The Art of painting Titans
Chapter 1: Who are you?
Today is his day off and after the fourth night shift Levi is sure he earned every second of it. The lack of relaxed free time is something he is sure he will miss sometime in the future but he is young, 25, and a few nights a week being on call won´t kill him.
Not that he is a good sleeper. Levi would call it manageable, at least the time he gets on average during a working week. No one said being a fire fighter in one of the busiest cities of the world would be easy. But he likes his job. Every second of it, he would never admit it but even training their new members is something he general enjoys. Working with the young and unformed is always something he is looking forward. He took over this job two years ago, as his own mentor went into retirement. His boss asked him to train the new commers and they found out that getting another young person to do the job is far easier for all of them. The newbies don't look so frightened and if they have a question a more experienced colleague needs to answer Levi would find someone.
It would take another 5 months until they would get fresh blood and Levi is looking forward to it. Today he is on a different mission. It´s called relaxing and soul seeking. His colleague told him to try it after he had snapped at him for no reason, except for being tired. Levi notice that his sleep patten got worse over the last few years so he asked his colleagues what they do to relax. Most told him to go for long walks in the park, join a club or find a hobby.
So going for a walk it is and New York offers lots of parks. First Levi tried the park but soon realizes that all the dog owner, families and jogger got on his nerves. His mind wanders to his last dream. It always does. Levi told his parents about them and they send him to some child psychologist. He never did this mistake again. They were just dreams and even when they got more frequent over the past few years he wouldn't see them as anything else.
Dreams about giant naked people that eat smaller people. Steaming bodies and grotesque faces. There is nothing real of it. Levi dreams of people in uniforms he had never seen but they are all shadowy and he couldn't even tell if it were men or women. It doesn't matter anyway most end up as lunch snacks for the ugly giants he calls titans. He has no idea why he calls them that. They are just big, tall figures, still his mind found a name for it.
Most times he has a dream like that he wakes up reaching for something or someone that isn't there. Levi would never be able to describe that feeling. If he had to try he would say that he is missing a piece of himself that only another person can give him back. As if he had give something very important for him away, entrusted it to this other person and this person took it. Now that this person is gone Levi needs it back but it doesn't feel broken more like its taken care off. It´s hart to explain. This piece is still missing and Levi really wants to know who that person is that keeps it.
As a teenager Levi tried to find answers on the internet. He found fairy tales and other stories about giants, like Jack and the beanstalk and others. By the word titan he finds legends and parts of the antique Greek history but nothing looks even remotely like his dreams. Like the life of these people that seem to fight for their survival against the titans. He had given up after he became an expert in German folk lore and Greek mythology.
There are no titans. No explanation for his dreams. Nothing that would help him finding out what the dreams mean and why he has them for as long as he can remember.
Levi wakes up from his wandering mind and finds himself in a street he never walked before. He just passed a small used bookstore and thinks about entering as a look in the window shows him something he had never seen with wake eyes. A titan.
First Levi thought that it was a hallucination or something like that but than he sees that it is the reflection from the house across the street. Without looking for the cars he crosses the street and arrives in front of a small gallery, without getting hit by any vehicle.
The gallery showcases a collection of paintings. Most of these paintings seem to show off Levi´s titans. That couldn't be. Without hesitation Levi enters the gallery and looks at the paintings. All of them show titans, they look exactly like the titans he sees in his dream. Had he seen these paintings as a child and dreamed of them?
No, his parents never took him to something like that. And the pictures in his mind are moving. The titans are moving. Levi walks around the gallery, looking at every picture, he finds titans that look exactly like some of the ones he sees. Others are different but have the same vibe.
The gallerist comes over to Levi, thinking of him as a potential buyer. Levi looks at the painting of a titan without skin, looking over a wall, birds fly over the sky and steam evaporates around the titan. He looks at the woman coming closer.
"What can you tell me about the artist and how long are these paintings here?" She seems a bit surprised by the ruff voice, but she has seen stranger people. All art lovers have something strange about them.
"The name of the artist is unknown. We just got them in. They come from a youth centre. The director of it has a talented person working their and she got him to show them here. He doesn't want to be named but his art is marvellous. I never have seen something like it. A unique topic, executed in a different style. He must be young but incredible talented." Levi stops her there. He has enough information.
"Where can I find this youth centre?" She looks surprised but Levi doesn't need more information about art styles and brush control or whatever will follow. The artist is young, so Levi couldn't have seen his work before. That means this artist has the same dream as I. Someone who sees the titans. He needs to find this person.
"It´s just around the corner, you can´t miss it. It´s called Hanji´s laboratory. Don't know why she had called it that. The director is Hanji Zoe. She is a bit eccentric." Levi leaves the gallery before she can even finish her sentence and runs out of the door, down the street. He needs to find this artist.