Chapter 13 Rivven
RIVVEN
Over the next few days, while Tasha and Warden Tenn worked on clearing snow from the road, I worked on clearing the pond.
I did this between my other numerous chores, of course.
And just like she insisted on helping wash the dishes (which she still did after every meal) Shiloh would not hear of me doing it on my own.
I didn’t have a second shovel for her, but she seemed content enough to use an old broom, sweeping away the last remnants of snow after I had shovelled it.
Which made me a little nervous, sometimes. Nervous she might slip.
So I’d quietly altered the soles of her boots. Adding bits to the bottom for traction. I did it while she slept in my bed. This also gave me the opportunity to measure her boots for the skates I worked on, long after everyone else was asleep.
Every night, Shiloh tried to convince me to take my bed back.
Every night, she failed.
Sadly, I did not wake up with her in my arms again.
But I held out some small hope that we were at least getting a little closer.
She had not recoiled from me after she’d learned the details of my crime and conviction.
If anything, she seemed to enjoy my company.
At least, I thought she did. She smiled at me more and more often. And she did not catch another migraine.
“Why do you do that?” I asked her on the third afternoon of working at the pond.
Shiloh had stopped her sweeping. The sun had appeared, shafts of light lancing through the clouds, alighting on the dark, gleaming needles of the trees and exploding with fractured light on the snow.
Shiloh was holding her data tab up to the trees and sky.
She looked like Tasha had, when Tasha had been taking our pictures for the calendar.
“Oh. I’m taking reference photos. I was thinking I might like to paint some of these scenes.” She gestured towards the light, the trees, the spangled snow. “I’m not sure I’d be able to paint long out here. It’s really cold when you’re not moving around. So I’m taking the pictures now.”
“Paint?” I frowned, leaning on my shovel.
But as I looked at her, I felt the tension in my expression ebb away.
She really was so beautiful. Especially when the sun beamed down on her like this.
Sliding along the curves of her cheekbones, illuminating the subtle strands of warmer brown in her dark eyes.
Catching on every crimp and spiral of her hair.
Shafting light and shadow along the elegant lines of her neck.
So, so lovely to behold.
And adorable beyond measure in those earmuffs.
“Yeah, paint,” she said.
Paint made me think of painting doors. Or painting walls.
“Like, painting on a canvas.” She lowered her data tab, then slipped it into her jacket’s pocket.
“I never really used to paint landscapes. I was always so focused on painting stuff with, like, deeper meaning. Something that had some philosophical message. Or a political one. But sometimes I’m just so freaking tired, Rivven.
And sometimes, at least these days, I think it might be nice to just paint a peaceful, snowy scene.
To depict the way the light might hit a tree by a pond.
” Her eyes searched my face. “Do you know what I mean?”
I did not have the faintest clue what she meant. I wished I did. I wished so very badly to understand her.
But she was always so generous. And she must have seen the lack of understanding in me. Because she smiled at me and said, “I’ll show you.”
Back at the saloon, she immediately went up the stairs to the bedroom. I hesitated at the bottom, unsure if I was supposed to follow her. Logic told me that it was my room, and that I had every right to go up the stairs after her.
But something that did not belong to logic, something that seemed only to belong to Shiloh, held me back. Because her privacy, to me, was worth protecting. Her trust like the shell of an egg. And I did not dare do anything to break it.
Luckily, she came back down almost immediately, a small bag in her hands.
“We’ll go in the dining room,” she said. “There’s more light in there, with all those windows at the front.”
She went right to one of those windows and began to unpack the bag. Small, bristly brushes with wooden handles came out first. Then, about a dozen small tubes, each with a different square of colour on the front. After that, a book with white paper.
“I didn’t bring a palette,” she said. “Do you have a plate that you don’t mind me getting dirty?”
I’d give her as many plates as she wanted. For any purpose that she wanted.
I retrieved one for her, as well as a cup full of water after she asked for that as well.
Then, with rapt attention, I watched as she squeezed the little tubes, ejecting thick, richly pigmented ooze onto the plate.
“I likely won’t need all the colours,” she said. “Some white, some green, some brown. That might be enough to get me started.”
Once her colours were arranged on the plate, she turned on her data tab and opened the image she’d taken at the pond. Then, she placed the data tab on the window sill where she could see it, and propped her book open to a blank white page beside it.
And then, she started to paint.
I watched her in perfect silence, afraid that if I made even the tiniest of noises, I would spook her.
Like she was some rare and perfect creature – one that most people thought only existed in the realm of myths and dreams – had wandered into my midst, and I could not afford to scare her away.
My very breath seemed to stall in my lungs when, as she worked, the pond and its trees and that light – exactly like the light we’d seen – came into vivid shape on the paper.
When she paused to step back and examine her work, her head tilting slightly, I finally dared to speak.
“You are brilliant.” The words sounded guttural and strange to my own ears. But they were so very true. She’d taken nothing but pigment and paintbrushes and had created something real. Something beautiful. Something that, until this moment, only existed on her data tab screen and in our memories.
And now it was here, in a new and startling form. In that tiny paper rectangle, there was the pond we’d spent the afternoon at.
She’d put so much artistry, so much care, into that little slice of our life. That singular moment of the light coming through the clouds and hitting trees, the pond mostly excavated from the snow, a shovel in my hand and a broom in hers. A moment that would never come to pass again.
“Oh, well,” she looked at me and laughed, but it was not a happy laugh. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would.”
I was not an educated man. I had not been in a real school since before my conviction. Perhaps I was just too ignorant about it all to know what was talent, what was skill, what was brilliance, and what was not. But I knew what spoke to my heart.
And this did.
Shiloh did.
“Not brilliant enough to ever make it really work.” She breathed out slowly. “I thought, one day, I might be able to. My daddy thought so, to. But…Life happened, I guess. Daddy died. I never got to complete the training I was supposed to. And I never secured a patron.”
“A patron?”
“Yeah.” She returned her gaze – and her brush – to the surface of the paper.
“AI has been able to create any image imaginable for centuries. But some people are still willing to pay a premium for human-made art. If you can stand out enough – if you have something to say, a style, a voice, something special – you might be able to get financial support from someone who wants to pay you to paint. That’s a patron.
I tried for a few years. I’ve got profiles all over the place, on various forums and apps that are meant to connect artists with patrons. Never got an offer, though.”
“Never?” This seemed impossible to me. I was watching her create a pond and trees and sunlight on a page that moments ago had been blank.
“Well…” She laughed again. And this time it sounded angry.
“I suppose I did get one offer. But it wasn’t about my painting.
It was…Insulting. And horrible. And after that I kind of just…
Gave up on all that. On the financial side of things, I mean.
I learned about this bride program and thought that maybe it would be my chance to just breathe and…
And take some time to paint what I wanted, without worrying about getting paid.
And, it turns out, what I want to paint right now is pastoral landscape stuff. Go figure.”
“So when you came here…You were not seeking marriage?”
She stiffened slightly, then put down her brush.
“You’ve been so honest with me, Rivven. I’m going to be honest with you.” She faced me. “I didn’t come here with marriage as my main priority, no. It really wasn’t something I was thinking about much at all.”
Oh.
Oh.
“But I want you to know,” she said, firmness infusing her voice, “that I’m thinking about it now. I’m taking it seriously. I understand how important this all is to…To everyone”
“Please,” I murmured. “You need not explain yourself.”
She did not need to justify herself. Or any of the choices she had made.
Especially not to me.
Of course, this all made sense. Why else would a gorgeous, talented, kind human female like her need to seek a husband in this empire-forsaken place?
She didn’t. One such as her could have had her pick of men on any world. She’d come here for other reasons. To forge a new sort of life. And the payment required for that life would be to marry one of us.
It felt, very disconcertingly, as if the room were sliding suddenly sideways.
I’d been thinking of nothing but how to win her trust, her friendship, to prove myself worthy as a husband.