The National Art Museum had an entire exhibit dedicated to the paintings of Yvonne DeLac.

Three interconnected rooms bustling with visitors standing before tableaus of ruins and rivers, bloodied swords and rusted armor, rendition after rendition of human faces twisted with emotion. Soaring happiness, crushing grief, stony resignation and deepest desperation—Yvonne DeLac's paintings explored every thread of the fluctuating tapestry of human emotion. The only common factor throughout all her work was the raw realness of the subjects' expressions, marking Yvonne's paintings, fantastical as they might have been, as almost disturbingly human.

Those paintings fascinated Vivian Sanders to no end.

The castles, the battles, the ethereal women with fire for hair... They seemed as pages torn straight from every unfinished manuscript, every rough first draft that littered Vivian's desk. She knew nothing more of the painter than anyone else, but Yvonne DeLac was just as interesting to Vivian as the paintings—how did this unknown woman's brain work so similarly to hers? Whatever well their inspiration poured from, it was made of the same stone.

Such were Vivian's thoughts as she examined the newest addition to the exhibit: a painting of cobbled square, vaguely Medieval, surrounded by shops and stands of every kind. In the center of the square stood a stone cage, and within it a woman of almost divine beauty. Her legs were folded beneath her, the pleats of her dress concealing all but her ankles. Her chin was lifted regally, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, but her eyes... Her eyes were empty. Dull.

Those eyes were not, however, the focal point of the painting, Vivian noticed. The edges of the woman's dress, and what little of her legs could be seen below it, were made of the same stone as the cage that contained her.

Somehow, Vivian knew that this was not intentional. That the woman was not a statue or a wax figure. No, the stone was a disease, like mold or rust. Slowly, it would consume her, immobilizing the woman forever in her cage, the centerpiece of the town square.

Vivian's pen flew over the pages of the notebook she always had on hand, jotting down loose thoughts on the story behind the painting in an indecipherable scrawl. She did not look up from her inspection of the tableau as she wrote, absorbed in the depths of those dull, resigned eyes...

"It's my favorite, too."

Vivian jumped at the sudden voice, almost dropping her pen. She turned to find a tall woman at her side, arms crossed and head cocked slightly to one side as her eyes roved over the painting of the caged beauty. The woman smiled slightly at Vivian, nodding at the notebook she held.

"I see it's inspired you," she remarked, amused. Vivian noticed the stranger's voice held the undertones of a French accent.

"I guess so," Vivian replied, fidgeting with her pen. "I'll take inspiration wherever I can get it, nowadays. But there are so many possibilities with this one. Possibilities for a story."

"You see a story in this painting? Are you a writer?" the woman asked, quirking an eyebrow in a way that Vivian found undeniably attractive. She nodded lamely.

"I guess you could say that. Though with the amount of writer's block I'm facing right now, that might not be the right term." To this, the woman said nothing, so Vivian turned back to the painting to recount the contents of her jumbled notes.

"The caged woman," began Vivian, "is a a princess. The most beautiful in the land. In the world, even. Her father, the king, had her placed in a cage so the people of the kingdom could walk past her everyday, admiring her beauty, but they could ever touch her.

"His kingdom became the most prosperous in the land, lords and ladies from foreign lands traveling far wide to see the caged woman of legend. The king would allow no one to marry her, since that would take away his most valuable financial asset. But they left offerings: gold and jewels and wine brought to the castle in the princess's name. They worshipped her like a goddess."

Vivian didn't know where the words had come from, the story now much more elaborate than the messy notes she had penned. She and the woman beside her stood in silence a moment.

"And the stone?" the woman asked quietly at last. This seemed the easiest part to Vivian.

"She's been caged for so long, spoken to the same way an icon is spoken to in a church that... Well, she becomes an icon herself. She was treated like a statue, so she turns into one."

Vivian turned to find the woman smiling in a satisfied sort of way.

"That's exactly it," she said. "That's exactly how I meant it to be."

Vivian frowned. "What do you mean, exactly how you meant it to be...?"

She trailed off, realization seeping into her words.

"You're the artist," Vivian answered her own question. "Yvonne DeLac?"

It seemed wrong, somehow. Vivian had always pictured the artist of these paintings as someone middle-aged, someone who had seen enough in this life to be able to paint emotion so clearly. But this Yvonne was young, mid-twenties at most, with clear, dark eyes and complimenting brown hair pulled back in a claw clip. She was pretty. Beautiful, even.

The woman—Yvonne—smiled at Vivian's dazed expression. She flipped over the laminated image hanging on the lanyard around her neck. Yvonne DeLac, visiting artist, it proclaimed.

"That would be me," she said. "Tell me, do you often decipher the stories behind my paintings in your free time, or did you just start today?"

Vivian laughed. "It's my biggest hobby, actually."

Yvonne's eyes shone. She beckoned Vivian towards another painting, on the other side of the room. This one showed a kneeling woman in bloodied armor, head pulled back by the hand of an unseen figure, the sharp edge of a sword pressed against her exposed neck. The woman's hands, soaked in bright red blood up to the wrists, were outstretched in a gesture of supplication. A pool of blood had formed beneath her hands, a clear sign of how badly they were shaking. Tears streamed from her eyes, upturned to a hidden figure who stood before her. The woman's expression was one of pleading, but pleading half-heartedly, as though she knew she would be shown no mercy, and was resigned to the fact.

Very little of the person she looked up to, from whom she sought salvation, was visible. Only the tips of the armored feet, the edge of a ceremonial sword hanging from a sheath at their waist. What most fascinated Vivian was that the figure's face was not in the least visible. Were they stoic to the woman's begging? Sympathetic? Was the twist of their lips cruel, resigned, disgusted, grief-stricken? All this was left to the audience, but Vivian had long since decided on the story behind this painting.

When Yvonne asked her that very question in her smooth accent, the words came easily.

"The woman is a soldier," Vivian began confidently. "One of the most gifted in the entire army, trained to fight since she could walk."

"But..." Yvonne prompted, smiling.

"But she's insane. Her ancestor once badly offended a god, and one of his descendants was cursed to go mad and turn their sword against the wrong side. She," Vivian gestured to the kneeling woman in the center of the painting, "was just unlucky enough to be that descendant.

"The madness took her in the midst of battle, and she slaughtered everyone in her division, doing the enemy's job for them. The person to whom she looks up, who she begs for mercy, is her commander. Her commander who led her into every battle, who trained her for years, now must give the order for death, ending the curse of her line."

Vivian shifted her gaze from the painting to Yvonne. "Is that right?" she asked.

"There is no right or wrong in art," the woman mused, "as all art is subjective. But if you mean to ask if that's the interpretation I intended when I painted this, the answer would be yes and no."

Vivian frowned slightly. She had not expected this.

"You're close, though," Yvonne added. "You're only off by one thing. May I?"

She gestured to the notebook and pen still in Vivian's hands. Vivian handed them over readily, watching as the taller woman flipped to the back of the page full to the brim with half-finished stories about the paintings in the room.

After a few seconds, Yvonne handed the notebook back. Presumably, she had transcribed the true meaning behind the painting, that small that detail Vivian had missed.

Before Vivian could say anything in response, one of the Gallery's security guards entered the room and called Yvonne's name. She nodded to the guard and smiled that ridiculously attractive smile a final time as she stepped away from Vivian.

"Lovely talking to you," she said, by way of farewell. "I hope you beat your writer's block, if my paintings are the only thing that help you through it."

Vivian waved lamely as Yvonne disappeared through the room's arched doorway, following in the security guard's wake.

After that encounter, Vivian found herself completely having lost the ability to focus on the paintings. She stayed only a few minutes after Yvonne's departure before heading out to brave the January snow, taking the fastest route back to her apartment.

That evening, she wrote for hours, head stuffed full of stone princesses and bloody curses and selfish kings and ethereal women and every other element of Yvonne DeLac's paintings.

At last, after a full ten thousand words about every DeLac painting she could think of, Vivian reached the one she'd tactfully saved for last: the begging soldier, the ancestral curse.

She reached for the notebook where Yvonne had written the secret of the painting.

When she found the page at last, there was only this:

The commander is a woman

The soldier and the commander were lovers

226-763-9980

Call me

-Y

Vivian Sanders smiled up at her ceiling.