Sentinel

(Here is an excerpt from a romance I am writing about a female assassin and man from an alien race.)

She places a paper in front of me. It is one of her watercolor paintings, tiny and petite. However, it is very different from her other paintings that I have seen. Some have highly detailed mountain ranges and vast shimmering lakes with flowers and lavish bushes lining the shore. This one, is just a little dull green painting on a small square of paper without a border. All the other paintings have a pristine border created by the tape she lines the painting with. No, just green and that is all.

“This is for you,” she says, sliding the paper over to me. She gleams a smile at me, flashing her canine exposed by the scar on the right side of her face. She loves to smile like that. It’s an intimidating look from such a fearsome scar.

“No, I want one of your more elaborate paintings, with the beautiful mountains and lakes. It is much more reminiscent of your skill. Please?” I said. She glares at me with the slightest smirk and pushes the painting further towards me. “It is to remember me by.” She says. But I counter, “It’s nothing like you. You are intelligent, and complex. You breathe an air of mystery everywhere you go. This green nothing doesn’t remind me of you at all and it is nothing like all the other paintings of yours that I have seen thus far.”

She looks at me a little displeased. Out of her bag she pulls a small folder with some of her other tiny watercolor paintings. The ones with borders and pretty landscapes. She spreads them about the diner table for me to see next to the green one and says, “These are nothing like me. I hate them. No passion for what I do is inherent in their design. They’re good, yes, but they represent what I despise in all common judgment of humankind.”

“And besides, I am not as complex of a person as you think I am. I am more like this green painting than anything you see here. And it is my favorite color: muddy wintergreen.” She stated.

“I feel like you are trying to say something profound to me but I don’t quite understand.” I am confused. She doesn’t always talk in metaphors like this. It’s strange and I am not used to it. She is mysterious to me. I feel as though she lacks the self-awareness to see her own complexity. Just placing a simple green square in front of me and audaciously presenting the argument that it embodies her character is proof enough of her complexity.

She spreads them out some more, points to the green square again, looks at me, and says, “This… This is me. I am very simple. You embody the complexity of the rest of these. Intricate to perfection.”

I retorted, “So I am a thing you have no passion for?” I say with the slightest smirk. She lets out one of her adorable giggles. “No, that’s not what I meant. I only meant you represent everything that is expected of you. A perfect landscape like everyone wants to see. A thing that everyone understands. I am not that. I feel as though I am empty with chaos all the time and lingering inside me is this muddy disdain for life and yet a passion for the experience of all the pain I suffer in it.” She pauses to smile for a moment. Again, I find myself confused. I love this woman and want her to endure no pain at all, but I fail to see her view on pain as a necessity in life. She goes on, “I don’t love pain, but it justifies my life. It breathes sincerity into people’s lives and actions and makes truth more important than the lies we tell ourselves. Lies like these mountains and lakes which the average person will never get to see. They’re lies because they represent the perfect expectation of reality idealized into truth that we really never get to hear or see. Instead of the vomited out pain we are left with on a stupid little square of paper, unsigned and unbordered by an artist that can’t love herself enough not to paint lies and instead paint the pain that stabs at her every nerve.”

I have nothing to say. She stares blankly at the table and at all the paintings lying there. I don’t see them the same way now. They now feel more empty than that green square…. Except for one. The folder lies open on the restaurant table and inside I see the edge of another bordered watercolor. This one, unlike the others, has a black line emphasizing the border as well. I pull it out to reveal a predominantly red painting. It appears to depict a tower of wavy red, black, and green lines and obelisks. Red clouds swirl in the sky outlined by black. Underneath the monoliths crawl rows of people-like figures marching solemnly towards it. One man, it seems, stands still at the bottom-right of the small painting watching ominously at the grimm scene before him.

Senti paints her pain in so many interesting and beautiful ways but this, it seems more characteristic of her. “Senti, this one… This is you. It’s beautiful and dark. Twisted, and mysterious. Can I have this one?” She looks up slowly from her daze and lets out a cute little nervous laugh. She lets out a sarcastic huff, “But I was hoping you wouldn’t see that one. It’s my favorite.”