FLUORESCE

> CAST
> You yoke your imagination to the dreams of grandeur that trickle down from soul into illusion. Colors become paint, and paint becomes art.

[ The Journal of Willa Wysal, Curator, Raven's Court Art Gallery ]

DAY 1

I never thought I'd see this day! After all my letters and petitions and requests, we've been approved. This gallery -- MY gallery -- will host the famous Varren collection. The famous Trader-turned-Painter. The pieces arrive tomorrow. I doubt I'll even be able to sleep tonight!

DAY 2

Today was both busy and enlightening. A team of workers spent the afternoon unpacking the crates and mounting the pieces in the gallery, while I worked through the paperwork in my office with the estate's representative, Broker Corra, a Trader.

I remember joyfully saying to her, "It must be such a thrill, representing the most coveted art collection in Elanthia!"

"Don't forget to sign those in triplicate."

But I pressed on, unable to control myself: "He was just such an interesting character. Vacildon Varren . . . I wonder what he was like in person."

"Well, I knew him in his youth." She shuffled some papers.

"You KNEW him?" I asked her incredulously.

"He was a Trader. I was a Trader. We were Initiates in the Guild together. The cohorts are not terribly large, so yes, I knew him. There was even a time when we did some research together."

Needless to say I pestered her into telling me more.

"Each of us in the group had our own particular interests -- some rooted themselves in the physical with Fabrication, others explored reality through Noematics. And, Vacildon, well, he worked on Illusion, of course. Fluoresce, specifically . . . finding a way to make it do more, to make it last. It was meant for battle, originally, but, based on his work, he was able to start actually painting with it."

Here she paused. But I stayed silent and allowed her to continue.

"And, well, you know the rest. He became a famous Painter -- I heard the Baron himself even wanted a Varren piece of his own at one point -- but then he had to stop painting and it drove him mad. No one has seen him in ages."

"That last bit you said, I hadn't read that before -- what did you mean he HAD to stop painting?"

"Well, he couldn't cast the spell anymore. Fluoresce."

"Why not?"

"Because of what we told him from the beginning. Because Fluoresce runs on dreams. On unconscious thought."

"I still don't understa--"

"Don't think of a beisswurm."

Silence passed between us.

"What are you thinking of right now?"

"A beisswurm," I confessed.

"Exactly. Past a certain point, your thoughts, your dreams, they can't be controlled. And if Fluoresce is a tunnel from your dreams into reality, well . . ."

"Are you saying something came through the tunnel?"

She just seemed about ready to tell me more, but the oddest clicking noise started to come from her satchel. It sounded like . . . scratching glass? And I thought I saw a tiny cube nestled there . . . But she stiffened, bid me good luck with the exhibition, and hurried out.

DAY 3

Knowing what Broker Corra shared with me about the paint's magical origins makes me appreciate these pieces even more, but I must say they are masterful works all on their own.

There are several notable pieces in the collection. One shows a row of crystalline cocoons receding into the distance, each filled with the dim outline of a floating body. Another depicts a shining stairway that ascends into the distance amidst a backdrop of pure space and twinkling stars.

But my favorite, the real gem, is that of a child standing at a chalkboard. His back is to the viewer, giving us no detail of what his face looks like. His little hand reaches up toward the board, with a piece of chalk in it, seeming to put the finishing touches on the longest, most complicated equation I've ever seen.

Sometimes I stare at it for hours.

DAY 5

Sesetar, the night watchman, quit today. Said he was starting to hear voices on his rounds. Said the Varren paintings were talking to him.

He claimed that when walking by the piece with the starlight staircase, he could hear voices from far away. As if they were calling down the stairs to him from high above.

He said they wanted him to join them. Said that a woman promised him, "You will always be safe here."

Curse those superstitious Rakash.

DAY 8

I'm sorry I haven't written more. I haven't been sleeping well. Just last night, for example, I had the most vivid dream.

I was lying in my bed, staring at the tiny window across the room. Someone was standing there. Someone very small. Inside my locked room. Standing there on a wooden chair and pounding on the glass window, trying to get out into the night. Pounding and pounding, again and again, but unable to break the glass because there just wasn't enough strength in those tiny hands.

Then the tiny little thing stopped. And it turned. Its body stayed perfectly still as its head swiveled halfway around to look right at me. I heard that movement of the head -- it sounded like pouring a thick, viscous liquid. Like pouring paint.

It was a child. The child from the painting. Only three feet high. A face with no expression.

That's all I remember, the rest being lost in the haze of the dream.

This afternoon, my housekeeper said she found spots of paint on my window this morning.

I'm sure it's nothing.

DAY 13

I just woke up with the most interesting idea about commodity markets:

It's well known that for a mean-variance portfolio, the optimal weights are sensitive to parameter estimates, especially the mean return vector. Now, market participants typically assume that this is because of the interaction between estimation error and optimization . . .

But! BUT! It's so clear to me now that it's actually just an ill-conditioned linear system! A product of the first-order conditions!

Do you see it? CAN you see it?

I couldn't have seen it either, before I went to bed last night.

What is happening to me?

DAY 21

The voices. The noises. They never stop. Always from that same room. Those same paintings. Curse you, Vacildon Varren, wherever you are!

Finally, last night, I'd had enough. I stormed into the Varren room, suddenly filled with courage, ready to confront whatever demons these were.

But this time it was dead silent. The voices didn't beckon me to ascend the starlight stairway; the bodies floating in their crystalline cocoons no longer begged to be released.

Absolute, perfect, silence.

Broken only by the soft creaking noise of the door behind me drifting closed. And then clicking as it locked itself.

I flung myself at the door, sobbing hysterically I'm not ashamed to say, as I pulled on it repeatedly with all my strength. I'm sure it was only a few seconds, but to me it felt like I was there for ages trying to open it. Until something tapped against the back of my shoe.

I looked behind me and saw two things. The first was what had hit my shoe. It was a simple piece of white chalk. It had rolled across the floor, from the other end of the room.

Despite appearing perfectly white, it had left behind it the most interesting trail . . . glowing swirls of paint, the most vibrant colors you've ever seen: ceruleans and viridians and magentas and more. And it led right back to the painting of the child at the blackboard.

The second thing I noticed was that the painting itself had changed. The child was no longer facing the blackboard. He was facing me -- looking right at me. I could feel his dead eyes bore into my soul. His mouth was formed into a silent scream.

I was the one who broke that silence, as I screamed at the top of my lungs. Finally the door clicked of its own accord -- I tore it open and ran from the room.

But now I know what I have to do. Now the path is clear. I'm going back in there. With a torch this time. That's right, I'm going to burn it all down.

Warden’s Note:

We found this journal while looking into Ms. Wysal’s disappearance, and are documenting it as evidence. But I must note as part of my investigation that I am assuming several of the previous entries to have been made in error. There is no boy in the blackboard painting, and no equations or writing on the blackboard itself. Only a woman, with her back to us, just starting to make her first marks on the board.

The paintings are being catalogued for return to their owner, from whom they were on loan to the gallery. They will be shipped to Dirge tomorrow. The representative from House Turmar says they’re eager to get them back.