Chapter Twenty-One
A Great Work
After the night on the plain under the sky Astro's tensions had been eased immensely and the beauty and tranquility of it all inspired her. A project began for her as soon as she returned back home to her room. She grabbed a pencil and started to draw what she remembered of the sunset. She took her time in drawing out every detail of the image that she had saved in her mind with the ground being somewhere below the bottom of the paper leaving only the sun and the sky in view. The drawing and the coloring however were going to be two drastically different tasks in term of difficulty. It was the colors of the sunset that had been truly haunting to her and what had caused her such awe. The spectrum that radiated from it had been amazing and had placed her in a state of admiration. The shades that it had cast on the clouds and the blanket of the heavens were stunning.
She closed her eyes and imagined it all seeing the image displayed behind her eyelids. Her drawing continued to evolve as she kept on working, but it was hardly finished in one night, no, not by a long shot. Just the pencil sketch was drawn out over quite some time as she attempted to capture it perfectly. It had been a long while before she even started to experiment with the various colors. That of course would take a great deal more time than just sketching out the design which had taken long enough. She had a whole different paper with which she started to test out her paints once the sketch was finally finished. With each color that she made she took careful mental notes on how she had created each hue. The colors used and the amount of each were carefully recorded in a mental database for future use should she decide to use them in the painting. She practiced blending the different mixes together to create the cascading mural of the sky.
This project began to take up almost all of her time as she devoted herself to it over the course of time. She was determined to finish it off with perfection and that required the majority of her attention. Sail noticed her absence from the sorting room at the very beginning of this project however. She had always been very prompt to come to the work area and listen to and participate in their discussion. When she failed to show Sail was quick to question her lack of attendance, and Astro was quick to answer Sail with her goal. The mare clearly saw her determination to complete the task and left her to her work. She even became a consultant of sorts as she showed Sail her work as it progressed asking what she thought of various ideas, concepts, colors, drafts, and shapes. Sail in turn was swift to offer her support on her endeavor and give her opinions and assistance.
When she could she would bring a palette to show to her friends or a sketch to ask their opinion of. It was tedious work that lasted through the rest of her school year and into the summer. She found herself slightly more reluctant to spend time out with her friends as it was time that she could've been spending working. She didn't of course shut them out completely and she still spent time with them over the break, but the time was much less than it had been the year previously. This didn't hurt her relationship with Spot and Kara, but the two did notice her growing fixation with the painting. She wished that she could bring them down to the base to show them all that she had done, but Sail had yet to give her any further word on showing her friends her nature. It had become easier to give excuses as working on the painting had started to take the place of a good deal of the ones that she had to provide. Still, just as the year previous she did make sure to spend the entirety of the day of the summer solstice with her two friends.
That was the only day that she spent almost entirely away from her task, but even on that day she had worked on it some as she returned. As she had aged from when she had first reached the surface her need for sleep had started to lessen. Once having passed through adolescence star ponies needed almost no sleep to function properly. She was still young and did need to rest, but she needed significantly less slumber than an average foal of her age would require. She woke early and worked as well as stayed up late to further her progress. When school started back up those early mornings and late nights became her primary times of work as the majority of the middle of her day was taken up by school and the homework she received. She did always make sure to complete any school work before moving onto her painting.
Shortly after winter had begun once more she had completed a couple of drafts of the sunset that she wished to create. They had been made on simple pieces of paper as opposed to canvas, but she had wanted to see it there before transferring it to the more professional medium. The simple drafts were more than she could have ever hoped for. As she looked at the finished sunsets she couldn't help to contain her laughter. They all looked just the way that she had wished it would and she couldn't have asked for anything better than the result. She almost wished that she had taken the opportunity to use the canvas, but knew that she could only improve upon a further try at it. Each draft had improved from the last and she felt that she was prepared to try it one final time. Already overjoyed with her success at her first attempts she was eager to try it once more.
She bought the canvas with her own money which was starting to dwindle. This worried her, but she just needed it to get her through this project and no more. She would need to use it for more paint later, and possible more brushes should the need arise. Conserving it was an option, but she didn't want to buy anything cheap that might ruin her final product. The supplies that she had settled on weren't as inexpensive as they could've been, but she was set on the quality of them. They delivered as well when she finished the sunset on canvas. There was no hiding her excitement at the final product that was put on display. Both her mentor and her friends were amazed when they laid eyes on the finished masterpiece. When they saw what she had devoted all of her time to they understood why it had taken the time that it had. They didn't understand at the time that the painting that they were shown was only half of the equation.
The canvas was hung on her bedside wall and all of the drafts and such were stored in a drawer as she didn't want to trash them. Then she set right to work again. It wasn't just the sunset that she saw that night; it was also the midnight sky full of stars surrounding a glowing silver moon. She grabbed a new paper and the process began all over again starting with a sketch of what she saw that night. It was the first time that she had ever been glad for the winter solstice to come so that she might spend all of that extra time working on the second half of the sky that she was in awe of. Winter became a blessing and not a curse as she could work in peace.
Having learned a great deal from the first work her progress moved much quicker with the second. She finished the sketch in just over half the time it had taken her to complete the first one and moved swiftly onto messing with the colors. Despite her much quicker moving progress her work did still last into the summer, but it was almost done as she grew nearer to the summer solstice. She knew that it was wrong to rush perfection, but she wanted to try and finish the second one by the time school rolled around in September. Despite her want to get it done however she took off of her work on the day of the solstice for her friends just as every year that she'd spent on the surface. There was no intention held by her to abandon her two friends for her paints.
She kept on working hard through the shortening days ever nearing her goal of finishing by summer's end. It wasn't too long after the solstice when she completed her drafts of the night sky on the simple paper. Again she was thrilled with the result that she was greeted with, and again she was eager to move it to a proper canvas. With a considerable amount of her ever shortening money supply she bought another canvas for this second painting, the closing half of the night sky's duet. She transferred the drafts' portrait to the canvas promptly and skillfully. Once more she had captured the exact image that she had wished to and her joy was hard to keep in. Her companions were just as impressed as they were with the first. She had completed it before fall and the accompanying start of school. It took its place next to the sunset just where it should just when it should.
She looked up at the two paintings hanging over her bed and smiled in content as she let herself relax into the pillow. Unknown to the rest those were just drafts as well, not the finished products that she had led the others to believe that they were. She looked over at the wall and smiled to herself as she pictured the glowing sunset that would eventually adorn it. Her head rolled back to look skyward. The blank ceiling would also soon be covered in the constellations and silver moon that were printed in the back of her mind. It was going to be absolutely perfect once it was completed in all of its glory. Some of Bold's words from her first day at The Wish Division came to her as she started mapping everything out in her head. You can do anything you want with the interior as long as you don't break anything.