Oct Short Story [Frith Chronicles] A Painting of Failure

Hey peeps!

Here is this month's short story! It's told from Adelgis's point of view. Hopefully you enjoy.

ALSO, Happy Halloween! Look forward to my writing update post! I hope you;re all safe.

Shami

A Painting of Failure

I liked to imagine humans as oil paintings.

Every color, every brush stroke, every shape—it defines a person. A person has to make choices about what they’ll focus on in life. An oil painting only has so much room, after all.  There wasn’t enough room for all the paint, all the brush strokes, and all the shapes. And it would make for an incoherent painting.

Which was why I admired individuals who had to paint over past mistakes.

Dark colors were difficult to get rid of once they stained the canvas, but with enough bright colors, they would eventually fade.

But never disappear. Oil paints were difficult like that.

Fain never slept well. I sat at the end of his bed, listening to the rustling of his blankets. He had asked me several times to help him sleep—to chase away the nightmares—and I didn’t mind helping. But on some nights, it seemed worse than others.

Fain hated all the dark paints in his picture.

His wendigo, Wraith, paced the room. With each breath, he kept the area cool and comfortable. He did it on purpose, to help his arcanist rest. I knew because of his thoughts. I hope he’s okay. I hope it’s not too hot. The click of Wraith’s claws on the stone floor was soft, almost inaudible.

Wraith was waiting for me to help Fain. His impatient musings told me that he hated to see his arcanist in distress.

When I used my ethereal whelk magic to peek into Fain’s dreams, all I found were bloody waters and a profound sense of loneliness. Fain didn’t feel he fit in. With anyone or anything.

A relatable emotion.

I felt it quite often.

When I placed my hand on his bare shoulder, he shuddered. Fain never appreciated an unanticipated touch. I figured he would forgive me. He always did. For someone so bothered by darkness, he was quick to show mercy. Deep in his painting, was the color of kindness.

It was the reason I cared for him so.

No matter how many dark colors Fain added to his painting, he never covered the kindness. He tried to hide it, but I saw through his icy wall.

My father never showed much kindness to anyone. Not me. Not my siblings. Certainly not our mother. So, I valued it more than any other virtue whenever I found it. Volke, along with a few others, had it in spades. Such a rare quality.

A depressingly rare quality.

I tightened my grip on Fain’s shoulder and closed my eyes.

Then I walked into Fain’s dream of blood and water and emptiness. He sat on the deck of a ghost ship, alone with no crew and no captain. Fain didn’t even have Wraith. He wore the clothes of a deckhand that had seen a war. Blood and gunpowder stained his tunic and belt. His trousers were ripped at the end, and his tattoo—the one that marked him as a member of the Third Abyss—was clear on his neck.

Most people noticed his black fingers and ears first.

I didn’t care about those things.

A person’s oil painting wasn’t made up of immutable details. The painting was made of choices. Accomplishments. Decisions when they mattered most. What Fain looked like didn’t matter to me—not the scars, the tattoos, or the blemishes.

“Adelgis?” Fain said the moment he recognized my presence.

He turned to face me, his body thin, his shoulders unsteady. In his nightmares, he was always weak.

“You’re troubled again,” I said. “You don’t need to keep returning here.”

Fain huffed and then relaxed. He motioned to the nightmarish landscape. “You think I want to come here?” He walked to my side and stared deep into my eyes. “Even my mind is against me, it seems.”

“I’m here to help.”

I waved my hand and wove a new reality for his dreams. Like a painting, I crafted a sea of sparkling blue waves and a sky of ivory clouds. Then I filled the horizon with dots of tropical islands and gleeful birds.

A picture so perfect, it could hang on a wall.

Fain’s clothing changed. Gone were the stains. He wore a tunic of silk, and trousers of fine wool. His shiny leather boots would’ve put a king’s wardrobe to shame.

Yet this didn’t please him.

His thoughts turned sour. He wasn’t disgusted with me—he was disgusted with himself.

Always himself.

Fain wrapped his arms around his body, practically hugging himself. He turned away, unable to meet my gaze any longer. “I’m such a failure,” he hissed, self-loathing in every word. “Even in my dreams.”

“It won’t always be like this,” I said, never angry, never demanding.

“You don’t know that. I’ve always failed. Why would it ever change?”

It was so difficult to paint over mistakes, that sometimes people just gave up. They would see the dark spots, and realize their paint would never conceal them, and they would become disheartened. Little do they know that the darkness added depth to their picture. The best paintings were the ones that had deep shadows, but even brighter light.

“Everyone fails,” I said. “Didn’t Master Zelfree say it was important to learn from those moments? To become a stronger arcanist. You need confidence.”

“You only get confidence from success.” Fain shook his head, his dark hair wet at the tips, the locks clinging to the side of his face. “What confidence am I supposed to get from this?”

“The confidence that there will always be someone there to help.”

He turned around again, his dark eyes searching mine.

“There’s confidence to be gained from knowing that the cost of failure is small.” I smiled as I placed a hand on my chest. “I mean, you seem to hold me in high regard. And I’ve failed many times.”

You’ve never failed, Fain immediately thought, no hesitation.

My smile faded a bit as I said, “I have. Trust me.”

“Just because your father said you were a failure doesn’t make it true,” Fain snapped. “That man could criticize the rising of the sun.”

“Did I ever tell you about the Trial of Worth for a relickeeper?” I glanced down at my hands, remembering every detail with perfect clarity. “I thought I would follow in my father’s footsteps and bond with the same mystical creature he had.”

Fain tensed. He glanced at the arcanist mark on my forehead—obviously of the ethereal whelk—and then back to my eyes. “What happened?”

“Relickeepers are special creatures,” I began. “They’re only found in very special places.”

I waved my hand, changing Fain’s dream to match my memories. The waters vanished, the boat melted away, and we appeared at the edge of a ruined building. It had once been a grand library, but a devastating fire had destroyed over half of the structure. The rest was a charred husk.

Stone pillars and metal framework remained in place, each more blackened than the last from smoke and heat. Fain and I stood at one end, while a memory version of me stood at the other.

Three other hopeful arcanists were also there. Reports of the relickeeper forming were everywhere. Somewhere in the rubble, it had hidden its “heart.”

The relickeeper’s heart was important to its existence. The creature’s Trial of Worth was to find it. But nothing about the creature was that easy. Relickeepers represented an undying lust for discovery and preservation. They were creatures made from old monuments, buildings, and magical items. They wanted to explore and unearth centuries-old mysteries.

So their Trial of Worth was to dig through rubble and broken fragments of the past.

Fain watched the memory of me and the others.

We searched through the burned-down library, picking at the charred building. I knelt and touched some of the wood and glass, only to cut my fingers on the sharp edges. The pain caused me to slow my progress.

I had wanted to be careful.

But that wasn’t the essence of the Trial…

The other hopefuls dug through the rubble with reckless abandonment. They desperately wanted to find the heart of the relickeeper before anyone else. They cut their elbows, bruised their knees, and even slashed up their hands. Blood soaked the charred remains of the library.

My father’s hands were scarred to the bone.

When he had bonded with his relickeeper, he had cut himself on a piece of sharpened brass. He told me about it only once. For some reason, he hated his scarred hands. He seemed to believe they made him less of a person.

My father was so focused on outward appearances…

Another reason I didn’t care. Whatever he valued, I found myself questioning.

“You have to cut your hands up to find the relickeeper?” Fain asked, his eyes on the memory of me this entire time.

I nodded once. “Relickeepers only want to bond with those willing to endure pain for discovery. It’s important to them.”

“And you couldn’t bring yourself to do that?”

“I just… I worried that if I hurt myself too badly, I wouldn’t be able to write. At the time, I wrote my sister letters all the time. The fear weighed on me, even as I searched. Which is why I went so slow. And ultimately, it’s why I failed.”

Fain said nothing in response.

He just watched.

As the memory was coming to an end, Fain whispered, “You have to almost die to bond with a wendigo.”

His thoughts told me the story before his words could, but out of respect, I remained silent and allowed him to spin his tale. I liked the sound of his voice. And I appreciated that he was willing to share this color and brush stroke of his painting.

“You have to search through the snow.” Fain narrowed his eyes as he recalled the event. “Wendigo like to lead you through the worst of the weather. I followed the puppies as far as I could, and I knew that if I didn’t turn back, I probably would never make it home. But I just kept going.”

Fain naturally spoke with a quiet voice, but when he became passionate, his voice typically rose.

“I think… Wendigo only want to bond with people who know death is coming for them.” Fain glanced down at his black fingers. “When Wraith bonded with me, his magic saved me from the brink of death. Life returned to my fingers—I could use them, even if they appeared dead.”

I nodded once.

Fain darkly chuckled. “Wraith’s real name is Tennit. That was what he told me when we bonded. He only changed his name when we became pirates. Just like me.”

“Your birth name is Thibault,” I said. “I’m aware.”

His eyes went wide as he turned to me. “Who… Who told you? Was it Volke?”

I tapped the side of my head. “You told me.”

He huffed and waved away my comment. Then he turned his attention to the memory. “Of course. You know everything.”

“My father made sure to remind me that I didn’tknow everything.” When I smiled this time, I had to force it. The memories of Theasin Venrover weighed heavy on my mind. Heavy enough that it would crush any mood. “He was so… disappointed… when I didn’t bond with a relickeeper.”

As if summoned by my dark memories, a glint of light appeared in the dreamscape. Felicity shone into existence, her shimmering body a glowing beacon of hope. When her spiral shell and tentacles appeared, my sadness seemed further away than before.

“My arcanist,” she said as her body fully formed into the iridescent sea whelk. “I’m here, don’t you worry!”

Fain chuckled. He motioned to my eldrin. “What does your father know? You’re one of the best ethereal whelk arcanists I know of. You bonded with Felicity, didn’t you?”

“And you bonded with Wraith,” I said.

That statement seemed to catch Fain off guard. He hadn’t considered his bonding a success until that moment. “Well…”

“Wraith considers it a success. And you’re here, with me, right now. Surely, you haven’t done everything terribly.”

Fain mulled over my arguments, his stance relaxed. He had so many colors in his painting. It was sad that he kept them so muted.

Felicity hovered close to me. She was made of light and dreams, or so the legends say. She basically had no weight. Like a weed caught on the wind, she fluttered around me, her tentacles reaching for the long locks of my inky hair.

I grazed my fingertips on her shell. She felt like warm glass, as smooth as any polished stone.

Her Trial of Worth…

Ethereal whelks were strange creatures. They embodied hope. Undying, unyielding hope. I suspected I would never achieve Felicity’s true form, just because my hope wavered from time to time.

During her Trial of Worth, I was caught in a dreamscape. The test was to escape one of my nightmares. I remembered the moment I thought I would never escape. I almost gave up. Relinquished my hope. But I kept going because I couldn’t let my sister down.

It wasn’t my father’s condescension or my mother’s snide remarks. It was Cinna. My sister that my family had forgotten. I wanted to help her.

I still did.

And I would.

But when it came to my own wellbeing and desires, I often felt my determination slipping. If I had someone else to care for—like Fain, or possibly one day, future students in a class to share my knowledge—perhaps I wouldn’t be so quick to give up.

Perhaps I’d even channel a bit of Volke, and fight through the worst of storms.

The dreamscape around me and Fain began to crumble.

I glanced around, a bit surprised. It meant Fain was waking.

He gave me a half-smile before the colors finally melted around us. I opened my eyes in the waking world to find I was still sitting on his bed, my hand on his shoulder. After a short exhale, I released him and scooted away.

Fain’s eyes fluttered open. He took a moment to stretch before sitting up and wiping his face clean of any sweat and oil that had accumulated.

When he met my gaze, a slight look of surprise crossed his face.

“Good morning,” I said.

He opened his mouth, and then closed it. Then he chuckled. “I had this crazy dream. I kept thinking I wanted to tell you something.”

I lifted an eyebrow.

Fain moved across the bed, pushing some of the blankets away to be even closer. “I forgot what I was going to say.”

“I missed you,” I whispered as I touched his cheek with my knuckles.

He took hold of my arm and pulled me close. “That’s it. That’s what I was gonna say.” Then he embraced me, the heat of his body a contradiction to the frostbitten blackness that stained his fingers.

A beautiful swirl of colors. An oil painting like no other.