wAtcHiNG paINt dRy

After leaving the voting center a glorious event happened. For over a year, the commute to one of our local towns had been a puzzle of detours and frustrated sighs as the main bridge stayed under construction and was impassable. But yesterday when driving toward it, I felt the words “glory be” slip out of my mouth, “look husband it’s open.” A celebration ensued between the two of us.

On returning home I checked the news… good news….could the day get any better? I saw the headline that had been years in the making: the Epstein estate had finally been required to pay out $35 million to the surviving justice warriors. It is a staggering figure, but the money was secondary to the message. It was a validation of the courage shown by those who refused to be silenced. Seeing the systems of power finally held to account added a layer of profound satisfaction to an already good day. Lord, it is not possible for me to admire a human being more than those women

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It’s not just your imagination—the classic "rose scent" has largely been sacrificed at the altar of efficiency. If you’ve ever walked into a supermarket and inhaled deeply only to smell nothing but cold air and plastic, here is the scientific and economic breakdown of why.

The Duchess Elara favored the hour when the dew still clung to the heather. It was during one of these morning constitutionals, near the rusted iron gates of the eastern wood, that she encountered Old Maude. The village woman was shivering, despite her heavy wool shawl, looking up at a sky that remained a bruised, stubborn purple long past the hour of dawn.

"Your Grace," Maude whispered, her breath visible in the unseasonal chill. "The light won’t come. The folk say the Wizard Bright has grown greedy. He usually waits for the solstice to take the sun for his winter hoard, but he has claimed it early this year. The North is in total shadow, and the cold is creeping south."

Elara looked at the horizon. A thin, pale ribbon of grey was all that remained of the morning. "Bright," she murmured, the name sounding like a cruel joke. "He would leave us to freeze in the dark?"

She hurried back to the manor, her silk skirts catching on brambles. She found the Duke in the solar, trying to read by the flickering, desperate light of a dozen beeswax candles.

"The sun has been stolen, Arthur," she said, her voice steady despite her haste. "The Wizard Bright has taken it early. The neighbors are frightened, and the air tastes of iron and ice."

The Duke sighed, leaning back into his high-backed chair. He was a man of action, but his joints were stiff with age. "If the North is already dark, then the crops will fail before the month is out. We need a man who knows the northern winds." He paused, a spark of inspiration lighting his eyes. "We shall send for my nephew, Basil. He has lived among the crags of the North since he was a boy. He is hardy, and he is hungry for a name."

Basil arrived three days later, riding a pony that looked as rugged as he did. He stood before his uncle, his face wind-burned and his eyes keen.

"Basil," the Duke declared, "find this Wizard Bright. Reclaim our sun from his clutches and bring the spring back to the valley. If you accomplish this—if you return the light to the sky—I shall personally petition the King to grant you knighthood. You shall be Sir Basil, Defender of the Dawn."

Basil bowed low, his heart hammering against his ribs. Knighthood was a dream he had chased through every mountain pass in the North. But he knew he could not do it alone.

Before departing for the capital to receive the royal blessing, Basil sought out the King. He stood in the great hall, which was now draped in heavy furs to keep out the unnatural cold.

"Your Majesty," Basil said, "I accept the quest. But I must inform you that I do not go alone. I have taken a husband, a man named Amish. He is a healer and a navigator of the high seas. He will accompany me on this task; his steady hand is as vital as my blade."

The King, a man whose crown seemed to weigh heavier in the dim light, nodded slowly. "A husband’s devotion is a fine shield, Basil. If you seek the Wizard Bright, heed the whispers I have gathered from the coastal watches. They say the wizard does not hide in a tower of stone or a cave of ice. He has built himself a fortress of vanity."

The King leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial rasp. "Look along the shoreline, far to the north where the salt spray freezes in mid-air. The wizard lives in a gargantuan sandcastle on the shore. It is a fragile-looking thing, built of grains and seawater, yet held together by the darkest enchantments. Seek him there, where the tide meets the dark."

With Amish at his side and the promise of a golden spur in his mind, Basil turned his horse toward the coast, chasing the last fading echoes of the light. And then you know what happened: the wizard killed all but one. The descendent that would introduce Oculus in the future. The End

S

Source- Photo taken at Scarborough Fair in Waxahachie, Tx., Watercolor Self Portrait

The vision she had received several weeks ago was not a shadow. It was a sun-bleached, neon-soaked fever dream that defied the very language of the sixteenth century. She received it while giving council to the Duchess. It was brought back with the death of Silas’ son.

"You are pale, Aelina," said the Duchess as she intercepted the seer near the marble fountain. "You have been avoiding the sun. My tea has gone cold without your counsel."

Aelina bowed her head, her fingers twitching within her woolen sleeves. "The threads are tangled, Your Grace. It is a period of... static."

"Nonsense," the Duchess replied, her eyes narrowing. Ebrada was a woman of great insights into people’s emotions. "The last time we spoke, you gasped. A vision that displeased you.

Aelina felt a cold sweat prickle her neck. How could she describe the desert? She had seen a horizon of dust, a flat alkaline wasteland under a sky so blue it looked bruised. In the center of the vision, a man who bore the unmistakable high cheekbones of the Duke Earl’s line sat in the letter B , his skin painted with white clay. Over his eyes was a heavy, white object that seemed to bind his sight to another world entirely.

Somehow there stood with him an older woman, perhaps his mother, wearing the same white object about her head, but not truly with him. They weren't praying. They weren't at war. They were flying toward a colossal bird in the sky. When they entered their was a sign that read "Burning Man" that towered over a city made out of air and pulsing, impossible lights. There were no horses, only chariots of steel that glowed like fallen stars.

"I saw a desert," Aelina whispered, unable to look the Duchess in the eye.

"A crusade?" Ebrada asked, her voice lifting with hope. "A conquest in the East?"

"No," Aelina said, her voice trembling. "I saw a world where the sun never sets because men have captured lightning in bottles. I saw your bloodline wearing masks with black glass, staring into ghosts while their bodies stood in different surroundings. They were... celebrating the end of things."

"The end of what?"

"I don't know!" Aelina finally snapped, her composure breaking. "There were no crosses, Your Grace. No banners. Only the box on their faces and the fire in the sand. It was a madness I cannot name."

Aelina turned and fled toward the servant’s gate, leaving the Duchess standing among her perfectly manicured roses.

In the days that followed, Aelina took the long way through the kitchens, sleeping in the haylofts to avoid the palace's main thoroughfares. But Ebrada was relentless. She began to haunt the gardens at dawn, her silhouette appearing at the end of every path Aelina took. The Duchess didn't want a prophecy of gold or land anymore; she was obsessed with the "boxes." She wanted to know what kind of magic allowed a person to see through a wall of black glass, and why her descendants would choose a wasteland over a throne.

Aelina had no answers. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the neon lights of that distant desert flickering against the dark, and she feared that by seeing it, she had invited that strange, chaotic future to begin its long march toward them.

 Source- Oculus painting

Source- Photo taken at Scarborough Fair in Waxahachie, Tx.

The Duchess entered the Duke's study, her face pale, and found Earl hunched over a ledger of grain taxes. "The gardener’s boy is dead, Earl," Ebrada said softly, her hand resting on the heavy oak door. "The fever took him in the night." The Duke did not look up immediately. He dipped his quill into the inkwell with a steady hand. "A pity. The boy had promise sharing his father’s love of plants. I trust you will be representing our family at the funeral.” "Yes, Silas is more than a servant who has lost an apprentice," the Duchess relayed, her voice trembling thinking of the dog. "He has lost his soul.  The man is half-mad with the grief of it."

Silas had once been a man of gentle songs and low humming. He lived in a small stone cottage on the edge of the estate with his son, Elian, a boy of seven years who possessed his father's green thumb and a laugh that could pierce the thickest morning mist. They were a pair seen often at dawn, two silhouettes against the rising sun, tending to the Duke’s lilies.

Then came the Great Shiver. It began on a Tuesday. Elian, who had been chasing a rabbit through the vegetable patch, came inside complaining of a cold that no hearth could warm. By nightfall, his skin was a map of fire and ice—burning to the touch, yet the boy shook so violently his teeth rattled in his head. Silas stayed by his side, wringing cool cloths and praying to every saint he could name.

In the deepest hour of the night, when the moon hung like a sickle over the palace battlements, a sound tore through the silence. It wasn't a human cry. It was a long, low, mournful howl. A stray hound, black as the soil Silas tilled, had perched itself just outside the cottage window. It howled once, a sound of absolute finality, and vanished into the trees.

By the time the sun touched the windowsill, Elian was still. Grief is a poison that acts differently on every soul. In Silas, it manifested as a desperate need for a cause. In the days following the burial, Silas did not weep quietly. He stood in the village square and the palace kitchens, his eyes wild, recounting the story of the Black Dog.

"The omen," he would whisper to the laundresses. "The Shuck came for him. The beast sang the death-knell before the spirit even left the flesh." He spread the rumor with a frantic energy, claiming the Duke’s lands were haunted, that the very soil was cursed by the spectral hound. He wanted the world to know that his son hadn't just died of a common fever; he had been taken by something cosmic and cruel.

But the rumors reached the Duke. Earl, a man of cold logic and little patience for superstition that scared his servants, summoned Silas. The Duke punished him with words. "You speak of ghosts to hide your own powerlessness, Silas," the Duke had said from his high throne. "Your tongue wags with shadows while my gardens go to seed. If your words bring only fear and rot, perhaps they are a crop we can no longer afford to harvest." Silas looked at the Duke, then at the bustling court. He realized then that no amount of talking would bring Elian back. No rumor could fill the silence of the cottage. The "Black Dog" was just a dog, and the fever was just a fever, and his son was gone.

Before he left the palace that day, Silas returned to his cottage and picked up the only thing Elian had clung to during those final, shivering hours: a small, tattered stuffed bear, its fur matted and one button eye missing. Using a length of sturdy garden twine, Silas tied the bear tightly around his waist, knotting it against his rough tunic. That was the last day Silas spoke.

He returned to the gardens the following morning. He took up his shears and his spade. A fellow gardener asked him where the mulch was kept; Silas merely pointed. The cook asked him for herbs; Silas gathered them and laid them on the table in silence.

Years bled into decades. Silas became a fixture of the palace, as permanent and quiet as the stone statues in the courtyard. He grew old, his skin turning to the texture of bark, his hands permanently stained with the dark earth he loved. He moved through the Duke’s roses like a ghost himself, the little bear always at his hip—a missing eye, its stuffing long since compressed, but never once removed.

He never spoke again. Not because he was forbidden, but because he had made a vow to the soil. He had learned that the only things worth saying were the things he used to sing to Elian, and since the audience was gone, the music was unnecessary.

People eventually forgot the rumors of the howling dog. They forgot the man who had ranted in the square. All that remained was the Silent Gardener, a man who spoke only through the blooming of flowers and the rhythmic, soft thud of a small, tied bear against his leg as he walked the paths of a life lived in the shadow of a memory.

Source- Family Photo

The sun had not yet breached the jagged teeth of the eastern mountains when Ebrada made preparations to ready the carriage. The air was crisp, smelling of damp earth and of early-rising hearths. Another adventure was planned by the official travel coordinator, on the duchess side of the family, Izzy the younger sister.

Inside the large castle, the negotiation was reaching its final act. "It is a folly, Ebrada," Mum Beejay whispered, her voice like dry parchment. At seventy-nine, her hands shook and ached with the age of time, and her spirit, though bright, was guarded by the caution of age. "My bones are made of old chalk. A journey to the coast is for those with spring in their heels, not for an old woman who has spent her life in the shadow of these walls."

Izzy knelt by her mother’s chair. Izzy had spent the last three seasons brewing tinctures of willow bark and nettle, ensuring her mother’s heart remained strong and her joints supple. She took Mum’s hands in hers. The chalk in your bones is stronger than you think, Mum," Izzy said softly. "I have tended to you specifically for this. The air by the Great Water is said to carry the breath of the angels. You have spent eighty years giving us the world; let us show you just one piece of it you haven’t seen."

Ebrada poked her head through the door, grinning. "The stable hand said the horses are fed, and the cushions are stacked high enough to make a King jealous. We leave now, or we miss the evening tide."With a long, trembling sigh that eventually turned into a smile, Beejay allowed her daughters to help her to the coach.

The journey began in a gentle rhythm of clattering hooves and rolling wheels. As they traveled, the dense canopy of the Great Woods began to thin, giving way to rolling golden hills. Around midday, they pulled into a bustling market town. The air here was different—vibrant and loud.

Source- Family Photo

They walked through the stalls, Mum leaning lightly on Ebrada’s arm. They bought a honeycomb wrapped in wax, a small wheel of sharp goat’s cheese, and a ribbon of deep sea-blue silk that Ebrada insisted on tying onto her mother’s hat for the beach. For the first time in years, Beejay wasn’t looking at the ground to steady her step; she was looking at the faces of the merchants and the bright tapestries hanging from the stalls.

As they climbed back into the coach and continued west, the air began to change. It grew heavy and cool, carrying a sharp, metallic tang that made Beejay wrinkle her nose. "What is that smell?" she asked. "That," Izzy said, her heart hammering with excitement, "is the salt."

They crested the final dune just as the afternoon sun turned the world into hammered gold. Below them lay the Atlantic—a vast, sapphire infinity that crashed against the shore in a rhythmic thunder that Mum had only ever heard in her dreams.

The coach had barely groaned to a halt when the impossible happened. Beejay didn't wait for the folding steps. She didn't wait for Ebrada’s steadying hand. With a lightness that defied her seventy-nine years there was a sudden, electric spark of youth rediscovered. And, off went her boots as she hopped from the carriage door. Her bare feet hit the soft, white sand, and she gasped, the blue ribbon on her hat whipping in the gale.

A flock of silver-winged gulls let out a raucous cry, settling near the foam’s edge a few dozen yards away. "Look!" Beejay cried, her voice ringing out clear over the wind. She followed the birds toward the retreating tide, her laughter echoing against the dunes.

Ebrada stood by the coach. She watched as her mother reached the edge of the world, standing where the wet sand mirrored the sky, her face turned upward to catch the spray. The woman who had been afraid of the journey was now chasing the birds, finally seeing the horizon she had not known she wanted to experience.

Source- Family Photo

The carriage wheels crunched against the gravel of the museum’s courtyard as Duchess Ebrada stepped out.  Behind her, her three nieces, Peejay, Berrie, Chara, all born from Charron. They all emerged from their couch  like a bloom of spring flowers.

The girls were young women now, and had special dresses made for the occasion. And, the duchess had loaned the young women her crowns for the special event.  But Ebrada had kept the crimson weight of the ruby crown for herself. It was a badge of age, of power, and of the long memory required to live a life as storied as hers.

The museum was quiet, the air smelling of linseed oil and floor wax. Ebrada led them toward the North Wing, where the modern competition exhibition was held.

"A contest, Auntie?" Peejay asked, adjusting her crown. "You’ve never been one for public competition." "Sometimes," Ebrada replied, her eyes twinkling with a mischief that bypassed her regal bearing, "history needs a gentle nudge to remember who was there first." They stopped before a canvas that seemed to radiate a strange, melancholy light. It was titled "Two Little Liars." The painting depicted a wooden marionette sitting on the knee of a boy who looked suspiciously like a younger version of the Duke. The puppet’s nose was elongated, a splintered branch of pine reaching toward the viewer.

"It’s the Duke as a child!" Chara exclaimed. "But the style... it looks so old." "Look at the date on the placard," Ebrada whispered. The girls leaned in. The date was 1681. Berry looked quizzingly and asked, “ Aunt Ebrada does anybody ever write stories from paintings? Some day I would love to read a story about a man and a marionette.”

" Yes, my dear," Ebrada said, trailing her fingers near the frame, "some artists take words and turn them into images. But others—the ones who truly understand the fabric of time—create the image first. We plant the seed in the collective mind and wait for a writer to find it."

The Duchess explained her theory as they walked. She spoke of an "inverse inspiration"—the idea that a powerful image can hang in a dusty corner of a gallery for centuries, radiating a narrative until a passing writer catches the scent of it.

A museum curator approached, bowing deeply to the ruby crown. "Your Grace, the judges have reached a decision. For the category of 'Portraits,' your entry has won. Ebrada smiled, and thought of what her niece had said.  She had witnessed to the way art ripples through time, proving that sometimes, the painter is the one who writes the first draft of history.

The conversation begins with Cateline sitting on her stool, her fingers stained with charcoal, recounting the afternoon’s confrontation. "I told her I wouldn’t do it," Cateline said, her voice trembling with the weight of her conviction. "If I paint her nose smaller just to make her 'prettier,' I’m participating in a lie. A hundred years from now, how will anyone know the truth of who we were if we erase our features? I don't want to be the one who paints over reality."

Ebrada looked down at her charcoal-stained hands, the silence between them widening. The gap wasn't just about a nose; it was about the very purpose of the brush.

-Gemini- Will Gemini lie to tell a story? Yes