//------------------------------//
// L 
// Story: Wayfarer 
// by The Plebeian 
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Only two elements mark this place at all familiar, but it is nonetheless a revisiting. It is a circular room, with a bed set on two sides, one made with a torn-off blue curtain, and one holding the wayfarers’ bags. The room is lined with a faded brown wallpaper of sylvan designs and curls. There is a single window in the room, and a small hatch on the floor, though it remains shut and secure. A few shelves are set up along the walls, faded, but not nearly as faded as the paper, or the single remaining curtain that drifts inwards with the first light breezes of spring. The artist’s bag lies open, and its contents are spilled over the floor, grand scenes of Canterlot palace at night, a beautiful scene of reflections and reality in Baltimare, a portrait of two in similar color, a dreary factory left alone to fade, a memorial captured in its own time, a familiar aged spire, its tattered curtain drifting outwards, and a scene of the earth. The wayfarer sits at a desk, an impressive stack of canvas paper at his side, and one sheet directly before him, the look of inspiration keen in his eyes.

He has never quite been an artist. He can never mimic her finesse, he thinks, just as she can never quite mimic his own fervor for the journey. However, she found her own version of it, her own way of his joy. She is with him now, and he can tell, he has surprised her, for a torrent – of love now – washes over him as he begins his work. She has painted their journey, and now it is his turn. She helps him through the gaps of his memory, assuring him that such is a part of all the art, the spaces that are left to be filled. As she guides him, a broad smile stretches over his face. It is just like any new journey, the first few steps weak and uncertain.

It is a wonderful apology, to set right a wrong. It is his best effort, and he knows that by the time they finish, he will hold in his hands a masterpiece, a journey embodied. He wills himself to find the first strokes, though he feels already he is not meant for the grand scenes. He has not her finesse with a brush. It is a difficult start, but she still urges him on, as he has once.

It is more difficult than he can imagine, to try and capture a moment in its essence. There is so much he yet does not know, so much he cannot quite remember. She continues her calm, gentle pushes, and slowly, the ideas begin to form in him. The wayfarer, indeed cannot draw. Several drafts are started and discarded in his mind alone. It takes practice, she assures. He will become better.

But that is not what he sees in his mind. That is her way of painting a scene. She combines colors, mixes tones and shades, and sets up an easel. Here, he sits at a desk. He is not a painter, but he is still an artist, just as much as she is a wayfarer. He feels his way through, the new, greater idea taking shape in his mind, and her quiet whispers cease, and she watches as inspiration takes over. He has stood well enough alone, but this is his apology. This is his art, and that is all she wishes to see. The idea takes grand shapes, bends a bit, as he plays with it. It takes a while to take its true form, but as it skips through his mind, he sees that it is, of all, the most beautiful thing he has done, for they have made it. He has experienced many things, partaken in many scenes, but never have they made them. Never have they truly made anything. He lets his inspiration run wild, and as idea after idea swirls through his mind, he is once more calm, able.

In the wayfarer’s mouth is not a brush, nor a palette. It is a pen. On the desk sits an inkwell. His mouth still remains caught in a smile, and in his apology, in her forgiveness, the two are found whole again. He has heard, once, that a picture is worth a thousand words. It is a beautiful phrase to him because the wayfarer knows words well. He needs not color nor brush. He has every color in the black ink, every impression found as pen finds the canvas paper. He knows each scene as he knows himself, as he knows her. He has his depictions ready, gathered together in his mind. Hers are there too, in his own medium. It is a new art, and as she gazes down upon him, she is once more surprised, for in his eyes are found yet another discovery; certainly not the last.

Outside, the sun begins to set, and warm rays light the curtain aflame. They come from behind the wayfarer, and light the feather as well, burning as if captured in the moment of a phoenix’s last flame. It falls on the canvas, and the last rays of an unfeeling sun prepare to fade. There is a peace, and the scene is captured just as he has paused the first bit of his writing. It is a simple message, for both her and the others. It warms her heart, for him to write it so well. It is not nearly a perfect work he sets out to make; that is exactly what makes her heart leap.

On the canvas is found a new beginning, written in the black of their manes. It is a simple introduction, not even a sentence, that brings them finally together. At the top of the blank sheet is written in an artistic scrawling script, “This time, your way, love, that neither of us should stand alone . . .”