Unfinished Painting

Number Three

Bounty was a quiet man. He didn't cause trouble with the neighbors nor with anyone he knew. But even in his quiet life, the list of his enemies and gossips grew. "A nobody to a somebody just with one painting? Sounds like a failure, soon he will fall. If everyone painted their dreams, the world would be rich. He should thank us all!" 

Envy spread as he sold another painting to a man of noble status. "Paint me another one; something elegant but melancholic", said the nobleman. "Something with glamor but also simplicity.

False rumors began to spread. Like a wildfire, it grew. It burned his motivation down, but there was only so much he could do.

Bounty decided to focus on the task at hand. He painted the nobleman's deceased mother who, in the painting, wore a dark velvet gown which made her pale skin look like milk. Her bosom cradled a large sapphire that hung heavily on a simple metal string. 

"It is everything and even more", said the nobleman. "Elegant my mother was, but her demise was greatly painful; that stone was as precious as she, the stone a gift from my father, she wore pridefully. But I must ask, how did you know?" 

Bounty took off his hat and simply gestured to the nobleman, "a good painter will quietly observe, a secret talent he may not always show." With tears in his eyes, the nobleman said, as a reward, he would build Bounty a house he can call his own; with a room for each of his family members. And the nobleman kept his word.