The Painter, The Trench-Knife, And The Princess
His hand shook, and the paint didn't go where he wanted it to go, again.
Damn Jews!
The paint-brush had been over-trimmed, and his trench-knife had been splattered with his previous attempts at keeping it under control. Perhaps if he did this… or that.
No, it was no use.
The painter had had a better war than most. He'd never gone over the top. He'd barely ever had to stand the night watches in the trenches. There had been plenty of troopers in the regiment who'd come, and gone, and been left to rot in the fields, or carried back to cough their lungs out in the field hospitals, or fed into the grave registration machinery.
But the painter still had a bit of tremble in his traitor hands, his Jew hands. They didn't want to do what he wanted them to do, they rebelled against the fineness he demanded of them.
He dabbed again at his paint-mixing board, and tried to retrieve, repair the mistake.
He got through the night with a minimum of swearing at the bankers and the Jews and his damnable hands.
The nightmare of the gas clouds rose over the distance, and he cringed, watching the flashing on the horizon as more and more distant British tubes flung their rations of poison eastward, eastward towards him and his fellows in the trenches. His satchel was full of orders. His mind was full of orders. His soul was full of order. And the trench-entrances loomed before him, beckoned to him like the demon-lined downward path into Tartarus.
He set one foot in front of another, and started his march into Hades.
Then a pair of evil eyes loomed out of the darkness, and he stumbled back on his heels. A face like a muzzle followed those eyes, fierce and beautiful and terrible. The memory of muddy filth raised along his spine, it felt so much like…
The painter awoke, his neck aching terribly. The half-dried paint dripped off of his face like the trench-mud. He'd fallen asleep sitting up, and made a terrible mess of his materials.
He cursed, and went to get water out of the sink in the hallway outside. It was still early, and nobody else was awake. He washed his filth-encrusted face, and looked in the mirror. The little mustache he had learned to trim in the trenches was half-stained blue on the left hand side.
The painter swore again, and rubbed at it with water and a rag. Nothing caused the blue to wash out. Was he stuck half-blue-whiskered until it grew out?
There was the razor… the fellows at the beer hall would make fun of him if he showed up half-blue like a verkakte Britisher Highlander.
Muttering sulfurously to himself, the painter stomped through the darkness of the garret corridor, thinking of the terrible beauty of that half-remembered long blue face, like the merging of some Aryan beauty, and those noble artillery-horses that had died like flies in the rear areas that had been his running-courses during the war. The poor boys in the trenches had been stuck, buried deep in the dirt and the earth, beneath the violated sod, waiting for the shell or the poison or the bayonet. Only the blessed like the painter himself had been given the gift, to run like fire, to run like the wind, to run like all hell set loose, gates blown open and the rushing of all the horses of pestilence and poison and fire and death on the hoof.
The artist, lost in his vision of the horses of hell, sans tack, sans horsemen, rushing through the burning wastes, didn't even notice as he walked through that glowing doorway that had replaced the entrance to his narrow one-room refuge against starvation and poverty and the fucking Jews.
The artist didn't notice when his room failed to hold any easel. He didn't even notice that his chair and his cot weren't there. But the strange change in light and color eventually brought themselves to the artist's attention. He looked owlishly about, and finally noticed that he had gone somehow astray.
Instead of a heavy-timbered fourth-story garret, he was in some great echoing stone chamber, like the interiors of the uper spires of the great cathedral in Strasbourg he had once walked through while the List Regiment was recovering in Alsace. He couldn't see where the lighting was coming from. He couldn't see where he had come from. It was as if he had stood in the real world while balanced on the one foot, and when he'd settled his weight upon the other foot, he was in some wondering dreamland.
Except his dreams had never been like this. Not since Fromelles of the blood and the fires and the stinks.
A humming caught the artist's attention, and he turned to look, alarmed, hypervigilant and aware. He had his trench-knife in his hand, his off-hand guarding against a grab, ready to punch his way through-
The face of the great mare that haunted his dreams stared at him from the darkness, the strange light that lit the chamber blue-black casting her into even stranger shadowed flickering.
The trench-knife made a tinking sound as it fell from his nerveless fingers.
Why had he never noticed the long, sharp, barely-tapering horn that spiraled out of her noble brow? The strong blue feathered pinions that spread out from her perfect back? The swirling, mystic depths where her mane should have been…
"Painter!" the great blue mare said in her vast tones, echoing throughout the dark and stony room. "I have asked the shadows to give unto me a portraitist worthy of my stature, and my destiny!" The great, wondrous, winged, horned horse spoke perfect Viennese German, like she was a Hapsburg princess. But no Hapsburg was so well-formed, so perfect as this mare. No misshapen jaws or oddly proportioned features for this perfected, pure princess of the equine races!
"Are you a delicate and honorable soul, who can paint me as I am, as I should be?" she said, loudly and proudly. Ever since the trenches, the artist had found that nobody really spoke loudly enough for his damaged hearing. It was like the civilian world had been muffled, silenced, made small and squeaking and soft. Not this princess of the four-legged peoples! She spoke with confidence and vigor, loudly enough to cow the heavy guns, loudly enough to cut through even machine-gun fire. This was a commander of horses! This was a leader of the quadruped nations!
"Your worship," said the artist, trying to match her volume and vigor, and failing miserably. "I am but a humble painter of landscapes, of buildings and towns. I am no artist! I have no talent for forms and figures. You want anybody but me!"
"A humble artist! Wonderful! Glorious! I see your soul, my dear ape. I know a fellow-spirit when I see one! I put my trust in your paint-brush, I put my destiny in your clear eyes!"
The artist found an easel placed before him as if by magic, and paints, and a knife, and brushes. He mixed his paints, judging with a certainty he'd never felt in the real world the shades and the tints which would suit this great dark lady of the pony nations.
The artist worked, and mixed, and sketched with his charcoal-fragments, and judged with eyes somehow made perfect beyond all previous fallible moments he'd suffered through during his many, many failures after the glorious and savage war years.
The princess's portrait slowly emerged from this welter of charcoal and paint and brush-strokes. Slowly, slowly. Somehow, through the night that never ended, time stretched long and sinuous and glorious, the shifting bright stars glittering through the many windows of that dark castle-chamber, answered in turn by the starfields, nebulae, and heavenly lights that peeked through his subject's endlessly-shifting tresses.
The artist found himself challenged by those impossible locks, and fought, again and again, to pin them down in paint and canvas, savagely stabbing with his trusty trench-knife, trimming his brushes again and again, scraping away paint from the surface of the damp painting, removing, revising, swiping, repainting, dabbing and slashing and stroking again and again. On more than one occasion during those long, seemingly-endless hours, he nearly wiped his canvas clean, leaving only faint traces of what had gone before, scraping down to the fabric itself, to start again.
He laid down layers of paint a dozen times, and removed them in increments a dozen times more. His subject sat, inhumanly patient, impossibly so. Only a divine being could possibly be so still! Only a horse of the heavens could be so accommodating of such a fallible, flailing painter! So unworthy of his subject, so unworthy of his theme!
All the hates of his long war, all the fears, all the broken places he had painted and cut and scratched upon his palimpsest soul, fell away as he whittled and brushed and cut and swiped at his stubborn canvas.
The strange visage of his terrible, vast, sublime princess-subject slowly began to peek in swipes and scars through the sagging, fretted gaps of his much-abused canvas. Her strange, terrible eyes. Her proud brow! Her long and curling star-stuff mane, endless, wondrous, beautiful, dangerous! Again and again, the artist found himself falling into the depths hidden in that hair, that endless, endless space within which you can lose yourself, your terrors, your screaming memories, your nightmares…
Your dreams.
Finally, after pouring his soul into that abyss hidden within his subject's vast eyes, deeper mane, endless shadow… the artist came to an end. Not of his subject, because she was endless.
But the artist? The artist was finite, and small, and his hopes and fears and heart could only bleed so much over his canvas, before there came an end of him, and an end of his heart's-blood.
"I am sorry, my liege, my lady, my heart. I must rest. My brushes are pared to their last bristle. My knife is dull. My eyes see less and less, your glory is more and more muddled in my feeble sight. This is all I can offer you. It is enough. It can never be enough. But it is what I have for you."
The artist's eyesight and his consciousness shrunk, his world collapsing around the one true fact of his half-life, that terrible princess-subject. Her glittering eyes took up more and more of his shrinking world.
"No, my painter. My portraitist. It is enough. Though no pony else sees my beautiful night, you have shown me that there is someone who has seen it, if only a little corner. You have given me a night worth a thousand years. And though I have no other realm, no other kingdom, you have given me this thousand-year imperium, this millennial empire of the night! Thank you, my little human. Go back to your own world, and know that you have given Luna, Princess of Dreams and the Night, a precious gift. One that will last me another hundred years in the long shadow of my arrogant sister's brutal sunlight. I will need nothing else, and you may be assured, I shall meditate long upon your vision of my soul."
And with that, the artist fell back into sleep, and was lost to oblivion, for how long, he knew not.
In the morning, the painter awoke, and stumbled about like the bohemian veteran layabout he was. He snorted into the mirror at the blue tints in his whiskers, and getting out his razor, trimmed away the offending hairs.
He had another meeting with the Party in the evening, after all. And though they tolerated his artistic pretenses, they wouldn't understand multi-coloured former corporals' bohemian personal oddities.
And yet, that room full of serious men seemed smaller than it had the day before, full to the rafters and overflowing with their petty blame, and their anger tasted bitter.
Though he couldn't remember the night's dreams, they had left him in a good mood. An expansive mood, that felt pinched, and restrained in that little room, as if parts of it, and him, might be chopped off like the dyed hairs in a hallway sink until what was left of him would fit.
He left the meeting early, and went back to his room for some foolscap and charcoal sticks. He felt like trying his hand at caricatures. See how much beer he could get for free. And find some fellows worth drinking with.
And young Adolf strode off into the starry Bavarian night with his bag under his arm, looking for a warm and welcoming beer-hall full of horsey, long-faced women and hearty drinkers.
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Mate, it says you posted this five times on the New Stories section
9967685
That's what I begun to notice as well....
9967685
Those are other authors. What's going on?
Edit: HOLY SHIT! I just read the story and it's about Hitler!
9967688
WAT?!!!!
9967685
Actually, multiple different people are posting stories which are very similar to each other (Such as the same cover and title).
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Damb
What the duck.
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aka WTD
XD
9967716
I think these stories are all part of a contest or something, cause all the stories have links to the Quills and Sofas Speedwriting group.
9967722
Okie..... :P
That was different. Luna or Nightmare Moon or Maybe Luna pre-Nightmare Moon gave Adolf a vision that changed the course of history. Gave him confidence or maybe allowed him to cut away his bitterness?
Anyway it's an interesting take on what a vision at the right time and place could change history.
So my first thought is that it's some kind of experiment to, for example, see if eliminating as many distinguishing features as possible before posting the stories would have any effect on things like Likes or views or judgment or whatever. But of course such an experiment is doomed to failure on FiMFiction because every story is still tied to your screenname, so, for example, I still know I'm reading (or not) Mitch H's work.
Now perhaps this wasn't the case in whatever medium these stories were originally written in, the product was more anonymous, but still, it's not anonymous by the time it gets to here. So those of us sitting outside of the writing contest, unaware of what was coming, are instead just being hit by what looks like a series of trolls. Here's my thoughts on the matter.
Cast a stone, and watch the ripples.
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The odd part of this is I *just* got done writing a section of my Harry Potter crossover where the son of a Death Eater is painting a portrait of Princess Luna's Tantabus. I gotta up my game.
9967864
Damn, I'm sorry I haven't been by in a while. I really do like that story.
Most people could have lived a different life and I enjoy how this small encounters like this could change history.
This book here is also about Adolf taking painting as his job and doing something surprising in the end after being influenced by a little girl. ( And it's an alternate universe in the sixties where Germany won WW1 and a new conflict is brewing.)
I said I was going to comment on all of these, and this is no exception.
I'm conflicted about it. On the one hand, the immediate antisemitism turns me way off, and I'm generally not interested in seeing Hitler in my ponyfic. On the other hand, it's kind of fascinating, and not at all what I was expecting. I don't think it's the kind of story I want to see personally, but at the same time, it's done in a way that makes it clear it's art, and I do want that kind of provocative art to exist.
So, good job, I think.
Not much to critique in this story. There’s some absolutely wonderful lines, like these:
Overall, great writing! My one little nitpick, if I have to make one, would be the Hitler thing dude what the actual fffffff
They certainly delivered.
I'm not sure which of them should feel more insulted by that.
... Oh. Huh. Such is the power of ponies. The National Socialists might still rise to power in this timeline, but without the burning vitriol of the man with the mustache. Or I'm being too optimistic. Regardless, this left me minimally disgusted, which is the best we can hope for given the perspective character. Well done.
I am unsure how to feel about this.
Whoof. It ain’t bad but it’s going to fly over people’s heads, crash into the moon and then push the moon into a black hole.
Mitch, you're genuinely an exceptional writer. Some of the lines here are breathtaking. Your imagery and narrative work are really top notch. It's great to have found your work through the Quills and Sofas group.
But I really, really wish this hadn't been about Hitler of all things.
A thought experiment suggesting how a pre-fallen Luna might interact with a young Hitler. Dark, for sure, but fascinating all the same. I suppose this could be an attempt to understand how a phsychopath's descent into darkness could start, or how it could end, depending on how you read this story. Superb writing, if a little tedious. I for one appreciate this story for what it is, though I suspect that most people who read this story will only see the "It's Hitler" part, and get stuck on that. It's a shame, really. In trying to erase or ignore the horrors of the past because it triggers people's feelings, we're bound to repeat the mistakes and atrocities of history.
Just think: if WWI had been delayed a couple years by some mysterious traveler of time and dimensions sticking his foot out from a café table to trip some brooding revolutionary, young Adolf likely would have ended up in architectural design.
But I decided to just see how things played out.
My verdict: you're all very boring, rote, and dismally predictable, and I'm therefore going to destroy the world in 2032.
I can't understand why this story has so many dislikes. Most of the other Kaleidoscope stories have a similar number of dislikes. Some troll with a bone to pick?
I remember seeing the Kaleidoscope stories on the main page when they were first published, and being very confused, like some other commenters here. I also remember reading the first couple paragraphs of this story and dismissing it out of hand.
Now, having read this author's work previously, I was a little more open-minded. Something to be said about social (or economic?) phenomena, there.
Anyway, this was brilliant. Very poetic. The ending was a punch in the guts, though! I suppose if you'd opened with
few people would have read to the end!