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Characters: Otto, Margolotta Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with Terry Pratchett or Discworld.
Art
Voracia had been his only love, his only family. He closed his eyes and tried to think of her, but her face was already fading from his memory. There was a chasm inside him, in his chest, vast and hungry and full of regret, but something was flowing into it. It was being filled. To the brim, and beyond, leaking into his mind, into his thoughts, like fever. No-one had told Otto about the replacement of one lust for another and yet, when they did, it made perfect sense. It explained the shape burned on his retina, pink and gold and white and black, the shape of a woman against torchlight, framed in the doorway, and the detailed play of shadow and light in a most beautiful display. He was noticing similar things now, almost daily. Where before he'd seen a candle, he now saw the light it threw, and where before there was absence of sight, now there was a myriad forest of shadow and colour. Otto had never been in love. He now felt that he knew what it must feel like. He painted – he couldn't help it. Voracia had been right – the League took care of its own. He had been set up in one of her house's rooms, and there was rumour that they were looking for somewhere more permanent for him. Otto had time to wonder vaguely what this meant – he had no money, and vampires were not known for adopting strangers into their families, fellow Ribboners or not. He expected he would have to find a way for himself somehow. He had little patience for these thought, though, being consumed by his new love, by his efforts. He'd eat rat and gladly wear rags if only they would keep him in paint. He wasn't any good. He destroyed brushes as fast as canvases, broke every piece of chalk he put on paper, and no colour he tried to mix ever turned out anything like the splendour before him, painted by sun or moon or fire. At last, he dipped his fingers in paint, and scratched shapes and smudged colours desperately. There was some progress then. Sweet stars, oh mother, there was that glimmer, that shape he was looking for. It was close to midnight, on a night of full moon, and there on the canvas was the gold of candlelight, the white of moonlight, the blue of shadow. 'Here,' a voice called behind him. He turned, and to his intoxicated eyes the shape behind him took some time to coalesce into a person. It was the lady in the pink cardigan, his indoors sunset, the angel of contrasts. She was smiling, and he recognised the glimmer in her eye, the hunger of a true vampire, but not the same blood-red tinge. 'I've brought you a present,' she said. 'Who are you?' he asked, taking without thinking the black box she had thrust into his hands. 'A shadow,' she said, putting a finger to her lips. 'Not officially here at all, you understand. Best not to mention me at all – I'll be gone by daytime, as it is. But look, here, Otto – look.' Otto raised the thing to his eye-level. 'Push zis button here –' The lady proceeded to show him the mechanism, and then introduce him to the demon, and then, as morning began to creep in, Otto pushed the button for the first time, and the imp painted the sky, in minute detail, perfect in every respect; and the lady's hair caught the glimmer of the rising sun, and the imp painted that too, strands of radiance on a tiny piece of paper. 'Who are you?' Otto asked again in a whisper. The lady's eyes gleamed, and she whispered her name in his ear, kissing him on the cheek. Then she opened the window, driving stripes of shadow across the floor, and melted into the morning fog. He had never been in love. Now he was. But not with her. He lifted the box, and captured the lines of black shadow behind the chair's legs.
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