Breathing This Great Huge Thing

The next day, Twilight welcomed Bristles and Nurse Firm at the door as they walked up. “I’ve got some friends upstairs for our meeting today.”

“Alright,” Nurse Firm said, as Twilght led them in. “Who are they?”

“The shaman who lives in the Everfree, Zecora, and a friend of mine who’s also a painter. I’d like to see if him and Bristles can become friends, and Zecora knows quite a bit about stuff like this; she might be able to brew something that’ll help. ”

“Another painter, Bristles,” Nurse Firm said, turning to zef, “You’ll be meeting someone new and interesting.”

“I’m more than him,” ze said dismissively.

“Ze just means that ze is more passionate about painting.” Nurse Firm tried to rationalize to Twilight.

“Oh don’t worry about it, I told them about hez condition and all of that.”

She nodded, “Thank you.”

Upstairs, they walked in to see a naked Zebra and an earth pony in a vest sitting next to each other, chatting. Immediately, Bristles looked up from hez sketchbook and shouted, with great excitement, “Stripes!” Running, flailing, to the wall, ze pulled down another large canvas and threw it onto the floor, murmuring, “Big, big canvas, big stripes, yes.” Ze fell onto it and started drawing, staring at the intrigued Zecora, jerking hez head toward Nurse Firm while saying to Zecora, “Stand, stand, stand.”

Zecora stood, and manuvered out of the way of the table. Bristles started drawing faster, and Nurse Firm set hez colors, of which ze chose the oil paint supplies, down on the canvas.

Zecora turned to Nurse Firm, and smiled. “Nurse Firm you must be, a pleasure to make your company.”

Nurse Firm shook her outstretched hand. “Yes that’s right. You must be Zecora, then?”

“Yes mam, I am.”

She turned to the stallion, who stood up and offered his hand as well. “I’m Nurse Firm, I take care of Bristles. You’re a fellow painter, I’m told?”

“My Name’s Celluloid. That’s right, mam, I paint. Mostly watercolor. I do a lot of work for local magazines and papers, as well as some freelance stuff.”

“Well, It’s nice to meet you. If you want to try to connect with Bristles somehow, I would appreciate it. You can just draw on the canvas with hef, if ze’ll let you, and if not then I’ve got a large sketchbook you can use.”

“Alright.” He walked over and sat down next to Bristles, regarding hef almost as a child. “Hello Bristles. I’m Celluloid. Can I paint with you?”

Ze flicked hez head at him and back again. “Full piece, full canvas. Off, stay off.”

He looked to Nurse Firm, who handed him Bristles’s sketchbook already flipped to a new page. He put it on a portion of the canvas Bristles wasn’t filling up at the moment and started sketching. “I’m going to draw you as well, Zecora.”

She giggled, and took a pose as Twilight and Nure Firm settled in behind her at the table, and filled her in on all they knew about cutious-studiummania.

Celluloid marveled at how quickly Bristles created. Ze had everything, all the stripes and many of the facial details, outlined in only a few minutes. Drawing with both hands at the same time, ze almost never erased, and when ze did, ze did so furiously.  By the time Celluloid had a rough sketch of Zecora, Bristles was already reaching for hez paint.

“How is this, Bristles?” Celluloid asked hef, genuinely curious of the response.

Ze looked over at it briskly, only for a moment, and then back to hez own work. “Arms too long. Waist too skinny. Hooves turned wrong.”

“Um,” he looked back at his work, and suddenly those flaws were much clearer. He started to correct them, becoming self-concious. “Thanks. How did you see all of that so quick?”

Ze didn’t respond.

He fixed it, then asked hef again.

“All rough.”

“I’ll fix that when I paint it.”

“Mm.”

Zecora continued to stand and watch the two draw her. It was an odd feeling, but she liked new situations, and this would make a good story to tell. Keeping her body mostly pointed at the two artists, she turned her face to the two at the table. “I have some brews to rekindle passion, but not of the destroying fashion. Create one, maybe I can; I’ve never thought blandness to be in demand.”

“Yes, well, I don’t want Bristles to loose all hez passion, just lose enough to be able to take a break when ze needs to. Do you have any kind of self-control enhancers?”

“A few I can make, but I doubt they would take. They work more for focus than control, I’ve been shown the later you must grow on your own.”

Twilight piped up, tearing her eyes off her notes. “Focus spells are one of the things I tried the other day—they just made hez focus more on hez art. But it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to have her drink some of the self-control potions. Just in case. And I can look into self-control spells again. But you know—” she moved the tip of her pencil into her mouth and chewed it while she spoke, “—you should really try to find a unicorn psychiatrist. Maybe they would know more of those kinds of spells than I do, and you might have more success than the other pschiatrists you’ve met before. I don’t know if there’s one in ponyville or not, but there’s definitely some in Canterlot.”

“We can schedule a visit, if we can afford it, on our way to Princess Luna.”

“Princess Luna you’re going to visit? If I may ask, why is it?”

“You can sit down Zecora, I’m sure ze’s gotten a good enough look at you now.”

She did so, taking the chair facing away from the artists still laboring over their works.

“We’re going to Princess Luna to ask for her help. I know she has advanced dream magic, and I would like to try contacting Bristles in hez dreams. We’re actually on our way there now, and just stopping in Ponyville to rest and meet with Twilight here. We’re going to Rainbow Falls next, and we’ll probably see the waterfall before we leave, just because I doubt Bristles would let us skip it. I don’t know what all Twilight told you, so I’ll just start at the beginning.

“You see, cutiemark mania starts out from birth. Ze was born with hez cutiemark already on hez flank. And as ze grew, it grew as well. Ze became more and more distracted with drawing, until ze was about fifteen and the mark reached all but the ends of zefs extremities and zefs head, and ze stopped eating one or two meals a day to draw, and staying up well past midnight. That’s when hez parents hired me to take care of hef, and about five months ago, the mark finally debilitated hef and finished spreading. Well, I say finished, it might go into hez mouth and hooves next, I suppose. But it hasn’t yet. Anyhow, about a week ago we started for Ponyville from Bradoon. We need to find a cure or one of these days, ze’ll kill hefself.”

“And what did you do before you were hired, if it may so be inquired?”

The thought of her child slashed forward, but she smothered it. “I worked as an orderly.”

Celluloid, who was listening to all that Nurse Firm and the others were saying, said now to Bristles, “Well that’s not good. You have to take care of yourself, Bristles, because if you die you won’t be able to draw anymore.”

No response.

It was something he believed in as an artist, so he continued, “I mean it. You have to respect your art. You owe it to what you produce to stay alive. If you die, you’re abandoning all the visions and potential that your art could have used. You won’t produce what maybe was the one thing that the world really needed you to produce. So you owe it to your art to take care of yourself.”

Bristles did not stop drawing, but snatched a glance at him, and said, “Why exist if not drawing?”

“To prepare for better drawings. To give them the healthy, capable you that they deserve.”

“No. No, no. No no no. Practice and blood. The same. This is ecstasy.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.” He painted a little more. “Your Zecora is coming along really well. I can’t believe you’ve already got most of her legs done.”

“Mm.”

“What do you think of mine so far?”

Quickly, ze looked. Took it in in a moment, and, moving as if Celluloid had stopped existing, took the brushes right out of his hand and made several strokes and corrections. After maybe a minute, ze handed the brushes back and returned to hez own work. Celluloid looked at the sketch now. A beautiful Zebra, holding herself with one hand high and one leg bent. Stripes all over. It looked much better, he had to admit, with the little edges he’d messed up fixed, the whites brightened, the ears made bigger. Inwardly, he sighed, but outwardly he was only impressed.

After a while, Twilight had a bunch of new notes, and Zecora and Nurse Firm had talked about everything relevant. Bristles crouched over the canvas, putting on the finishing touches, and Celluloid just finished with his.

Bristles had painted Zecora, standing facing the viewer, with a fire in her eyes, teeth barred, and arms held up with strong, ready fists. Hooves firmly on the dark ground, the muscles tense around her chest and abdomen. The background an uneasy, muddled brown-gray, as if the sky were raining mud, and Zecora was facing the villain who’d made that so. Sharp sunlight fell over her face and shoulders, one slash across her hips, a few over her legs, coming from something that felt too square to be anything but rocks, but somehow instinctively you could tell was a foe. She had about three times as many stripes all over her legs and arms, lapping at her chest and hips, as she had in real life, but it created a feeling of beauty. A long, red slash travelled geometrically behind her and hooked into both her left arm and right leg. It was abstract, but something that pressed itself into the world so well, amplified the strength of Zecora so much, that it seemed wholly necessary. As if that red cut was both a part of the build up and the release of the angry tension in the piece.

Zecora herself loved it. “It is such a beautiful composition, I am in shock. Although for many years a fighter I have been not. How much would this painting be, if I were interested in it commercially?”

Nurse Firm laughed. “If you don’t charge us for the potions that may or may not work, then it’s free.”

“I accept whole hartedly, Nurse Firm! Those potions ze has definitely earned.”

Twilight giggled, “Are you going to hang it up in your hut?”

“Of course! It reminds me so much of home, that I can not just leave it be all alone.”

“I forget that Zebrica is such a wild place.”

“Well, fighting was not every day, but, oh, what can I say?”

“It’s beautiful,” Celluloid said. To Bristles now, “How did you do it? How did you create something so accurate and strong just from looking at her?”

Bristles looked up at him, then back at the sketchbook ze was busy in. Drawing a bunch of little zebras, now, one of them talking to a little Celluloid.

“And,” he kept going, “How do you keep your work from stagnating if you never pause to take in the world and other art and stuff? Do you think you’ll ever hit that wall?”

Bristles looked at him reproachfully for a second. Then ze turned back to hez sketchbook without answering.

Zecora chirped in, “Perhaps it’s the just the case that locked in your head, you discover new space. Even if the new is sometimes at the cost of mental health completely lost.”

“Hmm. I think that does make sense here. Well, I guess I’ll get going then. It was nice to meet you, Nurse Firm, Zecora.” He shook their hands and turned to Bristles. “It was nice to meet you too.” When ze didn’t react, he leaned forward and hugged hef around the sketchbook. Ze didn’t move. But as he drew away, ze stirred.

“No, no,” ze deftly ripped a page out and pressed it, with a jab of the arm, into Celluloid’s chest, then impassively returned to drawing on a new page.

As he walked out, with the rest of them right behind, he admired the sketches on the back of the piece he’d drawn in hez sketchbook. Ze’d drawn him, very quickly, a bones-only pencil of his face and a line right through his head. It had a little S at one end and an N at the other. By that, it looked like he was traveling southwest.

In the inn Bristles and Nurse Firm stayed at while they were in Ponyville, Bristles continued to draw figures of zebras in addition to the odd Twilight and all of the other things ze’d seen that day.

Sitting on the couch, reading a book, Nurse Firm felt the time slipping by. She knew Bristles must feel it as well, because ze’d inched away from her for the last half hour until they were both on opposite sides of the couch.

At ten thirty by Nurse Firm’s watch, she stood up and announced, “Come on. You know it’s time for bed.”

“Mmmm.”

Nurse Firm walked over to the cabinet over the little stove and pulled out the bottle of liquid Zfether. She used to use pills, back when Bristles still had mind enough to not spit them out or hide them under hez tongue. “Don’t fight and you’ll get to wake up and draw more sooner, okay?” But when she turned back around, she could see hez hooves peeking out; Bristles was wedged under the bed, undoubtedly still drawing.

Nurse Firm put the medicine down on the nightstand and stripped, throwing her clothes on the bed for now. It didn’t always get messy, but sometimes it did. She walked over to the opposite side of the bed, and got down on her arms and stifles. “Bristles.”

Bristles squirmed frantically out from under, but Nurse Firm jumped the bed and wrapped her arms around hez hips. She started pulling hef out as ze struggled, and hooked one hand around the boxspring, and began to hum loudly from the pain of not drawing properly.

“Just—come—out!” She lifted Bristles up, with her hooves on the ground now, and the bedframe began to bite into hez back. For several tiring, hot moments, nothing happened. Bristles had too good of a grip to let go. Nurse Firm let Bristles back down and upended the bed. The covers feel into a lump and the mattress flipped over onto the floor. But Bristles was exposed, and Nurse Firm crouched swiftly to grab hez wrists.

“I swear, Bristles, if you don’t stop fighting, I will start mixing this into your food and you’ll be asleep by seven!”

Bristles beyond words, Nurse Firm prying now both of hez hands off by the wrists, ze started flailing. Ze lurched upward, Nurse Firm put her weight down over hef, and forced hef to sit up. Ze started shaking zefs head violently, still screaming, and with one arm clamped over both of Bristles’s, Nurse Firm grabbed the Zfether and opened the bottle with her mouth.

Spitting the cap out, “Stay. Still!”

She brought the bottle up slowly, pressing her fist clenched around it to hez chest first, and pressing up the neck. Some began to spill, she managed to pin hef into leaning in only one direciton, and brought the bottle up. She lunged at hez mouth with her other hand, wrenched it open, and poured a sizeable ammount down, little waves of it spilling out as Bristles kept fighting. Then she clamped both hands over Bristles’s mouth and nose until she saw hef swallow.

Defeated, Bristles slumped over and got back to drawing. Nurse Firm pulled hef up and out of the way, putting hef on the couch while she cleaned up the spill off the floor, herself, and Bristles, and got the bed back together. It was like this pretty much every night, but if Bristles didn’t take the sleep medicine ze’d stay awake straight through until ze collapsed sometime the next day or so. Once she was ready, she turned all the lights except the one on the nightstand off. Then pulled Bristles into bed and sat next to hef as they both waited for hef to fall asleep. The room only had one bed, so they slept in it together. Bristles didn’t mind because it didn’t interfere with drawing, and Nurse Firm didn’t mind because it meant she woke up at the same time as Bristles. It took about seven minutes before hez hand stopped moving and ze weakly fell forward. Nurse Firm pulled the gauntlets off of hez arms and put them on the nightstand.

Then she turned out the lights and waited to fall asleep herself.