The First Artist was a Woman with No Name

The Message

The Woman spent the next few months teaching herself how to recognize the soil that contained the pigments, use the pigments on the cave walls, and create the images that she saw and heard in her mind and in the world. She experimented with wet soil versus dry, more in one place as compared to a light dusting, reverse images where she put her hand down and painted around it, everything. She was even able to make black pigment from the charred remains of their nightly bonfires. Two colors were a lot better than one.

Around the time of her discovery and experimentation, another event occurred that threw her world off its tilt. The Woman had been spending time with Ngobi after he returned from his hunts and between practicing her art. She liked the steady rhythm of his voice and the stories he told whether they were about what happened during the hunts or his childhood or the things he made up in his mind. It was a routine she had grown accustomed to.

One day, as she was out gathering plants and pigmented soil, a sharp cry of pain and panic sent the birds skittering away from their roosts in the towering trees. The women of the tribe ran back to see what the commotion was about and were met with a grisly scene. The men were carrying back a writhing, blood-soaked body that the Woman realized with horror was Ngobi, his face flushed with pain and his leg bent at an unnatural angle. Later, she would come to learn that there had been an accident that resulted in a break of his upper leg. Somehow, they managed to stop the bleeding and the screaming, and the Woman was able to see him, watching him as he slept, his chest rising with shallow breaths.

Ngobi could no longer join the hunts, at least not until he got better, if he did. The Woman offered to watch over and care for him while he recovered, a solution that put most everyone at ease as they tried to resume their normal activities. So, as the Woman learned to mix the pigments and paint the walls, she stayed with Ngobi as he healed, ensuring he got all the food and water and rest he needed. And as they spent those months together, the Woman balancing all of her new and old responsibilities the best she could, Ngobi learned more about the Woman-what it was like for her growing up, the praise she heaped on her mother, the way she and the other women learned the land as they foraged for food. On more than one occasion, the Woman caught Ngobi staring at her even when she wasn't signing, which led to inexplicable fluttering in her stomach.

Eventually, Ngobi healed, good as new, and rejoined the hunts while the Woman rejoined the other women of the tribe in the brambles and bushes and fields.

While the Woman was always silent, she was never strange. The other women of the tribe treated her no differently, so long as she was able to do what she could to help collect and prepare food and contribute to the wellbeing of the community. But ever since she found the pigments, something had taken over her-an almost a restless urge to paint and create and communicate and talk. This was the way she could talk to the people of the tribe. Not necessarily the women, but the men and children who didn't interact with her as much as they did each other. She could put her thoughts and observations into images that people could interpret and understand, with much less room for error or misunderstanding.

Once she nearly perfected her craft, covering entire boulders far from the tribe when she was out gathering food, she was ready to show someone. And she had just the person in mind.

When she next saw Ngobi coming back from the hunt, this time with only a few hares instead of the antelope he had the first time she met him, she dragged him away from his tasks. Not literally, she wouldn't want to physically drag anyone anywhere. But she went up to him, catching his eyes and staring at him until he broke eye contact. He muttered something to the man he was working with, handed over his hares to him, and followed the Woman when she turned on her heel and walked away.