The canvas was stained in crimson, the spill of color brushed through to blemish the pure reign of stretched cream. A design of the spoiled temper and ravenous nature of chaos was the evidence left behind on such what was once untainted. Was it a scar, an imperfection that was revealed to be taken into consideration or something more achingly obvious. A story. A history. A lifetime of path marks.



An Artist could be known to pour their heart, their soul, and sometimes even their very life blood into their work. Art and blood. It fit so well the very notion for were not paintings and sculptures the very revelation and product of emotions left bleeding before the eyes of all?



A step back could offer a more landscape born observation of the canvas, the finished product a painting still dripping wet. The Artist herself refrained from the desire to touch the slick temptation that was spilled paint pooling from the edges of the canvas. How she yearned to touch the painting if only to feel once more all that had been lost.



The brush was dismissed to the pot of tainted, paint smeared water, a brush forgotten until the time she would take it with the pot to purify once more the tools of her trade. It seemed strange to her even now to still use paint as her voice, to use a canvas as a weapon, but this was all she had.



Paintings and memories.



Cheryth knew well it was not the emotional rawness of the painting that drew the longing to touch but the revelation of those portrayed. A man who?s face seemed now a shadow, a blur of memories and the Artist herself. The Artist and the one who made her all that she was, all she had become.



The centuries had passed so easily, like pages easily ripped away and tossed aside from a sketch pad, that Cheryth had assumed that his face should have been a shadow, a blur, a haze within her memory.



Yet she possessed the memory of an Artist and he had a face she could never forget. No matter how hard she tried, the memory of a man haunted her. The memory of her Maker.



Hands stained red with oil paint lifted, flawless porcelain beauty of an ever exquisitely living corpse stained with a totem mark of all that she was. Cheryth perhaps would leave herself branded as if she was meant even now to be caught red handed.



Those elegant hands sculpted with the grace of antiquity?s passion rose not tonight in prayer but instead in freedom. The caged possession of her hair left freed to spill all the natural glory of blood and fire never contained. She changed silently from the accessories of the Artist to the desirable material of the Huntress.



The messy richness of lush scarlet waves were brushed and pinned if only for Cheryth?s eyes to be veiled by the jeweled latticework of the hat worn. The Artist was a superstitious source and it was never well in her opinion to offer a true vision within the blue fire windows of her own soul.



A polite cough into her lace gloved palm as she stepped outside brought a worrisome frown. No matter the time that had passed she found herself still thinking upon the once past and the dangerous promise of the end of life.



How silly it was to think of that now as she entered the shadows. No longer was she left to worry over the risks of fragility of life?



After all, he had made certain of that, hadn?t he?



Because of him like every other night before this one and every night to follow, Cheryth would always be one left to enter the night eternal.