Brushstrokes

The canvas was a barren landscape, the taught sheet rippling in the breeze. The white hills and valleys were shallow, but they did not remember the tension of the stretcher, it could have been millennia since the age of Gesso, when plaster washed over brown cloth, which creaked and groaned, and threatened to snap when it was stretched over the wooden frame. Once the plaster dried, the canvas was ready for pigment, its features covered in shallow grooves, leftover impressions from the gridded fibers beneath the shining primer.

When colors do arrive, they come first in wells, almost as if bubbling up from the canvas itself. Bright, vibrant colors, each with a unique personality and feeling, at one with where it is placed. CYAN dots the valleys, swaying languidly, collecting in ponds. YELLOW, hard and full and energy, streaks down from the high hills. even BLACK in small studs, brought great reverence to those around it, by it’s juxtaposition to them——solemn acknowledgement of the nothingness between forms.

Here and there, a brush slid over the scene. They mixed the colored paints, flattened them, drew them up into cresting waves and rippling tides. Most bodies of paint do not live long as their original colors, the brushes sweep them about, and they attain new identity as they mix with their neighbors. The thick brushes often lay the paints into quickly drying grooved plates, dead, but still vibrant. In the souther half of the canvas, an oddly large pool of MAGENTA formed, and the brushes do not touch it, or when they do, only gently. Some of the splotches of paint come to it, pick off pieces, and make themselves larger. The splotchlings that do so, however, are altered as a result of the exchange, and many merge so nearly to MAGENTA themselves, that they are compelled, as if by a gravitational pull, to return to the pool, and thus MAGENTA grows. Others are changed, but retain some fusion of their (original) will, and that of MAGENTA; RED and BLUE come from such small beginnings. BLUE was originally a speck of CYAN from the valley, and RED a ray of YELLOW from the hills. Now they were RED, and BLUE. They roamed the southland canvas, never straying too far from the soft, pillowy cradle of MAGENTA. Thanks to the sustenance MAGENTA provided them, they were big enough that they could consume other splotchlings, and be changed only little in their hue. RED and BLUE discovered that if they consumed only pigments which were their respective complements to MAGENTA, then they could return to the pool, sip from it, and return to their true color.(they don’t admit, however, that after discovering this technique they decided on more pleasing versions of themselves to return to) At some point, they became aware of each other. BLUE was returning from picking wild CYAN in the valley, and RED had chased down a particularly vigorous ray of YELLOW on the northeast hill they called Sunspot; they had changed slightly, and needed to feed on the MAGENTA pool to return to themselves. They took note of each other, the two largest mounds of paint in the southland canvas besides MAGENTA, and recognized that they were doing the same thing, for the same reason. Some intuition struck them both simultaneously, and they knew they were siblings.

Suddenly gifted with companionship, they saw the southland canvas differently, they saw it as their home. RED built highways of BLACK to shepherd YELLOW, which was always thrilled to enter the dark, into a ring of RED just outside the range of MAGENTA. Pumps of WHITE and BLACK formed a vestibule for MAGENTA to be mixed with YELLOW, and a generous seed of RED’s own bodily hue as a pasteurizing element. It is dirty work, but RED finds they don’t mind being changed, as long as they can return to the MAGENTA. BLUE watched the CYAN that grew in the valleys, and found that it comes from a needlelike rainfall of brushstrokes when the ground there is seeded with MAGENTA mixed loosely with GREEN into a sooty GREY. BLUE marveled at the ways in which the heavenly motions of the brushes could be made to act predictably, given time and patience.

RED offered to build structures for BLUE, who was too frail and easily altered to work with the harshness of BLACK, and when they were done, BLUE’s CYAN fields were safer, and easier to access. BLUE, in turn, taught RED how to study the cycles of the colors, and helped them find replenishing sources of YELLOW, and showed them how to use YELLOW without draining it completely.

Soon, RED and BLUE outshone MAGENTA on the canvas. What once was their lifeblood was now a trophy, a remembrance of where they came from. They often gazed at it together, remembering the early days of the canvas, that moment when they saw each other eating of MAGENTA, recognized their shared love for that color of promise and warmth, and instinctively knew themselves to be alike. Their domain spread across the southeastern corner of the canvas and could now be scene from a distance. They marveled at what their work had accomplished, and wondered if they could one day make the entire canvas bend to their will——but for now they knew home.

One day, while out at their CYAN fields, BLUE noticed something on the hills opposite them, a shape, not unlike the GREY which grew in the valley, but it moved——warping and molding across the ground. BLUE decided to take closer look, and when they reached the top of the hill at the very edge of their domain, they felt fear for the first time since they were only a splotchling, looking always upward for the stray movement of a brush. The entirety of the canvas of the northlands was engulfed in streaks of GREY, not like they’re GREY, placated and smooth. This GREY was muddy, opalescent with streaks of finer colors, the leftover remains of the fallen. Hardly any other colors were visible besides GREY, and it was discolored in different saturations in different spots in a way that sickened BLUE. It didn’t even care if it’s nature was changed by what it ate, it just ate.

BLUE rushed back to their home, and told RED of what they saw. It was only a matter of time before the shuddering mass came to them, they had to do something to stop it. They looked at MAGENTA, and vowed to protect it, as it protected them, until The Day the Paint Dries.

BLUE sent scouts out to all corners of their domain, to watch GREY’s advance, and to study its behavior. RED exhausted themselves building a moat of WHITE, harvested painstakingly from every corner of their domain, and increased the size of their industry twice over. The CYAN fields now filled a full half of the domain’s entire size, and the web of YELLOW filled BLACK strands pouring into the central hub was a dizzying maze of incomprehensible interconnections. RED consumed more MAGENTA with every step, careful not to take so much as to reduce its size beyond the point of being able to replenish, but the tasks at hand required so much material, it was all they could do to keep taking. BLUE discovered that while seemingly without consciousness, GREY did respond to certain stimuli. They were able to guide it away from their domain with small bait traps, mostly of their own BLUE, but most bright colors worked.

Eventually, the coming waves of GREY grew to where BLUE could no longer dissuade them from entering the southland canvas. They retreated behind the barrier which RED created, and waited anxiously for the arrival of the horde. The dark, swirling mass of GREY oozed over the far hill, and slowly moved towards them, urged on by shuffling of wiry brushes. RED and BLUE both held their forces up against the inside wall of the moat, ready to fight if necessary. RED would take the primary vanguard, a natural fighter, BLUE would focus on organizing their forces——if GREY breached, it would surely find more than one point of entry, and they would need to delegate work carefully. GREY reached the walls, and where it made contact with WHITE was instantly lightened to a creamy tint. The flaps and tendrils that were tinted shriveled from the wall, dazed by the unexpected event. RED would not give it a chance to realize what was happening. They launched a counter, opening up a sluice in the WHITE moat, and riding out to capture the lightened pigment. RED absorbed it readily, toned, but hue unchanged. Then, mission achieved, RED’s forced retreated back behind the moat. BLUE assessed the situation, there was hardly a visible decrease in GREY’s sheer volume of paint, but some was lost. their plan was working. Soon, the GREY blobs at their gates began to move again, having recovered from its stunned disposition. GREY attacked again, this time with a larger swath of pigment, aided by a large rectangular brush from above. BLUE and RED braced for the impact, but they were prepared for this, as well. They put their industry into overdrive, and where forces were lost, they were replenished, and as quickly as they were made, RED pigments charged out to retrieve the lightened and discolored GREY. The battle raged on for many days, GREY attacking without seeming to whither, and RED and BLUE, relying on their sources of CYAN, YELLOW, and the always majestic MAGENTA, renewing themselves to fight on.

They fought for as long as they could, but eventually they reached the limits of what their economy could produce. The CYAN fields ran dry, and the rays of YELLOW in their BLACK straws were reduced to a trickle. GREY was not uninjured, however, the brushes drew feebly on the mounds of pigment at what remained of the white moat, broken in places, but heavily guarded by the remaining RED forces. RED repelled an attack on the CYAN fields, BLUE noticed too late that an attack of equal measure was being aimed at the web of YELLOW wires, and the response was too slow. GREY washed past the shallow wall of WHITE, and decimated large swathes of the YELLOW aqueducts. The RED that responded were as well mixed in BLACK as they were in GREY, and when the fighting was done, almost a third of the domain lay in a wasteland of smoldering, crusted, dark red embers.

But they were not destroyed. Those final attacks were the last real strength GREY had. It was not only attacking them, after all——it was also using its volume to spread to every corner of the canvas. What once was a torrent of towering tendrils, was now a shallow film. The only remains of what existed before the GREY assimilation lie safely behind the WHITE border of the domain of RED, BLUE, and MAGENTA.

RED flew into a rage, BLACK entered him as grief, and his heart hardened to BLUE, whose verdant CYAN fields were mostly untainted. RED accused BLUE of not caring for the fate of the YELLOW channels he needed to survive, and BLUE repudiated the claims, citing their vow to MAGENTA, and then redirected the flow of those insults back at RED, questioning their inability to maintain their true color. RED says that if it were not for the sheer amount of space required to house the CYAN fields, the WHITE they gathered would not have been breached so soon. BLUE responds that the WHITE they had would have done the job fine, if RED had only been more sparing of their use of resources. RED exclaimed that at least they were willing to get their hands dirty, BLUE clearly thought themselves superior to RED, or else they would have defended their sibling’s body as if it were their own. BLUE wondered if they really were siblings. Why did they think so, anyway? Because they both were placed in close proximity to the irreplaceable beauty of MAGENTA, to its warm, motherly embrace, to its blushing flesh and ripening fruits? Any color in their right mind would have done the same, does that really make them family? RED couldn’t believe what they were hearing, and swore to defend MAGENTA, and would do so first and foremost by subjugating BLUE.

RED began rebuilding their network of YELLOW, electricity pulsating through, pressure building between black edges which snaked around the war-torn homeland. A new boundary began to form, one that cut straight through the center of the hub of industry RED and BLUE had built together, and the image of the southland canvas began to change once more. GREY sloshed feebly at the white border, eroding it, but not enough to threaten entry; meanwhile BLUE works desperately to protect its resources from the vengeful RED. Here and there, spurts of PURPLE appear, where RED soldiers, caught up by brushes thin as rapiers, slice through BLUE’s stronghold. BLUE is sickened not just at the blows, but at the sight of the PURPLE, a grotesque, dark opposite of their precious MAGENTA, pure and innocent. Soon enough, RED recovers their strength, and more, they grow. RED and BLUE both see GREY is the lesser threat compared to their one-time ally, and each begins to tear through the GREY, consuming it in patches in order to expand, each time, taking from MAGENTA only what they dare. The core of their homeland, cleaved nearly in half by their civil war, is the only place where RED and BLUE still agree. They both hold MAGENTA holy, still. They each feed it of their own bodies, almost as much as they take out. To themselves, they both still remember the first time they saw each other, how this thing connected them, but they tell themselves it is only the beauty of MAGENTA which they hold onto, the thing that gave them their birth, that sustained them through every trial. They no longer dwell on that moment of shared intuition as anything other than happenstance. They continue to build, drawing their resources out thinner and thinner, each unable to allow the other to engulf them. Eventually, BLUE believes they may have discovered a way to be rid of the GREY entirely, but they would need access to YELLOW, something RED will never give them. RED believes they could build a permanent barrier, one that wouldn’t corrode even from the biggest rogue waves of GREY, but to do so, they would need to use BLUE’s ability to nurture a paint’s natural attributes, to build passively, and RED knew only dominance.

They agreed to meet for a truce, but on entering the inner sanctum, that haloed ground where they first saw one another, they looked at the MAGENTA temple, and saw it was gone. Their focus had been entirely on each other, neither had noticed the extent of the damage to their own sacred center, all that remained of the MAGENTA pool was a thin crust, flaking and blowing off in the wind. BLUE cried out that they should not have needed so much space, RED dismisses the thought, and declares that they should not have used their precious resources so greedily. Then, as they have never done. They embraced. BLUE saw the PURPLE, not as they did before, as an unsightly parody of their precious MAGENTA, but as the echo of it, the child that should have inherited their home——not an empire, but a home, filled with the loving presence of its family. Instead, they had used everything to grow beyond reason, their border was so large there was no hope to maintain it. It was only a matter of time until GREY, as pitiful as it had become, washed RED and BLUE away.

BLUE wondered if it were cruel, to know there was no chance of survival, and to want PURPLE to exist anyway, to give life to something that would not live for long. RED mused back, saying that the act of birth was a promise made to oneself, and whispered to the world. They embraced again, and let every drop of their being mingle. RED and BLUE were gone, the entire canvas was a shallow ocean of GREY, currents of colors twisting through it faintly, all except for an island of deep PURPLE, held off by a thin facade of WHITE.

They stayed like that for an eternity, not building, not even observing, only marveling in the sensation of existence. When WHITE began to break down, GREY seeped in lazily, and ebbed in and out of the broken border. PURPLE began to be washed out in wide streaks, but PURPLE did not mind, they knew this would happen. They stayed, not forgetting who they were, until the thickening globs of GREY finally overtook them completely. GREY was not malaise and melancholy, as they had assumed, it was the end of all color. Every mixture eventually lead here, to the averaging of hue and light and saturation. It was acceptance and understanding, it was movement with the will of all things——they allowed GREY to wash over their body until it was impossible to tell there had been a home, or industry, or anything at all other than GREY in the southland canvas, save for the slopping elevation, the remains of layers and layers of accumulated paint. But if you looked closely, you could see that GREY was not really GREY, it was full of vibrant colors, in streaks so thin you’d never notice from a distance.

The paint of the canvas hardened, and the new landscape was just as barren as it had been after the age of Gesso. That is what ‘barren’ is——equilibrium. New beings, too, began to arrive. These were not beings of single color, as had been in the time before them——they were multicolored, built of organelles of nuanced tints and shades, each to specific, symbiotic purpose. They fell upon the canvas in waves, feeling over its smoothed hills and jagged mountains of hardened GREY. Some of these being brought pouches of a substance that loosened the hard acrylic rock, which they then processed into a type of paste, and ate it. They rejoiced at the abundance of the place they had found, and danced and sang. They built shelters, planted smaller beings that were made of the same structures they were, and which slowly transformed the hardened GREY into edible substance, sifting out those microscopic pigments, weaving them into geometric patterns. The beings came up with stories to explain the strange formations of the landscape; they talked of giants with long hair that fell from the heavens, moving stones as if they were puddles of water.

As one of the beings works away at the base of a mountain of jagged stones, they discover something: a vein of rich color captured in a grey boulder. They carefully carve it out, and carry it home to their village. There, the artisans melt it down, and marvel at the result.

The next day, half the village trek to the mountain, where the day before, one of them had discovered the majestic purple ore, which had inspired them with such awe. They hope to find more of this beautiful material, planning to work it into clothes, into jewelry, and onto the graves of their loved ones lost.