semi-open post: portraiture

[peaklordshen]

After shifting his way through oil pastels, watercolors, house paint, colored pencils, and an endless variety of paint markers, Shen Yuan has finally managed to get the Mansion to produce a decent set of oil paints, and—wonder of wonders—an easel. He's set up in a spacious, well-lit hall, probably for dancing or salons or whatever, where he's arranged a bunch of furniture in various configurations—wooden screens that he's draped cloth¹ over for backdrops; armchairs stolen from the lounge, wooden stools and high-backed dining chairs from the kitchens; even a lovely chaise lounge in a deep purple that he wistfully thinks he won't actually use, because it would definitely be for Aleksander, and he doubts he'll be doing that entry in his protagonists of the Mansion series after all. He has one of the stools pulled up next to the easel to hold his paints, and is wearing a wide-necked sweater over a black turtleneck and some loose, worn jeans that already have a few flecks of paint on them from when he was doing his color tests.² He's pulled his hair back in a practical bun, and he's currently laying down a layer of gesso on his canvas.

¹ Look, he has to do something with all of those robes he accidentally conjured in his last post.
² After days of feeling very lost and confused about how he's not required to LARP anymore, he's pretty much decided that it actually means he can just change who he's LARPing as at will, and the main way to do this is through fashion. Today he is An Artist.

[Primarily for those Shen Yuan has offered to paint, but anyone else is also welcome to come bother him while he works.]

Comments

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan blinks. "That is ironic."

[peaklordshen]

"Also I wouldn't necessarily say I visited." He shrugs, a little. "Before I came here, I thought I was trapped there forever."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan looks at Shen Yuan for a long minute, expression thoughtful but otherwise blank. She's considering what Shen Yuan knows about her, and what he doesn't. She hasn't really seen him since he kissed her, but she does like him. She thinks, perhaps, they have a few things in common. In many ways, she's not the same woman she was that night; she thinks perhaps he's not the same man he was that night, either.

Then she nods to herself, decision made.

"When I was a child, my brothers and my sister and I stumbled into a different world," she says. Her tone is mild; inflection-less. She's had a good day - she can still feel the ghost of Lancelot's hands on her body, his mouth on her jaw, and she's looking forward to their meal that evening - but this still isn't easy for her to talk about. "We were there for fifteen years before -" it spat us back out, she thinks to her own surprise. "We returned home. We went back a year later, in our time, much more briefly." She pauses. "Thomas remembered Narnia, specifically; I can't imagine I featured heavily in the stories. But during the first visit, I thought it might be forever."

[peaklordshen]

"Narnia," repeats Shen Yuan, startled. "Right—Susan, you're the oldest." He stops, not sure how to proceed - with Claudius it was easier, because he wasn't sober,¹ and he didn't care as much about his feelings (or at least he was confident that he'd already hurt those feelings far worse than he could by talking about Hamlet). And with Laertes, he'd had something specific to avoid, but no specifics to share. He likes Susan, and can't quite tell what's beyond the impassive neutrality of her face and voice.

"I haven't read of you," he says, because that seems like a maybe reassuring place to start. "But—the books are famous, especially in Europe and America. They made a few movies, which I did see—well, I saw the first one. They weren't very good."

¹ Either time - truth curses count as not sober.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No, Peter was the oldest," Susan corrects, automatically, and then freezes. Movies! That suggests a level of import that she hadn't thought to assume. And - famous? The thought is discomfiting.

But she shan't let this overwhelm her. She has tasks to accomplish, and things she's looking forward to. Instead, she offers, with a nod to Shen Yuan's canvas, "He reminds me of them. The boy does."

[peaklordshen]

"I'm sorry," says Shen Yuan. "Peter. Of course." He follows her nod back to his canvas. "That makes sense—Magnus also ended up in a world not his own, though I think more like you than like Janet and I." The nested definitional categories of world, here, make sense to him, but would be hard to untangle. He should try to write it down sometime. "He has a talking sword."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan shakes her head - she hadn't meant it in a world-traveling way, but she's not certain that she has the capacity to explain her actual meaning.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan notes the shake of the head; not that kind of reminding, then. He nods. "He's good," he says, more quietly. "Brave, and kind, and easy to talk to."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"He heals."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods. "I haven't seen it, but I hear he healed Claudius from a zombie bite when that whole... business happened."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"He did." Susan had been there, in the kitchen, helping Clarissant when it happened. She hesitates again. "Lucy was a healer, too."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods—he vaguely remembers the kids in Narnia having powers, but not what they were—and then the past tense sinks in. Ah, god. It would be really cool if everyone he liked didn't have such fraught relationships with their potentially dead little sisters. "I'm sorry," he offers, and then, cautiously, "is she—back in Narnia?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan's lips press together in a tight, thin line with very little direct purpose at all. "Perhaps," she allows, because Thomas had said they returned. There's no easy way to say this without shifting the mood of the conversation even further - it's a faux pas, is what it is - but she's told several people already and they haven't resented her for the burden of the truth. She focuses on the edge of the canvas, and says, "They're all dead, my family. Though Thomas said one of the books spoke of some change in the rules which allowed them all to go back even so."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan is quiet for a long time. He doesn't want to just turn the conversation back to himself, but he is in a kind of unique position, in relationship to this particular complex grief. Finally, he says, "I died, before I was transported to my fictional world. My family still believe me dead. Because to them, I am." He meets her eyes. "All three of my siblings--alive, but in a world I can likely never access again."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan takes a step back, giving him a sharp, assessing look. She doesn't quite know what to say - likely there isn't anything - but questions crowd the back of her tongue anyway. Surely the specifics differ, between his experience and her family's, but - "Did it hurt?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan blinks. "Death? I—no, not that I remember." If it had, it had since faded. "I've experienced worse pain since."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Once again, Susan doesn't know what to say. She nods and takes a step forward, reaching out to rest a hand on Shen Yuan's bicep. She squeezes lightly - it's part gratitude, part apology.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan smiles at her, small but real. "'Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away to the next room.' That's—someone. English poet, I think." He looks apologetic. "I've only read it in translation." Online, in some AMV or something, almost definitely.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Still," Susan says, quietly. "I am sorry for your siblings."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods, a little uncomfortable but grateful nonetheless. He doesn't like to think about what his siblings think happened to him, and how much it is both true and completely untrue. He doesn't know what to do with it at all. "And I for yours," he says, "for being in their kingdom without you."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Thank you." Susan hesitates for a long moment. She doesn't want all this to overtake her anticipation of her date with Lancelot tonight, but she also doesn't want to just walk away from Shen Yuan. "You really do have quite the talent."

[peaklordshen]

"Thanks," says Shen Yuan, abashed. "It's really just practice--but if you'd ever like to sit for me, let me know." He's never painted a woman before, but he'd never kissed a woman before Susan either, so he might as well be consistent.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I would," Susan says. It's been years since she's sat for a courtly portrait, and that was nine years and (if memory serves) several inches of height ago. She hesitates. Tentatively, she asks, "Did you change with your death? Physically?"

[peaklordshen]

"I--" Shen Yuan hesitates. "Yes, but it wasn't really my death that did that part, I was--my soul left my body, I guess, and I ended up in another one entirely." He eyes her curiously. "Why?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh." That's different, then. "I think I was taller. The first time I was this age."