Take Breakfast with the Starry Eyed

A Raving Artist has fled Barenhaven for a fifth-storey atelier atop the House of Bones. ”I needed a different kind of decay,” he says. And: ”Barenhaven is dead, but my art thrives on ****."

Masked servants carry trays heavy with sparkling wine, entrées, and with steaming mugs of coffee. You take a cup and taste earthy spices. Real kahwe from mysterious Tithebarn, off the storm-swept coast of mainland Faerie. You are used to the burnt taste of roasted Poisonoak, and you quickly snatch a second and a third.

You take in the art, sipping on another mug of rare delight. Velvet curtains and candles frame the paintings in the first room. Ponderous pieces of heavy oil, some only swirls of deranged colour, others rather more explicit.

”She marries body and soul to perfection!” The Raving Artist describes the life-sized piece. The model, her hair a varnished fire, pleasures herself on a runic Leviathan bone. The strange invitation from her sea-red lips and eel-sharp teeth makes you shudder. Meanwhile, the Artist describes his process in braggadocious detail.

The second room houses strange statues, suspended from the ceiling on silken ropes. The soft shine and long shadows of the tar lanterns make lifeless plaster look alive. You have crossed the room by the time you realise that some subtle movements are not just a trick of the light; that human hands, hidden somewhere in the half-light, animate the demonic fishes and birds – and move the feyer forms by concealed joints.

The Raving Artist stops the group in front of the closed curtains leading to the third and final room. He warns away ladies, couples, gentlemen of a delicate disposition, and all others who might take offence at what he called ”truest art.” Soft moans from the inside mix with the enticed whispers of your peers.

Everyone else he encourages to participate, and he is the first through the cloth barrier. A Noted Critic follows him immediately, leaving their companion behind. The Murky Sisters enter, arm-in-arm and trailed by scandalized murmurs. The mayor refuses and leads his wife back to the safety of lifeless, oily art and to good drink. Two curates hurry inside, shame-faced but aroused to bawdy zeal.