WHY DO WE tell stories?
They are a universal human experience. Every culture I’ve ever visited, every people I’ve met, every human on every planet in every situation I’ve seen…they all tell stories. Men trapped alone for years tell them to themselves. Ancients leave them painted on the walls.
Women whisper them to their babies.
Stories explain us. You want to define what makes a human different from an animal? I can do it in one word or a hundred thousand. Sad stories. Exultant stories. Didactic morality tales.
Frivolous yarns that, paradoxically, carry too much meaning.
We need stories.
I’m sorry I had to bring this ending to you. But the more you think about it, the more you’ll realize that our tale today had to end in such a way. Stories demand certain endings. It’s part of their nature.
I wish I could have explained this to Painter, kneeling as he did on the cobbles, staring out as his world turned upside down. Because he
didn’t understand.
He thought the story wasn’t finished.
Painter stood up, then seized his brush in fingers that ached from his extended battle. He took Akane’s ink as she cowered down, looking up as the sky opened and the darkness vanished. He strode past terrified police, among wounded painters, past people who cried out at the strange light. He reached a blank wall. The one that had been left for him. The masterpiece he had never finished.
There, as a city panicked—full of people seeing the sun for the first time—he started painting.
Horribly inconsiderate of him. We were all ready to go home. The
story should have been done.
He just kept on painting anyway.
A painting is, of course, a story too. Not a still fragment of one as you might think, but an entire story. Every painting moves, full of life, if you know how to look at it.
Here he painted a picture of a beautiful woman sitting on the branch of a tree. Soaring high in the sky, flowers bursting behind her
like fireworks.
“I know you,” he whispered.
The curve of her hair as it curled around the sides of her head to spill down her back. The line of her chin, the defiant confidence in her
eyes. The smile. That smile.
“I know you.”
Painter didn’t have two thousand years of experience. But in some ways, what he did have was better. Because art requires intent. Art requires passion. And among all the painters in the city, you would never find a person with more of either.
As the city trembled and people panicked all around him, Painter worked calmly. The shroud vanished in large chunks, leaving behind wisps of darkness. He seemed to paint from this smoke itself, using the ink of the soul.
Her dress, the shade of the sky that day, captured in inkwash greyscale. The blazing sun, a section with no paint at all, contrasted by the streaks around it.
Painter finally had a reason for his masterwork.
For him, audience had always been so very important—and today he had a singular audience. One person. The most important one.
Something touched him on the arm. Unseen, yet warm, sending a thrill of heat through him as he painted the flowers. Smoke from the dying shroud clung to him, one of the few patches remaining. No one noticed it. They were too busy dealing with what they assumed was
the end of the world.
Another touch. On the other shoulder.
A final flourish, the dots that were her pupils. Then he turned to find smoke behind him, spinning like a vortex. White on the inside, an infinite hole, the eye of a nightmare. Within it a dark shape reaching toward him.
Painter dropped his brush and reached in.
And took her hand.
I… Her voice. It’s not right… “Yumi,” he said, tears in his eyes, holding on tight. “We decide what is right. Nightmares can be real. Why not dreams? You have power granted by the spirits. Your whole life—your dozens of lives—you’ve used it to serve. Use it for yourself this once.”
But…
“Our world, Yumi. Our rules.”
I don’t…
“Our world. Our rules.”
Our…world.
“You deserve to live.”
Our rules.
“You deserve to be happy.”
I…deserve to choose. I deserve love.
Her other hand emerged from the smoke and seized his. They held to each other as the city trembled, the smoke died, and the world changed. They clung to one another as light from above rained down
and shone on her face.
The last wisps of darkness vanished.
And at the end of it all, when someone finally thought to check on him, they found Painter huddled against the wall beneath a masterpiece of incredible caliber, holding a young woman tight in his arms.
As real as anyone else. Because she wanted to be.
RIGHT ABOUT THEN, I woke up.
Design was waiting for me, lounging behind the bar, smirking at me in the most unbearable way. Why I ever gave her a face, I’ll never know.
“About time you loosened up a little,” she said.
“Shut up.” I shook off the dozen or so coats that had been hung all over me, then pulled off the hooks and other things she’d attached for the purpose.
I had to blink paint out of my eyes. Storming Cryptic.
I kept the crown though. It was a special kind of awful.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Remember that time I got my memories stolen?”
“Yes. It was hilarious.”
“It was humiliating,” I said. “I instituted protection protocols to defend me if something tried to play games with my soul. When we landed here, that machine tried to draw my Investiture. My protocols
activated.”
“And turned you into a statue?”
“It…wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped would happen.”
She smirked at me. Insufferable creature. Then she waved around with two eager hands. “I started a restaurant!”
“Yes, I was aware for much of it,” I said.
“Sounds awful!”
“You have no idea.”
“Nope! Any desire to stick around until the next pickup in three
years?”
“None whatsoever.”
Outside the front window of the shop, Painter and Yumi passed, supporting one another. They looked like the way it felt to spend three years being a coatrack. In other words, terrible. They paused just outside and kissed, but we’ll get to that.
“How are we getting away?” I asked Design.
She disappeared behind the counter, then emerged with a large stack of papers. “I have a plan.”
“Delightful,” I said, finding a handful of individually packaged condiments in my pocket. Who had put those in there?
“Yup. You imitate one of their astronauts. We steal their ship. It should be able to get us to Iron Seven Waystation.”
“You need all of that?” I asked, pointing at her huge stack of papers. “To explain such a simple plan?”
“What? This isn’t my plan. These are my recipes.”
“Wonderful.”
“They mostly aren’t. You have no idea how many different combinations of edible ingredients produce something completely inedible! It’s fun.”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s fun,” she said, “if someone else is tasting them.”
I smiled. “Let’s go steal a spaceship.”
“Finally!” she said, grabbing her recipes. “I’m ready.”
“No worries about abandoning your restaurant?”
“Nope! I willed it to someone. Well, two someones.”
“Can they cook?”
“Who cares? Let’s go!”
And so, I escaped that dreadful planet. Such was the actual point of this story, if you hadn’t noticed. Pay attention. And stop encouraging rogue participants to go off script.
I suppose, though, you want some loose ends tied up. Design gets letters from Masaka once in a while with updates, and I was able to send some inquiries to get more details. You should be thankful to her and the others, as this is the type of story I’m only able to tell you because I have the permission of those involved.
You’ll be happy to know the planet, Komashi, survived. (Find it in the UTol system, in dual orbit with the planet UTol—which you might have heard about for other reasons.) The emergence of the sun didn’t cause an utter catastrophe on Komashi, though they did learn the hard way about sunburns.
Turns out, a number of the spirits liked being hion lines, and were persuaded to continue in that service—with proper payment. That kept the heat of the ground down to something manageable. There were plants in the ruins of Torio City they could use to start new strains of crops, and the old ones would still grow by hion, if kept in the shade.
It was difficult for a while, but society didn’t collapse. Evidently the sky can fall and most people will still get up the next day and go to work. I hear the planet is delightful to visit these days. Warm floors.
Flying plants. Neon nights. I wouldn’t know, as I’m never going to go back.
If you do go, though, stop by the Noodle Princess. I hear it has some of the best food around. And of course there’s the attached art gallery. Full of paintings and stacked-up stones. Just don’t sneeze.
Painter and Yumi, well, they never told anyone about what had happened to them—though they did eventually manage to convince
their friends that she was his secret girlfriend from another city, not his sister. A fact confirmed by his parents when they arrived in a tizzy, worried about what had become of their son during the upheavals.
Nightmares went away forever, at least the living kind. Which meant no more need for painters. Those poor Dreamwatch members had to get jobs at their mommies’ and daddies’ corporations instead.
At Painter’s insistence, his friends told everyone that Usasha—the only painter to die in the attack—had been the one to mobilize everyone. She was given the honors.
At the end of it all, Painter and Yumi just wanted a quiet life with each other. Who would have guessed? If you visit, tell them I sent you, as Yumi and Painter do like offworld visitors. Just don’t overstay your welcome, try not to out their story to the locals, and be sure to tip your server well. And if you think of it, point out how humanlike she’s acting. Masaka is increasingly comfortable with others knowing what she is, but she—like all people—still appreciates a compliment now and then.
Oh, and if you’re worried, the planet didn’t end up needing yoki-hijo to appease the spirits anymore. Turns out the things really, really like historical dramas.
To this day, no one on the planet knows what Yumi actually is. They think of her as the eccentric cook of the best noodle place in town— the woman with the odd accent who can stack a hundred bowls on top of one another, with silverware balanced on each tier.
That should cover it.
Oh. Except the kiss.
That first kiss, outside the noodle shop, bathed in sunlight. Lips together, sharing a deeper warmth, her hands to his face, his arms pulling her tight—as if to never let go. Pressed so close their very souls seemed to mix. And in the case of these two, those souls did at least mash together with a blast of abiding warmth.
That said, it wasn’t a very good kiss.
Considering the limited experience of the ones responsible, that won’t surprise you. Yet for two people whose only previous brushes with romance involved some particularly aspirational daydreams, it worked well enough.
Plus, here’s the thing. A kiss doesn’t need to be good to be valuable. It doesn’t serve any real purpose. It’s valued solely because of the person you share it with.
Things only have the value we give to them. And likewise, actions can be worth whatever we decide them to be worth.
And so, to these two, that kiss was priceless.
THE END
