings of falcon wings that covered the page. He was so quiet, but the way he was so direct in focusing on her and only her… it was a little embarrassing. Since she was starting to hear her heart pounding, she turned the page of Devius' sketchbook again as a distraction and found herself staring at a strange portrait.
Now here's someone else with that scary-intense stare, she thought, staring into the dark eyes of a thin and somewhat girlish young man with very long hair. In the picture, he was pulling it back from his face with both hands and his eyes were half-closed, but the way he was drawn made him look like he was staring straight at her—almost confrontationally so. It was direct and challenging and the kind of thing that you almost didn't want to look at for too long. Even more flustered, Rose turned the page, but found another drawing of the same person there.
There were lots of pictures of him here, so many that they almost outnumbered Devius' bird sketches. Charcoals of him standing against a wall or sitting, always positioned artfully—usually with one leg arced out like a dancer's or his hands in his hair or at his face. There were also a few nudes of him, too—drawn precisely and meticulously, so much so that it almost made Rose blush. She really did admire Devius' skill—it showed in the delicate shading of his subject's skin, in the faint, tiny etches of scars here or there, in the impossibly accurate links of the chain pendant the young man always seemed to be wearing. Flipping the page to a partially colored sketch, Rose realized with a jolt that she almost recognized this person, too.
He looks like that Julius, she thought to herself, chewing at a thumbnail as she stared at the somehow accusing eyes that she now saw were very dark green. But I can't ever imagine that person knowing Devius… let alone posing for pictures, or looking this… desperate, or vulnerable.
"You… seem to draw this person a lot," she said aloud at last.
Devius nodded. "This is my brother's lover," he explained in a very matter-of-fact tone. (Rose flinched with surprise and stared at him, then back down at the drawing.) "We don't always get along very well—he's rather the emotional type, very possessive, and he's usually scheming something. Still, he's an excellent model, and doesn't mind being drawn."
"Really?" Rose buried her outright shock, knowing that in the face of Devius' utter nonchalance it would seem terribly rude, and tried to think of something to ask. "How is that? I mean, how is he a better model than anyone else you've drawn, that is…"
As with almost their entire conversation, Devius was totally unfazed by her awkwardness. "It involves an instinctive knowledge of how to pose. With most people—my brother, for instance, in that charcoal of him you saw—the artist has to leave explicit directions to how the subject should sit or stand or behave, and then the subject will get bored and want to shift around if the drawing takes longer than they expect. There are some people who have the type of artistic flair already that allows them to choose an interesting position. Maybe it's just self-consciousness or conceit, but whatever it is, it definitely helps." Devius gave a light shrug and pushed his hair back again—it had begun to fall into his face. "It's also advantageous if the model has a certain shamelessness about posing naked, possibly provocatively, for long stretches of time."
The half-smirk about his lips and eyes told her he was joking, but Rose was only able to offer a shaky laugh. "I-I see."
"My preferences and my brother's are most definitely dissimilar, but unlike most people—most artists, even—I believe that one should not be ashamed to acknowledge and understand beauty, no matter where one finds it. My brother's lover has a kind of beauty that you don't often find in humans or Mavoles… and from what little I know, his life has been somewhat… difficult. It's what gives him that air he has—challenging and hurt at once. It compels, even as it disturbs. It makes him a very interesting subject. And he is beautiful—so I take it upon myself to attempt to capture that beauty."
"…"
"I enjoy beautiful things," Devius said calmly. "Music, or art, it matters little. The times we live in are ugly… so it's my opinion that what beauty exists should be cherished all the more."
Rose nodded, a little breathlessly. "I understand exactly what you mean," she told him.
And at that, he smiled—really smiled—the harsh, apathetic, heavy angles to his face softening, his slate-gray eyes going warm. Gently, he reached out and traced his fingertips over her cheek, catching her curls and letting them cascade away as he pulled his hand back. "I would very much like to paint your portrait someday, if I can," he remarked almost conversationally. "Although I have business to attend to in town here, and I know you do as well, you may visit me at my manor in the deserts of Jadd whenever you find it convenient. It's not often I'm out… and the invitation is always open."
While Rose sat there and stared, feeling her face approaching the kinds of reds you only found in paint sets, Devius deftly collected his sketchbook and stood. "I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me—my birds require seeing to. I'll be here for a few more days; if you'd like to talk, go ahead and drop by."
Rose felt like her chest was glowing, and even as her face got hotter and hotter, she smiled at him brightly. "I promise I will!"
This, she thought giddily as he quietly walked away, is going to be a very, very good day.
---
"Good morning," Rose said cheerfully as she sat down across from Matt at the inn's breakfast table.
Matt made a face at her and took a pull at the mug of black coffee he was surgically attached to. "Ngeh. What the heck's so good about it?"
She just grinned and shook her head at him. "Oh, never you mind. You wouldn't care about it, anyway."
Matt made a disgruntled sound of semiconsciousness and stabbed his pancakes with his fork, shoving what equated to a whole one into his mouth and starting to chew.
Rose rolled her eyes. Even if he was her friend, he was a total moron. Still, even Matt's complete and utter stupidity wouldn't be able to dent her elation today.
Owari.