Warning: Please note that the Sea God’s paintings and songs can enchant people’s hearts and make them... lose themselves in illusions. Proceed with that in mind.

Mornings at Mo Art Studio consisted of the following: tiny fragments of crushed red coral from the deep sea scattered all over the floor, the remains of a mummy’s bandages rolled up in disarray near a trash bag, faded purple sea snail mucus on a shell-shaped palette.

One morning, Raphaela noticed the faint shadows beneath Rafayel’s eyes, the soft hints of sleepless nights that even he couldn’t quite hide, and concern quietly settled in her chest. It took far more persuading than she expected when his stubbornness had to be coaxed with incessant patience until he eventually relented.

With a quiet sigh of surrender, Rafayel allowed her into his process of creating paints.

That was how she found herself stood beside him in the storeroom, a small space with a single window that poured in pale light and offered a quiet view of the beach. It was nearly bare, merely filled with cupboards and a table at the center that held mortar and pestle, fine-mesh sieve, and masher. There were a few basins and earthenware plates, as well as a pair of tongs near a modest fireplace.

“Charred ivory,” he simply says, drawing a thick black stick from the cupboard, “to make black paint.”

Rafayel dropped it into the mortar and added water, honey, a gummy substance, and… “Rafa, is that egg yolk?”

“Aren’t you a smart-cookie?” He smiled when he explained how to hold the muller and put motion into it. In minutes, the ivory became a smooth, dark paste. “Wanna give it a try?” he asked.

Rafayel set aside the finished pigment and handed her another piece of the black stick, though however she tried to follow his movements, grinding charred bones took more effort than she expected.

“No, my love, you should do it like this.” Rafayel’s hand came over hers as he leaned forward. It took her far longer than it had taken him—her movements were awkward, her thoughts flustered, her hands unsure under his… hands-on guide—so, after a while, he asked, “What troubles you, cutie? Surely a few bones do not frighten my Miss Bodyguard.”

It was not that, for sure. Rafayel had been so absorbed in grinding the pigments, lost himself in the steady beat of stone against bone fragments, that only after a while did he seem to return to himself and realize the situation at hand.

Perhaps it wasn’t only the stone that was grinding against the pigments, but there was another kind of… grinding, or rather friction, in the room. Albeit certainly, it was not the sort of thing meant to unfold in a storeroom at all, least of all one heavy with the presence of literal dead things just a few inches away from their flushed bodies.

Their intimacy felt misplaced here, perhaps almost irreverent, so Rafayel moved their work into the studio instead. She found herself growing fond of the rhythm of it, grinding pigments near his painting stool, as the soft scrape of stone blended with the low murmur of their conversation. At other times, she would stand with him at the basin, washing the colors to rid them of their impurities. Sometimes they would do it thirty times over, and when the day had quietly slipped into evening, they would allow themselves a small indulgence.

A seafood buffet at home, of all things.

So how had it come to this: her quiet, ordinary days of grinding paint beside him were now reduced to a neat description in one corner of his exhibition?

Raphaela read the panel once more, her lips pressing between disbelief and amusement, where all those long and tedious hours bent over ground and mashed pigments were distilled into a few careful lines crafted for strangers to glance at and pass by.

Although from that same section, she learned something else: Rafayel did not mention how he acquired his materials or his inspirations.

She let out a soft exhale, slight relief softening her stiff shoulders, when she realized that—for the very least—he had spared her that much. There was no mention of how inspiration truly came to him… and thus, no trace of late hours where ‘work’ blurred into something far less disciplined, where tangled limbs and tousled sheets spoke more honestly of his paintings than any muller or basin ever could.

Turning away, she continued down the corridor, forming a mental list of questions she intended to press him with, especially about that conveniently ‘curated’ section of his, when her phone buzzed inside her pocket.