Outdoor Explorer's Diary

Outdoor Explorer's Diary I While exploring the ruins today, I unexpectedly ran into a master painter!

She was dressed quite plainly and would be completely unnoticeable in a crowd, but you could tell at a glance that she had true skill. She wasn't just casually sketching.
Seeing her so focused, I was too embarrassed to strike up a conversation, so I stood off to the side and quietly watched.

She seemed fond of painting landscapes. Each scene wasn't just a one-and-done thing for her; she made draft after draft first, as if confirming the lines from a certain angle until she was satisfied.

Today she was painting a section of a wall in the ruins. The wall looked like a Bapharian Legacy, yet it had grown together with the natural rock face next to it.
It's actually quite common in these ruins, but she painted it with extreme care.
Every crease and peeling spot on the wall was rendered faithfully stroke by stroke—she didn't even miss the mottled mark in the corner.

I watched for a while, then left because I got hungry.
But for some reason, while watching her paint, time seemed to freeze, and I felt almost as if my heart had been cleansed.
I hope I run into her again next time. --- Outdoor Explorer's Diary II I'm so excited today, my heart is pounding! Why? Because I met that painter again!

This time she wasn't working on a landscape, but a mechanical structure. I leaned in for a closer look... it looked like a chicken with a clockwork mechanism in its belly!
What's even stranger is that she was as familiar with mechanical structures as an artisan. The springs and gears were drawn in extreme detail, with clean and crisp lines.
She even drew a magnified view of the local details; on the inside of the spring, there was a beautiful spiral mark printed.
When you really looked at it, it didn't seem like a casual sketch. I'd say something more like a blueprint of some sort. Perhaps drawing blueprints is her idea of fun?

I can't help but feel a bit put out. I guess it really is a good thing to learn new things.
I mean, it seems like you've got to even know a bit of mechanical design to be a painter nowadays, and they say you have to study anatomy to draw the human body...
And then you've got me, who goes out for an adventure and ends up spraining an ankle. I'm so useless! --- Outdoor Explorer's Diary III I actually spoke with the painter lady yesterday!
At first, I just wanted to watch her paint a bit. I'd lost my food sack, so I was a bit out of sorts. I figured watching her work might cheer me up.

I never thought that as soon as I approached, she'd smile at me and ask what I thought of her painting.
I mean, what could I say, really? She had already become like the silvery moonlight that shines on my windowsill at night—there weren't enough words to describe how good she was!
Still, I used all the vocabulary I'd learned over the course of my life to praise her, even to the point where it got a bit sappy... but she just smiled faintly, as if she was already used to it.

Then she handed me a painting and said, "Open it when you get home."
The painting was already rolled up and placed next to her easel, almost as if it had been prepared especially for me.
I was extremely flattered and even tried to stutter out my thanks.

But when I got home and unrolled the painting, I was startled.
By Bapharia! What is this on the painting? It looked like a massive, dark crystal.
The patterns on the surface of the crystal were so complex they made my scalp tingle, intertwining and crisscrossing. At first glance, it looked like a tangled mess...
But on further inspection, it seemed as if it was being guided by some force, naturally falling into place at some points, and finally twisting into a triangular mark.

For some reason, looking at that shape made me extremely uncomfortable, as if it were a pupil staring at me.
I closed the painting almost instinctively, my palms drenched in sweat.

Early this morning, I rushed back to the ruins, wanting to find her and ask what this painting actually was.
But she had disappeared.
The spot where her easel stood was empty, as if no one had ever stood there painting.