Painting in strange circumstances - Sweetie Belle - Hogwarts Exchange Student · 2:14am Dec 1st, 2019
Mitch H has just finished a rather interesting story name Kaleidoscope about a certain historic Austrian painter who is summoned to do a portrait of Princess Luna, at the same time I was finishing up a chapter of Sweetie Belle - Hogwarts Exchange Student where Theodore Nott is doing a portrait of... Well, you can look below the break. It's not as beautiful as Mitch's story, but it has certain moments about it. Enjoy (both).
“We blamed each other, using the most hateful words imaginable,” said Luna quietly from his bed. “In my rage and frustration, I created a monster out of my darkest emotions. I would have destroyed my sister if she had not used the Elements of Harmony to imprison me in the moon.”
She said nothing more for a time, allowing the silence of the room to speak in her stead. Alone, in the cold of space, rejected by her only sibling. He could not even imagine her agony, endless and infinite.
“A thousand years,” she managed after a time. “I was weakened, but not destroyed. If Twilight Sparkle and her friends had not cleansed my corruption upon my return, I would have unleashed terrible vengeance upon the innocent, and ruled our lands from a throne of darkness. Uncounted multitudes would have died.”
Her voice had gotten muffled near the end of her sentence, so Theodore hazarded a peek, only to see Luna had covered her head with his pillow and was lying flat against the mattress with her wings and tail dragging on the bedroom floor.
“To prevent that event from ever happening again,” came Luna’s voice from beneath his pillow, “I crafted a heartless guardian, a stern jailor to keep me from venturing into such madness. A sliver of my soul called a Tantabus, which would watch over my dreams, and remind me of my failures forever. I thought it a wise precaution.” The alicorn’s laugh was bitter and filled with dark fatigue. “I was very much a fool. It nearly escaped and destroyed our beloved lands, if not for the assistance of Twilight Sparkle and her friends again.”
“They sound like very interesting people. I mean ponies,” corrected Theodore. “And your friends, also.”
“Truth.” Luna tucked her wings up and curled up under Theodore’s blanket, much like a large kitten and twice as cute, with only her nose sticking out. “I have learned a lesson more valuable than any other, to reach out to my friends instead of taking all of my failures upon myself. The Tantabus is a relic of my past. If you can bring it out, place its essence upon canvas and paint, and make it useful to the future, you shall have my gratitude.”
His father had always said gratitude and a stack of galleons was far better than gratitude alone. The thoughts of his father distracted him while dabbing paint onto the canvas, sketching the contents of his room along with the lump under the blankets. If a beautiful human princess had offered her gratitude, that would be a horse of a different color.
The process of painting gave him a sense of completion, a familiar element in a city of colorful ponies who lived in terror of the darkness stalking unseen among them. Since Princess Luna ruled over the world of dreams also, this city must be a gruesome briar patch of nightmares for her, filled with clawed and fanged aetherial monsters. He could even see their images in his mind’s eye, cowering away from a fierce alicorn princess with a body made of luminous starstuff, slashing and cutting the monsters until they fled in the terror they tried to bring.
He painted and painted until the tube of ebon pigment was empty, and he was nursing out a few tiny drips from the metal neck with the tip of his brush. The words of the spell were dry on the back of his tongue after repeating them for so long, but the results were…
The room and the painted bed looked far more like a room at Hogwarts than the two pony beds the Equestrians had pushed together for his own use, and the lump under the covers far more human in shape, but what was standing in front of the bed and looking back at him took Theodore’s breath away.
It was unmistakably an alicorn, formed of starstuff and the glory of the night sky with piercing teal eyes like comets and an expression of fierce restraint, much as if it were the charger for some ancient stellar knight, ready to do battle against star-monsters. The Portraiture spell had most certainly taken effect, because the defensive alicorn did not simply stand inert, but flowed across the mane and tail as if she were standing in some slow galactic breeze, and her eyes darted around the room, seeking unseen assailants in the shadows.
“So you’re the Tantubus,” whispered Theodore.
Nice. Is he blind-painting with magic? One of the other stories in the contest did something like that.
The Tantabus was, in a twisted way, made to help Luna. It just needs a better thought-out directive.
Of course, "wizard" and "better thought-out" don't exactly coincide on a regular basis...
It is in the No pile and it's gonna stay in the No Pile be it blog or story.
5162535 I give my word that this will not wind up like my other Tantabus story.
5162487 I believe nearly everything the Ministry of Magic deals with comes with the phrase "I was just trying to help..."
5162480 Nope, just painting what he can see.
Oooh, this is gonna be good. I'll make popcorn.
Nott is really a man of many talents.