"Sweetly he'll hold forth
turn his eyes gently, although
in his jawbones the Devil
in his mouth Doom were to dwell."
-- The Kalevala

Tall, baroque, built for war. Solid black, like the night or pitch or a pile of charcoal dust crushed against a canvas. A shaky white sickle crowns me, crosses the bridge of my nose like a scar. Most of my mane is shaved down, save a tuft of styled, curling hair between my ears. My tail is long, smooth, and cut razor-straight at the end. I think of myself as stylish.

Meticulous. Carving, slowly, scale by scale - they must be perfectly preserved. Rinse, carefully, in solution - blood will rust. Pestle to mortar. Dust: pigment. Ruby.

Ambition? Just enough. I want what I want and I will have it. I will be the best at it, and if I am not - well. I will make it so that I am. If you want something you must take it. You cannot wait for it to be stolen.

Vindictive, yes. My spite is unending. Perhaps it was programmed in me from the beginning; I was born into competition. I didn't know it. It must be nice, to simply create. Do not try to take from me what I have rightfully earned. You will regret it. Do not ask me to meditate on whether I am worthy of what I have (stolen). It is mine. Mine. Mine.

"Every beast is driven to pasture by blows."
-Heraclitus

Mother, oh, mother. Innocent girl - foolish girl. How could you allow yourself to be taken so completely by another man? Was it truly out of your hands - was it truly fate - that you serve as second wife to the cruelest man on earth? Why not a kinder one, another blacksmith - like your father - or anyone, anyone else? Maybe then you would have been happy. Maybe then I would not have been born.

It has always been a competition for His favor. You, against his first wife, and me, against his heir. Rheingold with his pipes and me with my paintbrush. He is more than enough; I am never enough. He is going to the academy; I am not. He is found with his tongue cut out; I am home, painting, unaware. His mother cries. You look away. I shake my head. Father's eyes are on me.
(For the record, I really didn't do it.)

I am going to the academy.

And then Kett is born, sweet, innocent, beautiful Kett. If he has any talents besides his beauty, I know not what they are. I should hate him, he is her son after all, but I don't. He is too kind, and he does whatever I ask. I am the most distraught, of course, when he is afflicted with such a strange illness, a falling away of his incarnadine scales.

The De Clare committee debates my entry to the academy, for a time, until I bring them my first masterpiece: A portrait in a red they have never seen. No one can replicate it.

I go to the academy.

And - I graduate.

Hold on - what happens in the middle, you ask.

I paint portraits in red. Well - not just portraits, and not just in red. But it is my trademark, this pigment. On rare days off, I must return home to retrieve this sacred pigment, lest some malicious classmate steal a parcel with my name on it and my lifeline enclosed. Kett's illness does not improve when I am away, as he is, of course, sickly, and he always does what I ask.

But as I said: I graduate.

I want to stay.

My father and my signature pigment find me a betrothal. She seems nice. Maybe. She will, ultimately, find that I am not. A shame.