Discovering Art

M'Kael didn't live well, he was miserable. All he wanted to do was paint but he couldn't, when he finished his seventh painting his muse left him. He did what he could to hide from his misery, he had the money to do it, but the yearning to paint, to create, never left him. When he turned eighteen he was sick of the rich life and began going to places frequented by artists. They knew his name and accepted him as a fellow artist. His favorite place was The Deeps where he made friends with four of the artists there. Their talk seemed more interesting than most of the artists he'd spoken with. There was no reality, no love of art in the talk of most, it was money and names for them, but his friends spoke of art and life with passion and intelligence. They were older than him but when he spoke they listened as they listened to each other. They spoke to him like he was one of them and that's because he was.

He was sitting in The Deeps one night when Rebeka, one of his friends, came in. She smiled when she saw him and went over to his table. When she saw his brooding eyes she knew he was troubled again. She sat next to him and put her hand over his, "What's troubling you, M'Kael?" He looked her in the eyes, he knew he wouldn't see judgment in them and he was right, she was concerned. "I can't paint." he told her. "I've seen you work," she replied, "you can paint." He gave her a small smile of thanks then explained, "I could, now I can't. I painted seven paintings, the paint flowed onto the canvas, now nothing comes. I have no inspiration, no sense of purpose." She smiled, the kind of smile you only give to the young but he didn't resent it there was caring in her smile. She patted his hand and said, "Don't paint. Travel. See the universe, experience life. Your art can not live until you do."

M'Kael knew Rebeka was right, he knew nothing of life, he knew how things worked but he was still very young in experience. With a small sense of purpose he traveled. At first he didn't know where he was going he just went from place to place. He'd be sitting in a bar and hear someone say something interesting about somewhere so he'd go. Or he'd read about a place or just pick out a place at random. When he tired of that he started visiting cultures, observing their ways, their look. Finally he needed real purpose to his travels, purpose that would once again summon his muse.

He remembered a mural of Rebeka's, The Quest, that gave him a sense of purpose. A boy began a journey into the wilderness, by the time the journey ended he was a man. It was a concept from another time, other cultures, he knew of no quests in his world. Then he remembered conversations with his friends in The Deeps. Everything they talked about was part of their quests for art, everything he talked about was an intellectual exercise. He was no different from the artists whose words seemed so shallow to him, it made him wonder why his friends endured his juvenile chatter. He wanted to be a man, he needed a quest. More than anything he wanted to paint again, he knew within him was an artist, now he wanted to be that artist. He would go on a quest for art.

He realized he knew little about art, he knew concepts thanks to his friends but the universe is large and he had seen a tiny fraction of its art. He began with what he heard and all his friends had much to say about the stones of Men Treth. First he got on the nets and researched everything he could about Men Treth. He was a sculptor who lived on Loigia 300 years before the Universal Credit System or BU, M'Kael awoke in 217 AU. Little else was known about him so M'Kael went to Loigia. It was a sculpture, a mural, over a thousand stones fitted together to make a tapestry. Each stone was over ten feet high and very little sculpting was done to fit them together, instead they were set together like pieces in a puzzle. The natural colorings of each stone painted a twilight scene over a jungle pond. Great beasts drank while predators crouched in the shadows. He rented a room with a view of the stones and spent days gazing out at that amazing work. He left Loigia with a sense of the struggle of art.

Zya Gobess was another sculptor M'Kael's friends spoke a lot about. He'd seen some of her work, she sculpted crystals into mythical creatures. When the light hit them they awoke with breathtaking colors. They were cut in such a way that the lights coming from them portrayed another image in the air, usually a person approaching the beast. The lights cause her sculptures to come alive with movement. Her most famous work is on Menth Prime, her homeworld, and that was the next stop on M'Kael's quest. The sculpture is in the capital city of Ni. It is a thirty foot dragon with wings outspread about to take flight. The dawn light makes its wings sweep the air and a warrior is seen approaching. As Menth Prime's two suns move through the sky the warrior draws near and pulls his sword. As the suns set the dragon breathes fire and the warrior falls to the ground. At night the dragon sits alone in the darkness. Each day he studied the sculpture he saw a myriad of subtle differences as the light hit it at slightly different angles. The more he studied the more he saw, expressions on the warrior's face, ripplings in the dragon's muscles. He left Menth Prime with a sense of the magic of art.

"Have you found your medium, M'Kael?" Rebeka had asked once and he had no hesitation when he answered, "Oils." "Then you must see the work of Nta." she told him. He had never heard of Nta and when he said so she smiled, "Few have. His paintings can only be seen on his homeworld, Odhj Lev. They don't like outsiders too much there." "Have you seen them?" he asked and her eyes grew sad and far away. She nodded and sat in silence for a time. When she came to herself she said, "There are ways to see his work. If you decide to go stop on Ex Oe Een and ask for Bar Ek. Tell him what you want and show him some money." M'Kael ended up showing Bar Ek a lot of money before he found himself on a smuggler ship headed for Odhj Lev. He enjoyed the smugglers, they were rough and gave him a hard time at first but he liked them, their stories were rich and exciting and they loved what they did. He would remember them when he rediscovered his art.

Their stealth tech was the latest and their landing was never seen. They were met by a skimmer and M'Kael was stashed under the seat. It was deep night when they got to the museum and M'Kael paid off six guards to get in to Nta's exhibit. It was worth every credit it took to get him there. Nta's work stirred feelings in M'Kael he'd tried to hide from himself since the day he awoke, loneliness. Each piece was a study in loneliness, a woman before a mirror, her eyes filled with a sad longing, a man walking the night in the rain, aimless in his steps, a child sitting in the cold light of a courtyard, a small patch of light his only companion. There were others but M'Kael had to leave after seeing those three, the last made his loneliness so terrible he could barely find his way back to the skimmer. He left Odhj Lev with a sense of the power of art...

...One night on the trip back fromt Odhj Lev M'Kael ran into one of smugglers, Mesotani Henjik the cook, when he went to the galley to get something to eat. It liked M'Kael, he'd often come back and help it clean up after meals. "I'll fix you something." it told him. M'Kael protested but it insisted. While it was cooking something up it asked, "What did you think of Nta's work?" M'Kael had a hard time coming up with the words to describe what those paintings had done to him and it smiled a sad little smile, "It was the same for me, I could only make it to five."

Excerpt from Shadow Stalkers by S.E.Estes