He saw now that there was no beginning to anything, and no end, either. Moments fell forward in seamless progression and then fell behind in gathering haze. Colours washed away the moment the observing eyes lost appreciation; or they grew stark and hard when the senselessness of things struck home. He saw now, at the ends of his scraped and stung arms, one hand that etched out creation, and the other that erased it: and by these twin measures he existed, and his entire purpose in living was to insist that he was here, and that this was now, and once those hands fell still, eternally still, all that he proclaimed of himself would vanish.

In his irretrievable absence, they could walk the halls between his paintings; they could walk as things of flesh and heat, blood and bone, thought and unthought, while to either side ran windows on to flattened worlds and reduced lives that were in total all Kadaspala had ever achieved, and with sharpened nail they could poke through those false worlds, and behind them find naught but mortar and stone.

I have always been a liar. I cannot help what I am – and that is the first lie, the one I uttered to myself long ago. Others accepted it, by virtue of my talent, and in accepting it, they let me live the lie. Sweet of them, and such a relief – that I fooled them – and if my contempt now dogs their shadows, wherever I walk in their wake, well, it is no surprise.

Give me the lie and I will take it.

And then give it back to you. In vibrant otherworldly colours – that godly language uttered by ungodly tongues – and yearn for the adoration in your eyes. It’s what I feed on, after all. Give me what I need, to keep the lies alive. To keep me alive.

He kept his honest thoughts to himself, for himself. He risked nothing that way, because if artists were liars first and foremost, in close second were they cowards.

One day he would paint beauty. He would capture its essence, and once it was captured, at the pinnacle of his talent, he could lie back, close his eyes, and drift into death. He would be done, and done with the world. It would have nothing left to give him.

But for now, he would paint in blood.

The trail opened ahead, in tangled scrub and severed stumps, and beyond that was the raised river road.

I leave the wild behind me, with all its perils of raw truth and senseless death. I step into civilization, its shaped stones and lifeless wood, its sun-baked clay and its crowded streets filled with furtive moments we boldly name people. If he had a free hand, his fingers would awaken to paint the scene, in all its desultory glory, and so make things anew, in all the old ways.