In the cool of a still, cloudy afternoon, a bereaved young man stood dressed in black before the hut of Kibougamine-no-mura's most acclaimed artist with a small, painted portrait in his hands. The portrait, while it easily could have been mistaken for one of himself, depicted a young woman. Her hair was long and black, like his. Her features at once sharp and lacking harshness, like his; keen and slim and graceful, like his. She had a smile with the elegant curve of a longbow.
He wore the very same sort of smile, behind the mask covering the lower half of his face, which he adjusted with a light tug before pulling a cord beside the door and sending a set of glassy chimes ringing and dancing.
It wasn't seconds before his ringing of the chimes was answered, which took him aback slightly - he stood just that much taller and straighter on the crack of the wooden door as it began to open inward before the artist flitted into view from behind it.
She had been expecting him. And he, likewise, anticipated due to his knowledge of her nature that when greeted him with her blue eyes wide and bright, and her smile almost giddily sunny.
"Ahh, hello, hello!" she cooed, waving in wide, sweeping arches; in return, he bowed. "Korekiyo Shinguji, yes?" she carried on. "Atua and I have been waiting for you for longer than you may think, you know!"
Despite the delivery as if Atua was a housemate, workmate, or other such simple partner of hers, Korekiyo the Occultist knew well who she was speaking of.
You see, Angie Yonaga may have been known throughout Kibougamine-no-mura as the Artist and Craftswoman, but she referred to herself as neither of those things. No, she styled herself, instead, as Angie, the Priestess. While she left no question who she was priestess to, it was ill-understood what, precisely, she was priestess to - she spoke of Atua often, but always in a manner that communicated very little about his nature as a deity. Even the Occultist's extensive research across the land of various religious and mystical practices, widespread beliefs and cults seldom even whispered of, had given him no knowledge which he could attach to the name.
All that was clear was that Atua always seemed to want what she seemed to want, and that all that occurred was ultimately right and good and for the best, as it was Atua's will.
This seemed to particularly apply to her art. She claimed often that every sculpture, every carving, every portrait, every string of beads she created was born out of divine inspiration, regardless of what it depicted. Her status as Artist and Craftswoman did, indeed, simply follow as an extension of her perceiving herself as a Priestess.
The unique fervor behind her creation is part of what brought the Occultist to her door. They both knew this, and so she turned on the bare soles of her feet and nearly skipped back into her single-room hut with nothing but a single look - still bright-eyed and beaming - over her shoulder to confirm he was following. He began doing so on this cue, gliding after her like shadow and dark wind.
Her works lined the walls that they passed as they rounded her hearth, casting strange shapes in the high windows and tinting the gray light that shafted in from outside them. He regarded them with flicks of his eyes - landscapes painted and washed with home-distilled inks, marching lines of figurines shaped from home-dug clay and decorated with crystals gathered with a birdlike natural fine-eye. There was always something new to observe about them; some part of the brain, on looking at each one, he found, still found that he was looking at each one for the first time. He had not - he had studied her works extensively, by now, partly because he had never encountered art before that had had this effect on him: this uncanniness as if they came from nothing, just as her stripe of supposed ceremonial tradition seemed to.
On the wooden table she guided him to in the back of the hut, there was an exception. What appeared to be the beginning of a new piece - a lump of pale wax, from which protruded the shape of a head. He arched an eyebrow at her; she simply turned to him, gave the little cushion sitting at one side of the table a gentle sideways "kick", and dropped herself to sit on one opposite it.
He took this action on her part as permission for him to sit as well. He bowed again and did so.
Once they sat, her in full lotus and him kneeling, she gave his attention very little room to continue contemplating the barely-formed statuette between them. She leaned forward, her eyelids flittering like butterflies until they flashed at him in a way that seemed almost wider than they had been before.
"You have come to me," she began, with a tilt of her head, "to request a funeral portrait, have you not?"
"Yes," the Occultist said, with another smile subtly arching behind his mask. It faded as he lifted the small portrait he had brought - a quick flicking look downwards at it before he passed it across the table. "My older sister was taken by illness this winter. As the last surviving member of my family, I have all I shall need to see her into the afterlife with the ceremony that a person so dear to me is rightfully due - except for a portrait… fit for the occasion."
She'd begun surveying it as he spoke the way a child might survey a strange new animal, or an unfamiliar shape on the wall. Once he finished, she took it.
After a few seconds, she looked up. Then back down, then back up. She beamed.
The Occultist hummed one faint, soft, smoky note in questioning.
"Oooooooooh, the two of you look very alike," she said, cheerily as if they hadn't been discussing a dead woman. "You said she was your bigger sister, didn't you? You're her spitting image."
Unoffended, the Occultist smiled and bowed a nod. "It has been found that people often come to look like those who they spend the most time with," he said. "I would almost expect that I've come to take quite a bit after her."
The Artist said not a word to that. Instead, she set the little portrait down. The Occultist's brow arched again - but as she produced a lit candle from underneath the table and began to take it to the lump of wax in front of him, he began to understand, and his eyes began to widen in a tentative fascination.
The wax warmed with a surprising quickness, and surprisingly quick, too, was her work. She began molding and pinching and shaping until the little formless translucent thing in front of them started to stand on two tall legs. Arms began to lift out from its sides. Curtains of hair began to fall and curve. His eyes watched her face just as much as her hands - all the while as she worked, she smiled almost dumbly, blithely, abundantly happy without knowing what about.
At the end of it all, her hands stilled with a fresh wax doll cooling in her fingers.
"This will look familiar, I think," she finally said, turning it to face him and lowering over the table behind it, looking at the Occultist from under the white hair hanging over her forehead like she was a cat peeking out from under the shade of a fern. "It may even look more familiar than the little painting you brought to me."
As the Occultist sized up the new little statuette, his eyes widened anew, for she was right. The hair of this colorless wax figure was long. What features it had were at once sharp and lacking harshness; keen, and slim, and graceful. By modeling her sculpture after him as he sat across from her, the Artist had, indeed, produced the beginnings of a perfect likeness of his sister.
All it was missing was her smile, with the elegant curve of a longbow.
The Occultist was impressed. When he told her this, the Artist giggled like a child. As she spoke, she swayed, as if dancing in her seat
"Your ritual doesn't need a portrait, does it?" she asked him. "You never said that. And now I know it must be true, because Atua cannot have had me bring out my wax before your visit for no reason at all - not when he knew what you wanted, too!
"We must honor this divine spark of inspiration - we must fan it! As we speak, I have many other divine works to pursue - but, but! If you will return to me at this time tomorrow, dressed as you wish to see it dressed, so that we may begin painting the figure, then in no time at all, you will have a tribute to your sister more than worthy of any kind of funeral. You will look at the finished work and feel as if your sister is with you again - and Atua will be there smiling on her ceremony, shining his light down on her!"
It was true that, to the knowledge of the Occultist, any kind of effigy or likeness of his sister would be appropriate for what he needed, and by the Artist's confidence in her inspiration for this approach, he was made all the more assured in the quality of the piece he could expect from her.
He agreed, bowed, took his portrait back, paid her for the beginnings of her work, and left, while behind him, the little wax figure stared without a face.