by G. Howell
Old, some of the pieces were. Very old. There were paintings on crude parchment and canvass, sketches on yellowed paper and vellum, carvings and sculptures. All different, but all artfully executed, intriguing. I couldn’t call all of the works beautiful: They were created by aliens, created for alien senses and sensibilities so there were proportions and colors and subject matters I found odd. But art isn’t necessarily supposed to be beautiful. It’s supposed to elicit an emotion response, positive or negative. And these certainly did that. I don’t know of one museum or gallery back home that wouldn’t gnaw their own legs off for a chance to be able to display a collection like that.
There was a series of paintings. Looked at individually they would have been a series of five landscapes done in portrait format, as so many Rris paintings are. Masterful renditions of forest and a glade with light spilling through the canopy, gold against green. Each painting was like a window onto the scene and the center one was a portrait. In that picture a Rris of indeterminable sex was standing in the foreground, rich red and gold clothing standing out brilliantly and showing that individual was of not inconsiderable status.
“My grandfather on my sire’s side,” my hostess told me as we walked the gallery. We were alone in there, with no guards or interruptions. That solitude said a lot. About what, I wasn’t quite sure. But she seemed quite unconcerned and amiable as she showed herself to be quite an expert on the collection, relating the known history of each piece and ever willing to answer questions.
A good percentage of the portraits were of her kin. Or distant kin going back generations. Which I gathered was a little unusual in itself. Rris don’t have a tightly-knit family structure, not like I knew it. They don’t consider pair bonding, or marriage, normal behavior. They don’t, they can’t, form those kinds of mental attachments. There’d been a couple of times when conversations had touched on the subject and I hadn’t been able to understand attitudes that seemed so... uncaring, or even wary, to me. Conversely they couldn’t understand my attachments to individuals.
Exposure would help things become clearer to me. I don’t think many Rris were as enlightened regarding my attitudes.
Several of the pictures in that collection were considered masterpieces. They’d been... acquired over the last couple of centuries in the same way that artworks back home drifted around: through trade, seized in wars or skirmishes, or even as payment for debts. Of course there were the portraits; there were depictions of occasions of note such as the completion of a bridge or large structure; celebrations and memorials full of Rris in bright costumes and dyes. There was also an extensive array of everyday scenes. Just paintings and pictures of Rris cooking, washing, cooking and baking; working the land and cutting wood; coopers and carpenters at work; others nursing and mating. I blinked at those scenes of Rris scruff biting, as they’d put it. The only place you’d usually see something like that back home would be on a seedy site or channel, not hanging in a national gallery. I knew they weren’t there for titillation: it wasn’t pornography - a little knowledge of Rris told me that - but just because that was a part of life. All those works had that in common: carrying a gritty depth, a solidity and attention to actual life that denied all romanticism that a lot of human works carried.
A prime example of that were the battle scenes hanging in their own section. The shots of triumph as well as defeat. There were scenes filled with victory and glory, but when you looked they were also filled with the other trappings of war. Banners and flashing swords and glorious assaults and last stands were there in abundance, but there was also mud and dirt and blood and spilling entrails and scenes of agony. As graphic as their sex scenes had been in their own way.
Paintings, pictures, artworks... they carried the same name as their human counterparts. They were charcoal and paper and pigment and canvas, and like human art there were as many different techniques and inspirations as there’d been artists. But there was scarcely a one that I could look at and mistake for a human work.
It’s... it’s a combination of all sorts of little things. The proportions, those always seem odd. Then there’s the oddities in the use of color. Rris eyes might be great at detecting movement, but they can’t see as wide a range of colors as mine can. I’d done some simple experiments on that, and to them some of the deeper shades of red and blue were black, so some of the pigment blends weren’t as subtle as I was accustomed to. They also were somewhat short-sighted when it came to details: I could pick out things at a distance that were invisible to Rris. Well, they made up for it in other ways.
None of that detracted from the work. Rather, it gave it all a noticeable flavor.
I’d taken out my laptop before I remembered my manners and asked my host if she minded if I took pictures. She looked startled and I had to rephrase that, then demonstrate. She took it surprisingly well and gave me leave to record what I wished.
Time literally flew. I never noticed midday come and go, or the several hours that passed after that. Through the whole time she didn’t look the least impatient or anxious. She just let things go along at their own place, not watching the clock at all. I appreciated that.
“Thank you,” I said to her later as we walked along corridors brilliant with hot sunlight flooding in through the windows.
“You enjoyed that?”
“Very much,” I said.
“A? Good to hear,” she smiled up at me.
“I suppose I should keep up my end of the deal now, a?”
“You feel up to that?”
I almost grinned, “I believe I feel quite... inspired.”
------v------
I’d never drawn a queen before.
A warm breeze insinuated itself through the open doors and windows, setting the gauze curtains to swaying and carrying the sounds of a chorus of summer insects. Sunlight spilled in, washing across the floor, the cushions and the figure reclining on them. Light diffused through her fur, haloing her in white and gold as she sprawled there, as languidly as any big cat.
She’d been panting slightly before shucking the tunic, dressing down to that small kilt. There’s no way you can call a Rris naked. Unclothed, yes, but not naked. I could make out the compact musculature under her hide, the places where bones lay close to the surface, the twin columns of three dark nipples dotting her torso. But it wasn’t like a human nude, not like a stark photo or painting that whispered ‘this form; this intricately pure shape that your innermost animal knows; this food for the hunger inside; THIS is primal art’. What it was was a beautiful form: lithe and lean, silky and soft and yet full of the potential... the promise of danger.
“You know,” that form said, “there are things I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“A?” I responded absently, more focused on my hands than my mouth.
I’d drawn Rris before. I’d done sketches of Rraerch; Chihirae had deigned to sit for me a few times, and there’d been that time with Mai what seemed like an age ago. I enjoyed it. It was a time when I could forget about the rest of the world and concentrate on something that’d always come naturally to me. I could just sink into the scene, absorbing the proportions and the relationship of light and dark.
“About those stories.”
That got through. I saw my hand hesitate on the paper. “Stories?”
“A. I’ve been wondering if they’ve been exaggerated.”
I had a horrible feeling I knew where this was leading. “I think stories tend to do that.”
“Doubtless,” she murmured and blinked lazily at me. “It’s true though? You’re from a land populated with... individuals like yourself?”
I blinked. “That story?”
She cocked her slightly and she was wearing that look again. “You were expecting something else?”
“Uh... I know there’re lot of stories about me floating around out the
re,” I said.
“A, indeed,” she said. “Each more incredible than the last. And that one is true?”
“Oh, uh, yes. It’s true.”
Her ears twitched up. “A whole land? Across the seas?”
“I...umm. I don’t think the concept translates very well. It’s difficult to explain.”
“Try me.”
I paused and glanced up again. She was watching me, that stare again. “Alright, Ma’am,” I took a breath and made some more strokes as I gathered my thoughts.
Warmups. Quick sketches without looking at my hand on the paper, drawing her form in under forty seconds. That was a way of forcing my senses to really see her proportions and not work to subconscious fancies. They also let my try and find those distinctive features.
“I don’t know for certain myself. I can only guess. Perhaps it’s as if every time a decision is made a... world, a...everything is created. Perhaps for every possible outcome; perhaps only for important ones. In one world, this one, Rris are the dominant people. In my world it’s my kind. When I agreed to draw you, perhaps a world... an entire universe was created where I refused, or you never asked. Splitting off like branches on a tree. Any possibility. All possibilities.”
Her ears wilted back and she looked confused. “Where are these worlds?”
“All overlapping. You know directions: up and down, left and right, forward and back?”
“A,” she said guardedly.
“My kind think time is another direction. And we think there are more that we cannot perceive properly. They are other directions. These worlds exist in those directions.”
She blinked.
“Ahh,” I fumbled for an analogy she might be able to follow. “Suppose you lived in a world with only two directions, like a drawing on a piece of paper. To you there would be up and down, left and right as directions,” I waved my hands over the drawing to illustrate, “and that would be all. To you, being able to move forward and back, like this, would be something you couldn’t conceive of. If I were to try to interact with you in your world, all you might perceive of me would be a slice of me as I intersected with your world, but that would be all: just that slice of me, not the rest of me that exists off your flat world. Perhaps, somehow, your world intersected with mine and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
She was silent for a while. “This... is quite a remarkable concept,” she finally said, tactfully.
“I don’t know for certain,” I said. “It’s just a theory,” I said and pulled the stretched paper down, putting another frame up.
“What was that like? Your home?”
I looked from the empty paper, that blank potential, to her. And those amber eyes watched me levelly. Home. Another world. Remembering that was getting to be like reviewing someone else’s life.
Still, I told her. As I sketched I told her about my home and my work and the things I remembered and missed: my family and friends, the convenience, the cars and electronics, the foods and sights. And the people. I don’t know how much she understood, but she sat quietly and listened and watched me.
There were more detailed drawings of her face, trying for the muscle, the bone structure, all buried under that complex fur that made it so difficult. Rris could recognize one another by subtle indicators in facial features, fur detailing and stature. I was only just beginning to learn how to do that and generally had to rely on cruder things, like their distinctive markings. It was something I was aware of, and was also quite aware I was more than capable of making a real fool of myself. If an inexperienced Rris artist were to draw a human woman he might give her a masculine square jaw, or an over-prominent adam’s apple. I could quite easily make the same sort of mistake with my Rris portraits.
And those liquid amber eyes kept watching me.
The thing was, it wasn’t a look I could categorize. It was interested, amused, alert... like the look a well fed cat might give an interesting small creature scurrying around: worth watching but not quite worth moving for. Part of me interpreted it as curiosity, another part as threat, a danger. And yet another part as sexual interest. I really tried to ignore that part.
The charcoal was dusty, brittle and dirty stuff. I had to keep wiping my hands on a clean cloth to prevent errant fingerprints, but it had its uses. I could smear and scumble it, using it for shading and texturing. The soft stuff produced wonderfully dark lines and the harder sticks were almost H pencil quality. The chalk came into its own for highlights. I did my studies, covering several sheets of paper in sketches from various perspectives before starting on the final draft. Hard charcoal scratched against the paper in broad sweeps as I sketched in now-familiar lines.
It was taking shape. I stood back a few steps to consider it. The proportions felt right.
She yawned, flashing pink tongue and white teeth, licked her lips. “You have something?”
“I think so.” I said. “Thank you, you can get up now. The form is there and I’m just working on detail.”
“Ah,” The Lady waved a graceful acknowledgment and flowed to her feet. Muscles stood out under her fur as she stretched, arching her back and tail, then one leg at a time before padding around behind me.
I sketched in the suggestion of the markings on her fur, trying to hint at the grain. From off to the side there was a rustling as she picked up a paper from the table, one of the studies.
Finally: “These... I’ve never seen anything like this.”
That could be diplospeak for ‘utter crap’. “They are to your satisfaction?”
“A.” She held it out at arms length, then drew it in closer, her head twitching as her amber eyes studied the paper. “A, very much so. These are extremely good.”
“Thank you.”
“This is how you see us?”
“As best I can show on paper,” I said, not entirely sure what to make of that. Did she like them for their artistic merit? Or their freakish quality?
More rustling as the paper was laid down and the others were inspected, from the simple speed sketches to the more detailed studies. “You really see these shapes? This sort of detail?”
“Yes. Not all in a glance. That’s why those are called studies. They’re all parts of the whole.”
“But still, just comparing the difference between these and other portraits I’ve seen... My face looks wider.”
“I think there are differences in our eyes.”
“Really? Just the eyes.”
“Umm, also the way we... understand what we see,” I said, concentrating more on what was on the easel in front of me. “You’re very good at seeing movement, but...”
And something touched my hair.
Her hand lightly stroked my shoulder-length mane, brushing back and forth a few times and then gently hooked it and pulled it back to bare my neck. There was a presence of sun-warm fur at my shoulder, a sound of breathing as that leathery fingertip stroked across my cheek and beard, tracing down my neck. I heard her sniff, as if scenting me.
I’d frozen solid, motionless apart from the parts that clenched involuntarily.
There was a tickling on my ear; stroking around the outline, a furry fingertip tracing it curiously, then moving down to the bared skin of my neck. Gentle, just touching, but I couldn’t help but picture claws scant millimeters away from my jugular. For a few seconds she stroked with a feather-light touch. Perhaps then she noticed the slight trembling in my frozen hand.
“Ah,” she said and paused. Then I felt and heard her draw back. “I trespassed. I apologize.”
I started breathing again. “Why... did you do that?”
“Curious,” she explained simply. “I didn’t realize it would upset you. Again, my apologies.”
I closed my fist hard around the charcoal. It stopped the trembling, but there
were now small smudges on the paper where my hand had twitched. I was quite aware of the Rris standing just behind me, watching me. “Ma’am, why did you ask me here?”
“Why?” She stalked around into my field of vision, to where she could watch my face. She was so much smaller than myself, her head barely up to my clavicle, her tufted ears just over my shoulders. She looked a little puzzled. “You were interested in the collection. And I did think it would be an opportunity to learn more about you.”
“Uh... A?” I had a sinking feeling that I knew where this was heading.
“I did want to learn a little more about the veracity of those stories. About where you come from. Your home. There’ve been so many variants that all seem so hard to believe. I wanted to hear it from the source itself. I must confess, I found the idea of a world full of... individuals like yourself difficult to manage.”
“Just those stories?”
“A,” she scratched delicately at the side of her muzzle with a single claw. “That surprises you? I’d have thought a lot of people would ask you about that.”
“Ah,” I nodded slowly, forgetting my Rris etiquette.
“That wasn’t the reason you were expecting?” those amber eyes were watching mine.
I met her stare. “I had wondered if you were trying to sexually proposition me.”
There was a slight hiss of breath, then a pause, then she chittered... laughed out loud, her jaw spasming and then she stopped. Watching me and cocking her head. “That’s not a joke, is it? May I ask why you wondered that?”