Painted: 1.0.7

Chapter 7

The courtyard had been entirely empty when Kassi had stood in it before, but now it was crowded with people. These people were all around her, moving silently, as if muted, and all with their heads down. It was as if they feared making eye contact. This did not keep Kassi from seeing bits of their faces, however. And oh! their faces were beautiful. They had long lashes and smooth skin, perfectly shaped noses and lips. Whether man or women, they all had silken, idealistic hair like something out of a shampoo commercial. And the women's hair was done in all sorts of beautiful, complex ways that Kassi could never have dreamed of. They wore oddly styled braids that came up from their necks and curved back around their ears, twists that wrapped around their heads and then descended down their backs as far as Kassi could see, buns that wrapped into each other and then separated again, and curls that had been wrapped around their foreheads like crowns. Their clothes were flowy and silken, but dull in color. The men wore loose shirts tucked into pants and the women long capes and dresses with lace fringes and that reached the pavement.

Quietly, Trissea reached out and took Kassi's hand. They stepped forward and were swept into the conveyer belt of people. Kassi dodged several long capes and followed Trissea through the crowd. Eventually, they came out through the other side, and Kassi found Trissea already sitting on the edge of the fountain. She gestured for Kassi to have a seat next to her.

After a moment of silence, Trissea said in a hushed tone, "Remember that scroll we gave you?"

Kassi nodded. She realized that she still held it in her hand, and pulled it out from under the advelo.

Borne to the rebels of old,

A boy brave enough for the throne.

A prince of questioned past, but with understanding of the unknown to others,

And a princess passionate and humble—a princess to become queen.

To become queen to put Exspecto Locus back to what it was once meant to be.

To venture into the memories of a mother,

Brushstrokes of past surround us all,

She’ll find truth.

But truth stands alone and so must she, or the land cannot be settled.

Trissea pointed to the fifth line. It took a moment for Kassi to understand what she meant.

"Exspecto Locus?" Kassi asked and looked up at Trissea.

Trissea was nodding, her lips quiet. 

"That's where we are?"

"It means the land of those who wait, in our old language," Trissea whispered. The crowd continued to move slowly by, their heads down. Kassi thought, if she listened closely enough, she could hear their breath. They were indeed human, or at least something close.

"Where are they all going?"

"I can't be sure," Trissea said. "But I would bet most of them are going home. From work. From whatever their jobs are."

"Why don't they talk?"

"What do you mean?" Trissea cocked her head.

"Why don't they... you know... talk—like us—like we're doing now?"

"They're afraid they'll make friends," Trissea said sadly. "All people live separately, work separately... wait separately. They do it because if they make relationships while they wait, then when they are taken, they may hurt those they love, or they may be hurt because those they loved are taken."

"Where are they taken?"

"Quies Locus. They are taken and frozen into place in Quies Locus, and there they stay in their poses forever more."

"What do you mean... they're frozen?"

Trissea sighed. "They can't move. I guess I need to explain; Exspecto Locus isn't really... Earth."

Kassi nodded. Although she already knew this, it was still freaky.

"It is a place," Trissea said. "A special place, a world that only true creativity can find. It is like a database for Painters, or any artist who depicts a human in their work. When an artist reaches a high level of creative ability, have you ever noticed how their artwork begins to seem... almost alive?"

Kassi nodded. She had seen this in her own paintings on occasion.

Trissea swallowed hard, then continued. "Well... when they reach some creative point, that's when they start to take people. It's not their fault that they do it; it's an subconscious process: they tap in to the world of people in Exspecto, and when they paint, they take a soul from our land and transfer them onto a canvas."

Kassi blinked. This explanation Trissea had given made very little sense.

Seeing that Kassi was confused, Trissea explained further, "Quies Locus is the name we call the canvas; it is the place we go when a Painter decides to paint us."

"So when you said you were taken...?"

"Though we try to live as though on Earth—as though we were normal people—we cannot. Each one of us will be taken from this world—this waiting place—sooner or later. It used to be an honour to leave our land and transform into an artwork for Pictorians. But that was before the paintings were frozen. Now, Quies Locus is a place of the quiet and the petrified. A live in Quies Locus is an eternal hell; spirits are unable to move, unable to contact anyone, unable to communicate at all, only able to sit and seep in our own thoughts and wishes and watch as the Pictorians come and go, live and die, as we cannot.

"We live separately here. We live alone, in dread and anticipation of the day when a Painter will unconsciously find us and paint us: a day when we will disappear from this world and be frozen still in another." Trissea's voice had power behind it now, even though it was usually timid.

"Why can't you just live normally?" Kassi questioned.

"Many many years ago—our people remember it, but because time is different between us and Earth, it was millions of years ago for Pictorians, and they have no recollection of it—we lived normally. The people in paintings weren't frozen in place. They moved freely about.

"But our people have a tendency to be a chaotic in nature, and over time, Exspecto Locus and Quies Locus became places of chaos. There was no government—or if there was, nobody followed the rules set by it—and the streets and courtyards were places of lawlessness and disorder.

"We were saved, however, by a Pictorian man. His name was Pellio. He was young at the time, but none the weaker for it. He discovered Exspecto Locus and found a way to visit it. We still do not know how he was able to walk between worlds as he did. Some say it was his proximity to pure creativity that allowed him to do it.

"When Pellio came to us, he found what a place of discord Exspecto was. He decided immediately, being the decisive man he was, that we ought to have a proper, working system of government. For this, he created a scepter—a great golden cane with a large ruby at its tip that opened every thirty years to reveal a small stone in which two names were carved: the names of the two new rulers," Trissea said, her voice respectful.

"The scepter chooses the two new rulers based on who it thinks would best lead our nation at that time. One leader is always offspring of the previous rulers, so that between the pair there is already some knowledge of politics. The other is a common person chosen from the general population of Exspecto Locus.

"But alas, the first King chosen for the land was the one to put into place the magic that froze the paintings." Trissea sighed shakily. 

Kassi looked at her knees, which were draped in her emerald advelo, and then up at the thinning crowd of people crossing the square. She wondered which had been a happier time--the time of chaos and creativity, or this time; the time of loneliness and structure.

She looked over at Trissea, who had been quiet for some time now, and saw that a tear ran down her pale cheek. Her eyes were closed, and her hands held tightly onto her advelo. Kassi reached over and put an arm around Trissea's shoulder.

"We don't know why he even froze the paintings, but he did. And now we are forced to live separately, so that nobody is hurt when their companion disappears.

"Our race has changed, Kassi. It used to be that we were prone to disorder. But because of our new rulers, we're no longer that way. Now we're obedient and silent. We're a passionless people who wait for their time to end here and go to an elsewhere that isn't an better. There, we are even more two dimensional than we are here. We have no capabilities but to sit and wait for the next stage... the next stage that will never come," she whispered.

Kassi looked back out across the courtyard. There were very few people now--only one or two--and they were spread far apart with their heads to the ground. And then there was her and Trissea, who sat by the fountain with their arms around each other.

"If the people here are so averse to friendships... then why are you talking to me?" Kassi asked, unsure if it was an appropriate question or not, but wanting to ask it anyway.

"Remember how I told you that I'm part of a rebellion?"

"Yes?"

"Well, the community of the rebellion is different. We believe in friendship and in love. It is part of what we rebel for—we believe the citizens of Exspecto deserve joy."

Kassi heard that Trissea emphasized the words 'part of,' and she wondered aloud what else Trissea, Kiki and Luk rebelled against.

Trissea nodded in acknowledgement. She knew that Kassi would ask this. 

"Come with me? The advelos disguise us, but I just can't risk being heard out here," Trissea said, and Kassi nodded. Trissea reached for Kassi's hand and they stood.

The flow of people across the courtyard now ran in a slow trickle. Those who were left walked hurriedly and wrung their hands, as if they were late. Now that the crowd had mostly cleared, Kassi saw in front of them the building from which they came. Kassi thought it must have had a large surface area for all those corridors and rooms, but from the angle she stood at now, it stood the same as the two offices besides it. It blended in perfectly.

Trissea drew a key from her advelo and turned it in the lock on the metal door, which swung open for them. They stepped inside and silently shed their advelos, hooking them back on the coatrack once they were off.

Trissea led Kassi through another sequence of corridors. Once they had reached the end, Kassi found that they stood in a sort of massive conference room. Its ceiling reached into a high dome and let in light through fogged windows so that the whole room gleamed white, making Kassi squint. The conference table could have seated at least forty people, and the whole room was almost like a hall itself to compensate for the length of the table.

It was entirely quiet in the room when Trissea and Kassi entered, so Kassi could hear their footsteps echo around the walls.

"We want to break through the freezing barrier," Trissea said once she had closed the door.

"What?" Kassi turned to face her.

"We want to merge all three worlds: Pictor Terra, Quies Locus, and Exspecto Locus. We want to make it so that any person can move at will through all three of them."

"How?"

Trissea took a moment to answer. "We don't exactly know yet."

"Is it even possible?"

"A previous rebellion has done it."

"Really?"

"Yes. Two people broke the barrier... but that was before the government found out. Then the rest of the rebellion was... quelled."

"Were they killed?"

Trissea closed her eyes and nodded. 

Kassi reached out and touched Trissea's shoulder. "I'm sorry. That's awful."

They stood there silently for a moment. Eventually, Trissea opened her eyes again and peered at Kassi, a look of wonder in her eyes.

"What?" Kassi asked after a moment.

"Do you still have the scroll?”

Kassi held it up.

"Read it again."

Kassi's eyes skimmed it over again, her eyes catching several of the lines she hadn't noticed before.

And a princess passionate and humble—a princess to become queen.

To become queen to put Exspecto Locus back to what it was once meant to be.

An inkling of an idea was beginning to appear in Kassi's mind. She remembered the day when she had seen her mother talking to the painting on the wall. 

She had been so little; she hadn't known what it had meant.

"Why were Erko and Luk so excited about the fact that my mom's name is Sila?" Kassi asked.

"Because Sila Regnum is the name of our queen." A tentative smile was spreading across Trissea's thin lips. "You're a princess, Kassi," she whispered. "You're the girl in the prophecy."