Page 63 of Smitten By the Alien Saloon Owner
By the empire. It was so bad that it was making her cry!
“I am sorry,” I said, dismayed. “I will work on it. Next time, I promise I will not forget your eyebrows, and-”
“It’s perfect!”
She sobbed it, which made it very hard to actually hear the words in her reply. And also made it equally hard to believe them, once my translator had latched onto them.
“You don’t have to lie, Shiloh.”
“I’m not!” She nearly seemed angry at me now. “Don’t even suggest that I am!” She picked up the painting carefully, holding it by the dry edges where there was no paint to smear. “I love this, Rivven. There’s something so special about these early pieces. I’m going to put it next to Daddy!”
“Please, don’t,” I groaned. “It doesn’t deserve a place there!”
Shiloh had brought a small portrait of her father. One she had painted herself. It currently stood propped up on top of our dresser drawers in the bedroom upstairs. The first time I’d ever seen it, I’d been entirely arrested by the image. By the obvious care that had gone into it. The skill. Because while the image was of a man I’d never met before, I knew at once it was her father. Despite the difference in their age and gender, those were Shiloh’s eyes looking back at me.
“Of course it does!” she scoffed. Then, her voice softened. “I can’t believe the first thing you’ve ever painted is a picture of me.”
“What else would I paint?” I asked her, wracking my brains for anything else I would bother to attempt. “You said that love could make art. It might not be art. But…” I gestured at the image. “It’s got my love.”
“I know,” she whispered. “And that’s exactly why I want to display it. Somewhere that I’ll get to see it all the time.”
She wanted it. Then it would have to be. I could deny her nothing.
“I understand,” I said. “Go ahead.”
She beamed at me, then hurried up the stairs with the ugly portrait of herself. Apparently, she didn’t want to leave it down here to dry. Perhaps she thought I would chuck it into the fire when she was not looking.
I did not think I could ever be capable of burning an image of my wife. Even a very bad one.
While she was gone, I wandered over to the easel to see what she had been working on this afternoon. I was surprised to see that she had not begun work on one of the new canvasses. Instead, a page from her old book – the one she had brought with her – was on the wooden structure.
It was that painting of the pond. The very first one she’d started just a few days after her arrival.
But it was different from the last time I’d looked at it. She’d deepened the shadows and added more brightness somehow. The snow looked as if it actually glowed with sunlight. The shadows were blue upon it.
And something else had been added. There, in the centre of the pond, which was no longer white with any snow but gleaming and smooth from shovelling.
Two little figures.
They really were miniscule. Each one not even half the size of one of my claws. The work on the figures was so very fine. She must have used the tiniest of brushes.
I knew at once who they were.
They were us.
Shiloh and me, skating through the winter light. Our arms linked.
The first time we’d gone skating together, I’d told myself that it was a moment I wanted to live inside forever.
Maybe Shiloh had sensed that desire in me.
Or maybe she’d simply wanted the same thing.
Because there we were, in that precise moment, frozen in place and in time, by her paint. We’d get to live forever in that perfect sphere of sensation, that memory.
I wanted to do what Shiloh had done with my painting. I wanted to put it somewhere.
Very carefully, I removed it from its stand. I took my time, glancing about the dining room, deciding where it should go.
In the end, I put it high on the wall, behind the bar of the saloon. Where everyone would see it.
Where I would see it, most of all.
Every single day.
