Work Text:
Some might argue black wasn’t an actual colour. Right now, however, it was the sole colour of the universe, and no one was around to argue with him on that. The entire absence of colour and light around him was unsettling, almost menacing. The vast nothingness seemed to pull on the angel's consciousness, longing to devour his soul and turn him into unlimited darkness, too.
Did angels have a soul? They had to have. Everything had a soul, at least everything he had ever met. Souls would vary in complexity, but they were always there, weren’t they? So he assumed he had one too. How else would he be able to exist? Although the whole question of his existence also wasn’t entirely resolved yet. When it had started for instance. Or how, for that matter.
The red-haired angel yanked his thoughts away from the edge before they could saunter to even scarier depths. He wasn’t here to ponder about his existence, he had a job to fulfil. They had assigned him a huge canvas, with endless possibilities and no conditions. And it was still regrettably empty.
It was a black nothing. A small part of the greater black nothing. And he was supposed to fill it with something.
“Make it pretty,” they had said, “But don’t put too much thought into it,” which was absolutely out of the question. The Almighty really didn’t know him well if she believed he could just do this on a whim and not pour his whole heart and soul into it. If he had one. That was still to be answered.
The angel sighed and once again pulled his mind back from somewhere it wasn't supposed to be. The blank page was always the hardest part about creating just about anything. It was intimidating. But he had to start somewhere. Anywhere. Inspiration would follow. It always did.
He looked around, his eyes weary of the endless darkness, and tried to decide on a base colour for a start. Nothing too fancy or bright it ought to be, something that would evoke a sense of familiarity, forgive him his mistakes and was easy to blend.
A pot of light blue paint materialised next to him without a sound. The soft brush quivered along with the angel's hand as he dipped it into the viscous liquid, scraped off the excess at the rim and moved closer towards the floating sheet of parchment paper. He stared at it, as it mirrored the scene so perfectly with its daunting emptiness.
Then, slowly, he drew a soft blue curve, somewhere close to the middle, where it left a pale trail of paint. He tried a second one further to the right and placed more in between. The feathery bristles of the brush left his tentative streaks with soft edges, blending into each other and pouring into the nothing around.
The Artist allowed his mind to wander and so did the brush as they were exploring his vision. With every streak, a little more of the canvas disappeared until it was covered with several foggy swirls of blue.
Surprisingly content with the image so far, he put the used brush away and reached for the freshly-appeared one. It came with a pot of purple paint, that had also sprung right out of his subconsciousness. Alternating between large fluid movements and tiny strokes he twirled the enchanting colour around, let it mingle with the blue, mix with the black, and eventually travel away on its own.
When he picked up the light orange, it had almost evolved into a dance. It was the brush guiding his hand, not the other way around. He dabbed more pale clouds onto the background, spread them all around and populated the eerie emptiness with comforting colour.
[Artwork by @snootflake ]
The darkness around him vanished bit by bit, as his imagination painted a vision and a broad smile formed on his face. Whoever would live to see this, was a real lucky entity. His smile flickered, as another thought crept into his consciousness. Even half finished, it looked nice already, but what was it for? What was its purpose, really?
He shook the unwanted thought away as he snatched a little tin can out of thin air. He was here to make it look pretty. That’s why he was the Artist and not the Inventor. Inventing was for upstairs.
The light of three thousand pre-aged stars blinded him, as he opened the lid of the tin can. He grabbed a handful and sprinkled them over his piece of art, letting them settle wherever they felt best. Another dash of stars he specifically placed into the foggy clouds, where they twinkled mysteriously from behind the stunning colours.
When he had placed a few hundred of various sizes, he paused and looked at his work, scratching the back of his head. The little star-filled can to his feet still twinkled in the corner of his eye, but it was almost empty. The number of light sources the Almighty had approved for this quadrant, was limited, so the Artist had to make do with what was there. Except, maybe not.
The intrusive thought of giving all of this a purpose was back. The angel looked at the centre of the parchment paper, the spot where it had all started with a hesitant first stroke of blue colour. Now the blue and purple swirl looked a little too symmetrical for a free-hand draw. And with the dashes of orange around it, it almost seemed to rotate in front of the angel's eyes. That sparked an idea and he gasped to himself at the prospect. He just had no clue how to approach it.
With the parchment in his hands, he sat down cross-legged and thought thoroughly about it. In his imagination, the colours were moving in a perpetual rhythm, forever changing and expanding, drawing their power from within.
The angel picked a pencil out of thin air and set it on the sheet, drawing a perfect circle in the middle and then more around it. When he gave the stars a system, with a fixed centre and moving circular gears, then maybe all it needed was a hefty nudge to get it rotating. He reached for another empty sheet and sketched what was developing rapidly in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more empty parchment papers materialised around him. One by one he scribbled his designs on them until there were thousands of blueprints floating around his head. He had become the fixed star in his own solar system, a nebula of inspiration, incessantly generating ideas.
The Almighty was all for creation, wasn’t she? With her working on planets and people and animals one by one, the Artist could only imagine the praise he would get for this. What he was just sketching on paper, was a self-sustaining engine, that was generating millions of stars on its own. It was an everlasting supply of shiny new things. When the angel looked up from page 3,000,602 he could see it so clearly as if it had been etched into his retina: The fog of dust and gas he had hand-painted in the brightest colours, now enhanced with this marvellous appliance and the twinkling of hundreds of stars scattered in between like delicate beacons. It was perfect. It was beautiful.
But when he blinked, he was back in smothering darkness. His smile faded as he looked around amidst the colourless void, seeing nothing. Having been so engrossed in his imagination of what would be, he had forgotten, it wasn’t yet. His hands caressed the thick stack of leather-bound pages, that now held all his pride and joy. All that was left was someone who could lend a hand in priming the engine. Luckily, a bright light in the distance, told him, another angel was heading towards him at this very second. The Artist felt his unlimited excitement reach new heights as he pressed the million pages to his chest. This was his Opus Magnum and it was time to reveal his vision.