June Vignette #3

Thanks to absentwizard for this suggestion.


Your character accidentally enters a painting. Which? What happens?


Hmmm... reminds me of a certain old Disney movie....

Art museums are often places for quiet reflection and inspiration. Art museums at night are often even quieter because there are far fewer visitors. Private art museums at night are essentially silent, because there are no visitors unless the master was going through one of his phases. This one was filled with the sound of someone munching on biscuits.

Ryan had been working at the mansion for about three months as a manservant and found this sound very odd indeed. Certainly it was late in the night, but lately the master hasn't come back from his gentleman's club until the small hours of the morning. He silently stepped up to the big oak doors to the Collection and put his ears to the cold wood.

There was definitely a munching of biscuits, followed by a quiet sip of tea.

If the master was having a moment for himself in the museum, then it would go hard for Ryan to interrupt. If there was a thief having a snack in the museum, then it would go hard for Ryan not to interrupt. After a moment of dithering, he decided to do things safely and peer in the keyhole.

Ryan paused a moment while he thought very hard indeed. The master was pushing seventy and lived with no family except on the weeks when his disparate grand-children would come to visit. This was not one of those weeks. Nobody had said anything about the master starting a dalliance with a pretty young lady. Therefore, his brain went, this must be an intruder of some kind.

Itera sipped at the warm tea and set the cup back down in the saucer. These really were rather good paintings, very life-like. The four self-portraits, one for each season and each set fifteen years apart, were amusing one could see all the different cares and attitudes to life in the expression and in the accoutrements in the background. The collector had travelled to Alerar and admired it in his youth since the landscapes and daily scenes of that place filled an entire wall of the room. He-

The door handle turned. Itera was seized with a moment of panic, grabbed the Boundary, and tugged open a rift below herself.

Ryan thought he saw a flicker of purple light as he opened the door. When he opened his mouth to ask what was going on, he was at a loss for words. This was because there was no young, blond lady inside, sitting on the cushy chairs and looking at the paintings. He walked once around the room, spotting no open windows, no unlocked doors, nothing.

Wonderful, he thought to himself, the house is haunted. It was time to go and have a drink and hope that he was simply tired and imagining things instead. His shoe crunched on something and Ryan looked down. It was a piece of biscuit - a sugar biscuit from the fresh batch in the kitchen. He stared at it. A girl in a purple-and-white dress stared at him from the painting of Sandusky Street at Night. He left.

Itera turned around from the frame-sized hole in midair to face the silent world around her. This was a bit of a surprise, really. She had simply wanted to exchange Here and There for herself and get out of the room. Now it seems that she might have accidentally manipulated Illusion and Reality as well. As it were, she stood on the edge of a rooftop overlooking a city in Alerar. There was no motion in this world, no sound, and everything had a hazy sort of look to it like - well - like they were made with oil paints. The distant orange glow of the furnaces lined the night sky and their smoke blotted out the sprinkle of stars above. The moon was a hazy circle through the clouds. In this scene of stone city and distant fire, the only living thing was the potted fern sitting on the parapet very near the rectangle to another world. Its leaves were darkest green and seen mostly by the gleam of edges in the filtered moonlight.

Itera experimented with this new place. She walked around the rooftop and discovered that there really was no way down because the door wasn't there - just the idea of a door. That was one of the trouble with impressionist painters; they didn't draw anything but rather the idea of something. No matter. She twiddled the extremely odd-feeling Boundary of Here and There again and went roof-hopping, closing in on the distant fires of the furnace.

The fires were still fires. They did not move. Time did not pass for things of this world because it had never existed. She could touch the bright reds and oranges with her gloved hands. They were fuzzy and unyielding. The sparks hung in midair as bright pinpoints of yellow. She went further, following the smokestacks downwards towards the murky river of city streets, always remembering that rooftop with the window.

At lunchtime, the master entered his museum. He had a good night at the cards table and when he had a good night, he commanded that his lunch be taken in the museum. It was a sort of desire to drink a toast to himself. While the coffee was poured, he glanced over his paintings and his eyes stopped on Sandusky Street at Night. There was something wrong with it, his still-waking brain told him.

Quite a long ways away, Itera was taking lunch, as well. The farmer wouldn't notice that many fruits missing from his plum tree and the view from the top across the Corone countryside was spectacular. On her left sat a fuzzy-edged pot with a fuzzy-edged, gleaming fern in it. On her right sat a white kerchief on which a single fire spark laid unburning.

Out of Character:

Dear Artemis, Long ago, I had a portrait painted of your mother while she was pregnant with you. It had suffered some wear and tear throughout the years and I had been negligent with it due to my emotional instability after she had passed. Your friend Daros mentioned to me that he could restore it, so I sent it to him and he promised to send it along to you once it was complete. I'm sure you will take better care of it than I did. With love, Dad

The painting had just arrived and Artemis stared at the wrapped rectangle, rereading the letter before opening it to refresh his memory. Carefully, he undid the strings that tied the wrapping paper in place and unwrapped the portrait delicately. As it sat upon the small desk in his room, he just stared quietly as a breeze slammed against the window, causing a light whistling sound.

It hurt to look at the painting, as his mother's face had been just a faint and distant memory of his past that he couldn't quite place. Her features had blurred in a way after so many years of not seeing her, yet here she was, as clear and youthful as he remembered. And she was... moving?!

Artemis' eyes went wide in confusion as he stared at the moving figure in the painting. "What the hell?" he mumbled aloud. Within the beautiful mahogany frame, the image of his mother would smile and blink, she would glance down at her belly and rub it with a bright smile, and sometimes she even appeared to be laughing. The young man had no idea what this was, but he assumed this was the work of Daros - who else could have done something so absurd?

After the initial shock had worn off, Artemis' face easily fell back into a smile. His eyes began to water as he held the painting up before him, setting it upon a nail he had set in place just minutes ago. Once done, he stepped back and stared admiringly at the rather large painting with both happiness and sadness mixing into one. He stepped forward, reaching his hand toward the canvas and gently setting it upon his mother's cheek. Yet when he did, he was surprised yet again. Instead of feeling the rough and coarse texture of canvas, Artemis felt nothing as his hand passed into the painting and the image rippled like a cup of water.

He quickly retracted his hand in surprise but then stepped forward yet again, reaching out and seeing how far his hand could go. He started to think about what this meant. What had Daros done? Would he be drawn into the painting and find himself beside his mother? Would she recognize him? Would she have her memories and personality left intact? What kind of magic had Daros cast upon the painting?

Once Artemis' arm had passed into the painting just beyond his elbow, he felt a tug, and suddenly he was pulled into the portrait of his mother and out of his room at the Bearded Gnome Inn.

"Artemis!" As the young man landed upon a soft and lush violet carpet, the voice he heard was not the one he had hoped to hear. He looked up and saw a familiar face.

"Daros..."

"I see you got the painting! I hope you liked the restoration. I took the liberty to enchant it as a quick means to my home! Now it's that much easier to visit me!"

"Great..." Artemis mumbled as he rose to his feet with an immense disappointment weighing on his shoulders.

"What's wrong?" Daros said, pushing his spectacles further up his nose and brushing aside some of the loose strands of chestnut hair. "You look awful. Do you not like the gift?" A genuine frown found its way to the blue-robed wizard.

Artemis sighed deeply, brushing himself off. "It's not that Daros. I guess I just... " He lowered his gaze and let his thoughts drift back to the painting and his mother's face. "I guess I just hoped that when I reached in, I could see my mother again."

Daros frowned, realizing that it was his extra enchantment that had so upset the young man. For once, he managed to pull some sympathy out of his generally out-of-touch social skills. "I'm sorry Artemis. I suppose I didn't quite think things through. I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's okay, Daros," Artemis said, "it's not your fault. I guess I just let my imagination run wild for a moment." He gave Daros a friendly pat on the shoulder and looked him in the eye with a half-hearted grin. "Thank you for the gift. It came out great. I really appreciate it."

"I'm glad you like it," Daros said with an equally half-hearted grin.

As Artemis began to walk out the door and back to the Bearded Gnome, he heard Daros call out. "Hey Artemis?"

"Yeah Daros?" Artemis asked as he stopped and turned.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I'm not sure... I guess I'm just sorry."

Artemis chuckled at the thought. "Don't worry about it," he said with a shrug, walking out the door.

It had been a long day. Between traveling home from Radasanth with too many bags after a long day of shopping, fighting with an over-tired five year old at bedtime, and now tossing and turning, Kyla was about to go crazy. The young mystic quickly pulled on her slippers and stopped by to ask Anita to keep an ear out for Akiv before she made her ways to the gardens. She opened the metal gate that led to her private clearing and entered her painting shed. It had been a few weeks since she’d worked out here, but surely drawing would clear her mind and allow her to sleep. As she dug through a large crate of supplies the girl noticed an old painting out of the corner of her eye. With a smile she sat down the brushes she had gathered and stepped toward the canvas. She sat down with her legs crossed and leaned the piece against the wall in front of her. She always admired her older work, for some reason or other she couldn’t quite grasp the emotion she used to put into them now-a-days. It was a simple enough picture, and its twin hung within the castle itself. The only difference between the two was where your focus was drawn. In the other painting your eye was pulled to the sleepy little town surrounded by stars, as though the Thaynes themselves had blessed the village. In this one, the village was the backdrop to a much larger story, the stars seemed to be pulling your eyes towards a family standing on a hill, one that only Kyla knew was Jensen Ambrose, herself, and Akiv. Moments passed before the mystic pulled her eyes from the scene, and resolved to resume her search through the crate, but when she turned around she was surprised to find herself in a dark clearing on a starry night.

A chill ran up the girl’s spine though there was no wind in the air, in fact it seemed unnaturally quiet. She pushed herself to her feet and looked around at the lush grass and the nearby bush-lined path. This is impossible.

Kyla took several steps towards the road, curious to see what her fantasy village would look like up close. She stopped quickly when she heard voices filling the silent night, and ducked behind the bushes just as Kyla, Jensen, and baby Akiv made their way over the hill before her. For a few moments all she heard were the sounds of boots striking the dusty road and the quiet creak of the carriages wheels, but the Kyla raised her voice.

"Every single night we go through the same thing!”

Jensen replied, his tone exasperated, “Maybe because every single night you don’t listen to a damn word I say!”

The trio stopped, the girl turning towards the immortal with fire in her eyes. “That’s crap Jensen, all I ever do is listen to what you say! If you want to go then go! I though we’d build a life here together.”

The man looked down at the town before the, hurt obvious in his eyes. “No, Kyla. You built a life here, your dreams, not mine. I wasn’t meant for a little town and a family; I never wanted any of this. I’m here because I love you, but honestly I hate it here.”

The girl followed his gaze, watching her dreams for the first time through someone else’s eyes. Her features glazed over first in anger and then moments later in defeat. “Then go.” She grabbed the stroller and continued her walk, leaving the man behind.

When she was out of view Kyla stood, walking towards the man and clearing her throat. He jumped as he saw her approaching, looking back and forth between the retreating back of the painting Kyla and the real one standing inches away. “Are you a ghost?”

“I guess I kinda am, though I’d rather think of myself as a fairy godmother of sorts,” the mystic laughed.

Jensen stood quietly for a moment, still obviously upset. “I’ve done everything to make it work, but nothing seems to keep her satisfied. I hate it here.”

“That’s because you don’t belong here, and one day she’ll realize that. She spent years trying to make you into what she wanted you to be, to make you fit neatly into her plans, but you’re bigger than that.”

The immortal laughed, “So I’m guessing you’re from the future then?”

“Its complicated, but I’m here to take you back to where you belong.”

“And that would be?”

Kyla closed her eyes, picturing another painting she’d done. In moments they were in a field of flowers where a little girl sat on her mother’s lap, picking dandelions and blowing the seeds into the wind. The immortal joined the pair without a word, gently grabbing the red-haired woman’s hand and kissing the blonde child on the forehead as though he’d known this life was his the moment he laid eyes on them. As everything faded away Kyla couldn’t help but smile. The man she used to love may not have his fairy-tale ending in real life, but at least she could make sure that some part of him would always be with those he loved.

Awesome stories guys! Rewards are as follows-

Itera recieves 200 exp and 200 gp.

Sir Artemis recieves 560 exp and 175 gp.

Amber Eyes recieves 400 exp.

Exp/GP Added