The Bride of the King in Yellow

II. Remission

The clutches of destiny never left, despite a change in path I sought best for a meaningful life. When I left Landor House, I believed that Clementine absorbed every portion and corner of my heart. Time madly spun from the years I spent there as a boy, and soon my heart opened to other aspects of the world, and the many vices and virtues it had to offer. The heart has four chambers and over time Clementine grew hidden away from all of them. My heart fulfilled with creationary designs, the praises of Quinn and my accomplishments, and the knowledge the world granted me. Clementine wrote often in sophisticated words and innuendos of her activities but the yearning of her spirit drained each time we spoke of mere mortal frivolities. I was free from a prison I naught understood existed for Clementine, for she was absolute in her release of me to pursue the outside world from Landor.

I ceased writing to her, first excused by the pouring amount of work. When that justification dried, I was left with only shame that I had not been able to encourage her sentimentalities. No amount of praise seemed to amount to finding that equality with my angel, and I never felt accomplished in my work that she would be mine. Love felt distant from my purpose although I pictured it as my destination, one that felt more like an intangible dream.

Quinn and I traveled to many countries and coasts and soon my apprenticeship evolved until I was my own master. The call for commissions never ended and while I grasped the knowledge and culture of these foreign lands, my work hungered for my own creation, undictated by the masses. Fear shrouded me when I would attempt to contemplate my first work of art and I stood frozen on a blank canvas, fearing my life would turn into accomplishing the tasks of others. Just as Clementine used to distress for us- following the paths others tread and now dictate us to pursue.

Despite it all, my desire to create buried my fears of insignificance as I stood in the Pollier Exhibition Hall surrounded by my first public portfolio amongst the masses of Crece. It was five years since working alone on my own portfolio and commissions without Mr. Quinn, ten since I last saw Clementine at Landor Hall. Private invitations were few- Quinn was forced into absence due to his declining health, a deterioration that I slowly observed the past two years- but the Hall was full of loud contemplation, gasps of reactions, and a conjured emotion of passion and disgust from the public that sought something new.

In these paintings, you would not find intricate landscapes or beautiful women who modeled for days, nor depictions of religious iconography in the light of which I was first trained.

Here, my creation was

"Ghastly"

"Abhorrent!"

"Orphic but profound!"

Once, I knew nothing- told I would amount to nothing. Yet I watched their eyes bulge and complexions whiten, and even as their disgust grew, they could not look away. Their minds could not comprehend the creation of distant dark lands, the infinite cosmos, the world out of reach of our mortal cognizance. My methods were uncharacteristic in starting with a black canvas, the textures building onto each layer of paint as if my creation would seize the viewer from the frame. The clean perfection Quinn taught me with art was wasted as the paint appeared so fresh it would drip blood on their expensive shoes beneath the frames. My creation felt alive and real, despite their depictions of things one would not find in mortal life. My work was grotesque with misshapen forms, animals that resembled human bodies, or gaseous planes of existence amidst poison and blood.

Pride flooded my veins, watching their stoic facades melt with each interaction of my paintings. The voids of worlds created in my work still did not fill my heart, nor the path of destiny that I sought. This pinnacle of achievements felt triumphant...but did not surpass that border of the effect of an everlasting and infinite design.