Codex - Memoires of a Painter

Section 1

The Mount of Plenty is certainly one of my favourite spots, but lately I have stopped painting it.

As a young man, the lake was one of the designs I was expected to replicate, every painting the same as the last. Landscapes dashed with bold strokes of colour. By 2850, the sylph movement had begun, and like many artists I'd begun to depict the tiny people that inhabit everything. My landscapes became backdrops, the little sylphies floating across the foreground, spangling the lake creatures with their aetherial shimmer, as such agents of Aetherium are wont to do.

By then, the Momoros scene was flourishing, and I met visitors from all over Foundation. The abstracts from Melliflua, illustrators of the Verduban muscular school. Once we had learned all they had to teach, they were sent home, and we plastered the walls of Momoros with mimicry of their styles. It was a great time, and I met a beautiful girl. She was slender like a sylphie and I fell in love.

Section 2

But love took me to a dark place, for the sylphie betrayed me. She took another in the Boros. How hard it was to ascend after that. How horrible a distraction from my painting. And of course, there was no sympathy. That was not the Saborian way.

By then the Boros had got out of hand. The Committee even closed the Boros for a while, said there were too many of us, but it was too late for me. I never saw my sylphie again.

Now if I sit before the lake, brush in hand, I don't see sylphies, I see her face, and I can't paint.