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Verso was seven years old when he met his first otter. It was during a vacation to visit one of Papa's friends near Mont Blanc. Papa and his friend spent their time reminiscing about some war or another over glasses of brandy while Maman hovered on the porch, filling canvas after canvas with copies of the picturesque landscape.
This left Verso and Clea largely alone, for which they did not complain. Not even vacation exempted them from painting lessons with Maman, but it was more fun with the natural beauty of their surroundings. In their free time, they raced through forests as predator and prey; climbed piles of rocks that was, to them, tall as a sheer cliff; swam and splashed in cold, clear rivers; and then excitedly regaled their parents with tales of their grand adventures over dinner.
It was in one of the rivers that they saw the otters. They were very cute: small and long and fuzzy, twisting playfully in the river. He and Clea cooed and attempted to sneak up to them — to no avail. The otters startled at their approach and swam away.
Disappointed, they settled in the river instead, and Verso practiced swimming himself. He’d taken lessons, and he fancied himself quite good at it. Not, however, as good as the otters, who were made to be in the water and smaller than Verso to boot; Clea laughed and laughed every time Verso bumped his head attempting a jump or a somersault.
That evening at dinner, Verso, who had returned to the estate with a thin crust of mud on the cuffs of his trousers and promptly asked for a book on otters, regaled his family (and Papa’s friend) with otter facts while they smiled and nodded politely.
“You like them now,” Papa’s friend had said, pointing at him with a wedge of steak still stuck on his fork, “But wait until fishing season. Those pesky little s—” he faltered, eyes flickering between Maman and Papa “— pests will take all your fish!”
“Well, it was their river first,” said Clea, very reasonably.
Verso nodded. They looked so free, jumping and twirling in the water. Verso could sympathize. He always liked swimming.
“Was it? I don’t recall seeing their names on my deed,” Papa’s friend chuckled. It was a laugh young Verso associated with annoying adults who thought he was dumb (and what adult Verso knew was called ‘condescension’), so he didn’t like it.
“Do you really hunt them for their fur?” Verso asked. He read about it in one of his books and did not like it one bit. He fiddled anxiously with the cut of steak on his plate.
“Oh yes,” Papa’s friend nodded. “You’re welcome to come along, since you seem so interested in them.” He chuckled again.
“Absolutely not,” Maman said, her voice sharp.
Verso, too, shook his head frantically.
“Humans ruin everything,” Clea mumbled.
- YEAR 79 -
Of course, that did not happen to him. There were no otters in the canvas, except in the other Verso’s drafts — and he neither knew how to enter the drafts, nor was he keen to explore it. Mont Blanc, also, did not exist in the Canvas, and the Frozen Hearts was too snowy to be an adequate replacement. And Papa’s friend… well, ‘Papa’ was not his father, and Verso did not miss the friend.
Come to think of it, did anyone else in Lumière eat steak or did Maman Paint it for her family only? They couldn’t. Where would they get the meat?
Verso had a headache. His hand stopped moving, a pencil held loosely in his grip hovering over his tattered journal. He shifted, trying to sit comfortably on the hard, rocky cliff, and stared blankly at the horizon. A great wave reached toward him, split in half against the jagged rocks along the shoreline, and dissolved into seafoam. Would that it were him.
A few stray drops sprayed itself onto his clothing and splattered the paper of his journal, smearing the lines of his absent-minded otter doodles; swimming through a river, twisting in different poses, holding hands.
Verso sighed. It was for the best, really. It was silly of him to reminisce about a vacation he never took, drawing an animal he’d never seen. That no one in this Canvas had seen, save his family and Monoco. What if an expeditioner found his drawings? How would they react? He shouldn’t be so careless.
He ripped the page out of his notebook, crumpled it in his hands, and threw it into the ocean. Watched it saturate with water and sink.
There. Safer now.
Verso closed his eyes and took a deep breath, listening to the sound of the waves and taking in the briny air.
The area around Stone Wave Cliffs and Esquie’s Nest was one of Verso’s favourite brooding spots. It was also one of the least effective, which made it Monoco’s Number One Top Verso Brooding Spot (having ranked them during a particularly boring day). It wasn’t just that the spot was close to Esquie — although it certainly helped — it was that Verso found the sound of the ocean relaxing: the steady rhythm of waves crashing against the rocky shore, sweeping across stone with soft susurrations. He shut his eyes and sank into the symphony of the sea.
On his rare good days, that was where his train of thought ended. Sometimes, like today, he could even pull out some paper, write some poetry, doodle, maybe play his piano. On his worse days, he thought about sinking deeper. Immersing himself in the water, letting it muffle his senses until everything quieted to a dull roar, until it filled his lungs and pulled him, gently, to the sea floor.
His bad days lingered. Good ones, like today, faded in the blink of an eye.
Drowning wasn’t a pleasant experience. Burning wasn’t either. If he had to choose, he’d go with drowning any day.
- YEAR 78 -
Verso drowned — not for the first time, but the first time in a while, and the first time on purpose — soon after, having jumped off a mountain ledge at the far eastern edge of the Canvas. He always liked swimming (of course he did; the other Verso did) and the feeling of being underwater was both familiar and comforting. Everything slowed. The world disappeared, leaving only that dull roar against his ears, stinging at his eyes, the peaceful weightlessness of water.
His throat tightened eventually — alongside a brief surge of absurd pride that he could still hold his breath for so long. He gasped, released his leftover air in a burst of bubbles.
Water rushed into his throat. He coughed and gagged instinctively and — well, proceeded through the whole hubbub of drowning. His body instinctively rebelled, despite his mind’s best efforts. There was thrashing, there was choking; it was all bog standard. He’d know. Experiences aside, he learned plenty about drowning at his swimming lessons. (Or the original Verso did; the fake Verso never took swimming lessons. His only knowledge came from experience).
That was his last thought before blissful darkness.
Then Verso woke up.
He proceeded through the drowning process again — not fun — then blissful darkness again. Repeat ad infinitum until Esquie dragged him back up and made sad comments at him until he collapsed from guilt and promised to not do it again.
Sometimes that wasn’t a lie. He broke the promise anyway.
- YEAR 68 -
The other Verso loved water, and so he did as well.
Other Verso Painted water everywhere in the Canvas, although presumably, like the rest of the Canvas, he Painted it for fun and not for death. Flying Waters, which was Painted in a fit of childish fury after he realized he could not live in the ocean, contained something like breathable water. It made for an adequate alternative to the traditional ocean on days when Verso craved the peace of being underwater but not the pain of drowning. It wasn’t nearly as calming as swimming in real water, but it at least didn’t tempt him with the sleep of death. Not more than usual, anyway.
Flying Waters was also one of the only places on the Continent with animals, which meant it was one of the few places where he could find food. Not that Verso needed food, really. Sure, Monoco complained and Esquie made sad noises, but what were the consequences of not eating? Dying?
Verso lazily threw a dagger at a nearby floating fish. It sank in and the fish fell with a wet splat. It, unlike the otters in the other world, never knew it was prey.
Yet another thing ruined by humans.
As if summoned by his musings, a great wooden ship careened through the sky and landed with a deafening crash.
“Ah,” said Verso.
Against his best interests, he went looking for it.
They introduced themselves as Expedition 68, and they were grateful for the crash course on continental food sources. After he got them to stop pointing their weapons at him. That was a normal aspect of the first meeting.
Another benefit of Flying Waters was that it made expeditioners hesitate to start a fire. It worked fine in the area, but Verso, who disliked fire for reasons he thought were obvious, was not going to disabuse them of their notion.
“Are you sure that's safe?” Elodie asked, frowning suspiciously at the thin slices of fish, prepared like he taught them.
Animals Painted by a child did not have blood, much less germs. He didn’t tell them this either.
“Yeah, I am,” said Verso, absently slicing through another fish. Then, “Have you ever had steak?”
“Pardon?” Elodie said. “Is that from pre-Fracture?”
Verso shrugged. “I suppose it is.”
Despite his efforts, this expedition did not last much longer.
He didn’t drown himself for that particular failure. No, the next attempt happened years later, after several more failed expeditions, and ended up much the same way.
The time after that, he didn’t even do it on purpose.
- YEAR 43 -
Expedition 43 had a damn submarine. If young Verso knew of the powerful submarines of the 1900s, engineered by foolish men hungry for war, he might’ve added one to the Canvas. Perhaps he wouldn’t have Painted the Flying Waters in the first place.
To be honest, he was surprised one was created in the Canvas, given his Maman’s opinion of Verne. Perhaps that was why it was destroyed so swiftly.
Alicia, however, liked Verne. He — the other Verso had snuck a copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to her for her twelfth birthday.
She would be six years old now.
He needed to see their submarines. Expedition 43 was long dead by the time he found their island, which was good since it meant no one could stop him and bad since it also meant no one could point him to the wreckage. That meant he would have to search.
No matter. He was a strong swimmer and he couldn’t die.
The water was murky and dark, sand and silt and pieces of submarine suspended within. Verso squinted and had to conjure a chroma light, fighting his own body to submerge himself deeper, deeper, deeper, until his hand brushed a metal sheet and he spied faint, sporadic flashes of light below.
Expedition 43’s fleet of submarines were torn to pieces, scattered about the sea floor. It would take him ages to search through all of it, and he didn’t know what he was looking for. A resemblance, perhaps, of that book. A sign of another world, or of a not-sister. Maybe he could take his Alicia here. She might like it.
He passed by a remarkably untouched engine, examined it curiously. It was some kind of chroma-powered engine, similar to the trains they didn’t have in Lumière. Whichever engineer designed it was clever.
Scattered lamps, some intact and some shattered and smashed apart, were thrown carelessly in the sand, some half-covered. A few were still flickering, futilely attempting to illuminate the darkened depths of the ocean. Verso shuddered, remembering the Lampmaster.
His throat tightened in warning. He was almost out of air.
What he could gather from the various submarine pieces suggested it was much simpler compared to the submarine Alicia had breathlessly described to him, which last he remembered housed paintings, ornate furniture, and an entire organ. What he did see were simple furniture, floating rations, and corpses, their chroma calcified by that snake and half-buried under the sand.
There were no grand pieces of art, no lost library sunken in the sand. Instead, there were small paintings, a few books, some jewelry, some toys — personal effects, sentimentally set in a shared space instead of stored in a picto.
A ratty little doll with red hair and a single button eye caught his attention. Verso swam down further. A mistake.
He could hold his breath no longer. His mouth opened instinctively, gasping for air that did not exist.
Pain. Thrashing. Blissful silence. A large wooden hand, scruffing him by the neck.
Verso woke up.
“That really was an accident,” Verso said to Monoco, coughing up water. Monoco looked unimpressed.
- YEAR 33 -
Verso sat by the ocean for the last time, away from the main thoroughfare, where the noises of celebration were muffled. He stared blankly at the Monolith. The empty spot where the avatar of his Maman sat was… odd. A decades-long constant suddenly gone.
At least she was safe. That was all that mattered.
He closed his eyes and breathed in the salty air. Tried, for the last time, to listen to the sound of the ocean.
It was so quiet. Despite the celebration behind him, the Canvas had never been so still.
Everything would be over soon.
Verso woke up.
(Although he was grateful to see a real otter before the end.)