Green
A bright summer's day: hot, bright, and for much of the Great Demon Kingdom's population, a good excuse to bum around and take a break from work.
But for a few members of the ruling class, this was not to be. Take Gunter, for example. On that day, he was toiling away at the library, reviewing declarations and statements that Her Majesty would be releasing the next day. Why were there so many things to say to so many people? People need explanations for everything—for wells drying up, for crops failing, etcetera, etcetera, and you just have to say something before you do something about it, which doesn't make sense come to think of it—
Gunter daintily wiped off a bead of sweat that threatened to slide down his forehead. "Calm down, Lord von Kleist," he muttered to himself. It was the heat getting to his head, probably. The library was turned away from the sun, and so it was less sunny, but the heat from the exposed rocks outside reflected to the rooms inside the castle.
In other words, it was uncomfortable there. With all his willpower already summoned, it's easy to think that anything and everything will distract him from his work…
BANG!The door behind him flew wide open, and Gunter jerked violently in surprise.
"Oh…" Gunter whimpered softly. He had just made a rather unattractive gash of black ink on the document he was meticulously writing on. After mourning for a few seconds, he turned in annoyance to the intruder-in-question. "Next time, knock!" he said.
The person didn't take notice of him. He was already making his way towards an ornate chest of drawers standing in one of the shadiest parts of the room.
"Wolfram! Please look at me when I'm speaking to you," said Gunter. Really, for all his breeding, the brat has no manners at all.
The blond, clad in his painter's smock and beret, didn't apologize. Instead, he kept opening and closing drawers until he found what he was looking for. "I'm taking 2 more tubes of paint—citrus yellow and ultramarine. Please take note of it for the inventory," he said. And without giving Gunter another chance to complain, he rushed out of the room and slammed the door with the same intensity as when he entered the room—BANG!
"Well, I never! The nerve of that little brat, just ordering me around like I'm a lackey! As if he had talent for the fine arts… he's probably making another conceited self-portrait!" grumbled Gunter. What else could it be, right? The brat hates traditional paintings, but he always paints the people that he likes—or at least, distorted versions of them—and yellow and blue are his colours. And everyone knows that Wolfram doesn't like many people. And more especially, everyone knows that Wolfram likes himself above all.
He turned to his papers and sighed. No use pondering about stressful things. Now he had no choice but to trash the parchment and start over.
An hour and a half later, Gunter was still in the Library, which was gradually taking on the feeling of an oven. He had just finished rewriting the proclamation that will allow for the reconstruction of a major road leading to Bloodpledge Castle, and at that point he was struggling with a proposal to use one of Anissina's inventions (Refresh-Yourself-like-a-Spring-kun) to deal with the increasing number of unsanitary or dried-up wells in the towns.
As he pondered to himself whether this was a proposal that he would wish to come to fruition, the door went "BANG!" again. Unfortunately, he was handling a bottle of ink, and caused a murky blackness to spill all over his obsessively white trousers. (Luckily, the papers were safe from harm.)
Wolfram again was the culprit. He was on his way to the chest of drawers, but paused when he saw Gunter.
Seething, the older man said, "Well? What have you got to say for yourself?"
The blond blinked. "Nothing. You, on the other hand, need to change your trousers," he said. Then, as nonchalantly as he went in, he started going through the chest of drawers again, in search of paint.
"You… you…!" Gunter stood up and looked disdainfully at his trousers, and also noted the drops of ink slowly dripping on the floor. Irritated, he cried out, "Why must you torment me like this? Now I'll not get any work done at this rate!"
"Oh, quit making excuses, Gunter. You can just change into new trousers, right? Then you can go back to writing in your diary."
"You made me spill my ink! And now I'm in no state to work! You…" Honestly. If this vain boy was not a prince, he'd have been strangled long ago.
"You probably just don't feel like working. Maybe that's why you spilled the ink on yourself, so don't blame me," said Wolfram. "Anyway, I'm taking one of the big tubes of white paint. Please note that down as well for the inventory."
"And you seem to be wasting a lot of paint today, your highness," growled Gunter, putting some scathing sound at his last two words.
"Ah, yeah…" Wolfram paused and looked outside. He seemed to daze off for a while, staring at the sunlight, long enough for Gunter to think it was strange.
What's this brat up to, anyway?
"It's the light, I guess," he said, finally. "The sun's really bright today. It really makes hair and eyes shine in an… interesting way."
They both fell silent. Wolfram shook his head, as if to snap himself back to reality, before making his way outside, back to the painting room.
"Hmph! How could someone be so mesmerized by himself? Ah, vanity," Gunter muttered to himself. And then, noticing that he was dripping all over the floor, he waddled towards his quarters to change out of his inky pants.
At around five o'clock in the afternoon, Gunter was exhausted from all the work, but at least he was all clean, and around 80 percent finished.
He smoothed his long, silver hair with his hand and noted how damp it was with sweat. It really was a hot day today. It wasn't just irritation that made him feel the heat.
Oh, if only it weren't summer. Then little lord brat needn't have kept all the paint away from the sunlight. I can't say I blame him. Bear Bee excrement really smells bad when it stays under the sunlight for too long, doesn't it?
A gentle click of the door made him stop his train of thought. He turned around and saw a young, green-haired youth, peering in cautiously from the door.
Seeing him in that relatively calm state, she smiled and walked towards him with open arms. "Father! How was your day?" she asked as she hugged him.
"Oh, Gisela. It wasn't such a nice day today. Too hot, too irritating," he answered.
"It means you clashed with Lord von Bielefeld again, didn't you?" she asked. As she looked at the look of pure exasperation on her adoptive father's face, she giggled.
"Ah, I do not wish to remember it, Gisela. Please do tell me about your day instead," he said. And as he looked at her, he noticed how her eyes seem to have sunk a little deeper into the sockets, and how much damper her hair was with sweat than his. "Why, you look much more exhausted, Gisela! What have you been up to? I thought you didn't have work today!"
"Oh, this? It's nothing, father, don't worry about it. I didn't have work today, but I did help out at the castle today."
"What did they make you do? Don't tell me you were doing the laundry! I don't know what to say to the other nobles if anybody saw you—"
She cut him off with a lively giggle. "No, father, of course not. If I was there, I'd be the one supervising the laundrywomen," she said.
"Ah, that's right. That is to be expected from the Sergeant, right? So what did you do today?"
"I helped out His Highness today, with his painting…"
Gunter looked at her with curiosity. "Helped? How?"
"Oh, er…" Suddenly, she looked down and cleared her throat. Gunter raised his eyebrows as she took a moment to gather her thoughts. "Well, I guess standing next to a mirror is one way to put it…" she said softly.
Standing next to a mirror…?! Suddenly, Gunter's vision darkened. That little brat! Apparently it wasn't enough that his presence ruined his usual methodical workday. Of course Wolfram had to have some form of slave—how insulting that he picked his only daughter to hold up a mirror for more than five grueling hot hours, all to further facilitate his vanities! Gunter's veins all but burst as he thought about it.
Next thing he knew, he was storming out of the library and towards Wolfram's painting room, with Gisela calling out to him in vain. "Father, stop! He doesn't want anyone to see his unfinished works!"
"Gisela, stop it! I'm disappointed in you! And you let other people call you Sergeant?" Now he wasn't listening to any protests, because he was opening the door to the painting room and came face-to-face with Wolfram…
Except that it wasn't exactly Wolfram that he saw, but a painting.
More specifically, a small part of the painting. The small part where a mirror is standing in the background, and reflected on it is a blond boy working inaudibly behind a canvas.
And in front of the canvas: a half-painted face, a spot of purple, and wave after wave of green, almost mimicking the ocean in the middle of the day. The eyes shone brightly against the sunlight.
Clearly, it was intended to be Gisela. But the obvious intent to avoid any distortion in her image gave the whole picture an ethereal feel to it. It's probably all the light that's shining through the window…
Gunter, mesmerized, stared at this image, oblivious to the stink of the paint and the soft footsteps behind him.
"What do you think? He says it's his first venture into realism." Gisela's voice piped up shyly after a long silence.
"It's… not very realistic," said Gunter.
"Really? But he worked so very hard at it," she said.
Gunter stared at the humongous canvas: it was about three feet wide and five feet high, and it was easy to imagine how many tubes of yellow, blue, and white paint were needed to finish the whole thing.
Sighing, he turned around and tottered back to the library.
"Father? Where are you going?" asked Gisela. "You're working again?"
"I've got to take notes in the inventory, or else he'll run out of bear bee excrement," he said. And without another word, he closed the library door behind him.
-end-
Author's notes: Hurrah for another non-Death Note fic :D And hurrah for Wolfram and Gisela :D I'm sorry if the spellings and terms are all weird and messed up. I've got no patience for putting in the little u with the two dots on top, haha.