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Action Id: 4415 Crisis: Participants: Denica
Status: Resolved Submitted: Dec. 17, 2021, 1:29 p.m. Public: True GM: Crawfish


Action by Denica

Denica wants to use her abilities to paint the future to understand what upcoming threats will face the compact, or what are the new Triarchy's plans. Denica will go to her studio, armed with lots of art supplies and she will continue to paint until something comes to her. Denica will think about what she knows about the Horned God, Ruin, Azazel, the visions she's heard from others, the situations she's faced in Bastion, Cedar Vale and Arx. Her thoughts will remain here until she is able to see something and paint it.


Result

To say Denica gets lost in her work is an understatement. This painting is made with purpose, and focus, and intention. She pours everything she wants to know into it, she uses every color she can find, she finds more colors to use, minerals to crush and blend with oil. At one point, her eyes are dazzled by her brushstrokes, the myriad hues and tints. The joy of such creation swells in her chest.

She gets so caught up that she loses time; hours and hours pass, maybe even a day. Oh, she eats and drinks but she doesn't sleep, can't sleep, until the brush eventually falls from her fingers and she has just enough sense to collapse into bed, content with the knowledge that when she wakes, she'll have something to behold.

But that's not what happens.

She wakes, for certain, but she can't see.

The world is gray, splotches of light and dark and middling tones; there is no color, no detail, and try as she might she can't make out her painting.

She calls for servants, for friends. She asks them to tell her, "What did I paint?"

Confusion. She repeats the question because the answer doesn't make sense to her.

The canvas is painted, yes, and there is color, but whatever created this patchwork of random, chaotic color is fueled by Denica's skill and nothing else. There are no shapes, no patterns, no details to discern. She asks anyone who visits her, any servant who listens. -What did I paint?-

The colorblind, blurry vision only lasts thirteen days, and it's after that that she realizes everyone spoke the truth.

There is color and there are brushstrokes, but the images she swears she saw aren't there, at least not with the clarity she witnessed before. Like a language she'd forgotten, or knew in a dream but lost upon waking, she can see that there is something there, an obscure shape, an image just on the edge of recognition.

An answer she's unable to decipher, but there's something there, something more. She gets the feeling that it's something she can figure out eventually, somehow.