Tristero

Through and through, Tristero was a painter. He had started with thick clay, smeared across the cave wall as his mother watched him with warmth in her eyes. Together, they drew the sky, the mountains, the storm clouds and the rivers. It was love at first stroke. He took this love into life. He molded it Into trained sketches that demanded the stroke of his brush. He sculpted it into murals that decorated lively cities, and portraits that hung in private, quiet homes to be gazed upon for generations. In every movement of the brush, he felt the love from his mother, the moments they had shared, and the home he had left to pursue his dreams.

Many years later, his claws brush the dried crumbs still adhered to the stone. The Nest is empty, falling apart from age and from small animals picking it apart across the seasons, and yet he didn't hesitate to settle himself inside and imagine the warmth of his mother's scales against his own.

It was not the same.

And so he pulled himself up and set up his canvas made of cloth instead of rock and his paints made of pigment instead of earth....

And he painted his grief.