Written for a challenge on the Dragon Age Writer's Corner here on the forums:
"Write a story about one of the (many) random pieces of... stuff... you pick up in the world. You can use the Codex for inspiration if you want, or you can just completely wing it. It can be hilarious, serious, long, short, whatever."
Anatole studied the scene before him, then leaned forward and dabbled delicately at his canvas, filling in the highlights on a few more blades of grass in the foreground. It was a lovely little serene spring landscape, looking down the grassy hill toward a pretty little flower-edged pond, some fruit trees in bloom in the distance before the dark-forested background hills. Just the sort of thing his patron would pay handsomely for, to hang in a guest room and promptly forget, other than when she wished to brag to her guests about having had it painted specifically for that room by a well-known artist.
He'd painted many such scenes for Madame this spring, on this long tour of Ferelden, her childhood home, that she'd sent him on. Of course, he was having to fudge the details somewhat, he thought, as he huddled deeper into his coat. Very little grass was showing through the snow that lingered in this small upland valley, the fruit trees in flower existed only in his mind. Dark-forested hills, yes, a pond, yes – through murky and brown, not the clear blue he'd painted. Some plants around it, certainly, but mainly dead things lingering from the year before, only a few hardy spring flowers having opened yet, here and there, the faintest fuzz of new green growth showing through the brown remnants of last year's grass.
He started at the sound of a loud angry gobbling sound, and turned to see a goosegirl herding her charges along the muddy path toward the pond. For a moment he worried that he'd have to grab up his things and flee – geese were notoriously territorial creatures, and a full-grown goose was not a creature to argue with, not when a buffet of its wing could break a man's arm, and it's sharp, hard beak do unspeakable damage to tender flesh, as he'd once had the misfortune of learning the hard way in his own misspent youth. But the goosegirl was deft with the use of her long crook and the quick scattering of a few grains of corn to distract the large waterfowl away from the man, and once they caught sight of the pond they forgot him entirely, waddling rapidly downhill in a rather ridiculous fashion to plunge into its fetid waters and begin noisily feeding among the new growth along its verge.
She watched the geese for a moment, then walked over to find out why this stranger was perched on a rock overlooking the pond, an odd wooden and canvas contraption before him. She was quite taken with the landscape he was painting, and gave him a crooked-tooth smile, clasping her thin-fingered hands together in delight, gabbling away at him in the thick-tongued language of this land.
"I'm sorry, I only speak Orlesian," he told her, shrugging and looking perplexed. She laughed, and pointed at one of the fruit trees he'd painted, then gestured at the surrounding landscape and shook her head. That was clear – pointing out there was no such thing in view. He grinned. "I know, but it's what my patron wants, and if I want to eat, it's what I will paint for her. She would not pay me for this muddy, murky scene before me," he said, shaking his head and making a dismissive gesture at the sodden landscape.
The girl laughed again – amused by his tone of voice, even if not understanding his words – and stood behind him for a while, watching him paint, before retiring further down the hill to perch on a rock outcrop and watch over her flock.
She was not a pretty girl, not by any stretch of the imagination – very tall, and skinny as a rake, with fingers like crooked twigs, hair like dirty straw, and skin rank and filthy, but as she perched there, head turned away to watch her charges, he found the way the sun lit the curve of her cheek and the wind toyed with her long tangled hair and ragged clothing interesting. More interesting then the pretty landscape, that he might just as well be painting in a nice warm garret somewhere, as be perched here on a cold rock on a windy day in a high, snowy valley.
He put away the painting, carefully locking it into the frame that would protect the still-wet paint, and drew out a much smaller canvas, stretched of coarser material then the fine cotton canvas he used for his patron's commissions. His own canvas, this, paid for out of his meagre earnings. He quickly sketched in the girl on her rock, the pond, the geese feeding, blocked in what colours he could in the little time he could spare. Her clothes, which had first seemed a muddle of greys and browns, he realized were subtly coloured, patched together of rags of what had once been well-dyed cloth. The faded grey shawl around her shoulders still showed hints of its original blue, the brownish top she wore had been mended with fabric that had been red or rose or some similarly warm colour once, before years of washing and wear stole much of the colour away. How many other women, he wondered, had worn that cloth, shaped and reshaped into various garments, as the colour leached away and the fabric thinned, before it became nought more than a rag for the goosegirl to patch her top with? And could he somehow convey that in paint alone?
The wind picked up, almost knocking his easel over. It was clouding over; likely one of those miserable cold spring showers was going to begin shortly. He hastily packed away the canvas and his paints and fled. He finished both paintings a few days later, huddled in a warm room at a comfortable inn many miles away, while nursing the cold he'd caught that day from sitting out in the wind so long. He quite liked how the portrait of the goosegirl came out; enough so that after that, whenever he had the time and money to work on his own little projects instead of his patron's commissions, he sought out and painted the peasantry of this dismal little land.
His landscapes were what he was remembered for in his life. It was only after his death, many years later, when his landlady sold off the contents of his garret, that his portraits came to light. And it was for those that he became most famous, remembered for centuries after his brief fame as a painter of landscapes had passed into history. Those simple portraits of plain-faced peasants engaged in their daily life, captured with an honest eye.
Most famous of all, the earliest known example of his work in peasant portraiture, was the 'Portrait of a Goosegirl', with its subtle shadings of rich colour hiding in the folds of her garments, in the muddy landscape beyond her, her hair and ragged clothing equally wind-blown. The sunlit curve of her pale cheek was echoed in the sunlit curves of the snow and the white geese grazing on the verge of the murky pond, dotted here and there with the bright coloured early flowers of a long-forgotten spring day.