Then she'll sit here until she's pretty sure no one will be able to tell she's been crying.

"Thank you, miss."

"Of course. Thank you for coming. Shelyn's blessings be on you for your love and for your healing both."

"Shelyn's blessings on you too, miss."

And she leaves.

Laia jots down a couple of notes for a possible sermon idea and resumes circulating.

An older, well-dressed man is critically examining the artwork on the walls.

"Good evening, my lord, and welcome!"

"Songbird." He nods his head. He's never seen a lion before in person, but doubts they look like that. "I can't help but notice you that still have some undecorated walls."

"Songbird Gabriel and all his volunteers are working as fast as they can, but it's a big place!"

He pauses for a moment, then settles on directness. "I am interested in spiritual counseling, but hate to be idle. Would you paint with me?"

"Sure! Not on a wall, I'm not much of a painter so far, but we've got paper." She can fetch some, and some red and yellow and blue and white from Gabriel, and a brush for each of them, and cups for her to fill with water.

He is, and so will pick a section of wall and begin on a unicorn. He has seen one of those in person, which he thinks he might be supposed to regret?

"I... am not sure what to do with my skills," he begins after a while. "I painted to remember, to capture particularly striking moments and evoke those emotions again, and... there is much I would rather forget, now."

"You've always painted from life and not imagination?"

"Almost always. I painted a dream, once or twice, and sometimes would have a need for something particular." The head and neck take shape. "But almost always it was of the scene in front of me, or my memory of it."

He is scared to admit it. It's pathetic; they're not going to replace him now, not while he has the archmage's protection. "I... had a reputation among Chosen."

"A reputation for what?"

He focuses on the mane. Then the horn, which requires mixing up a few new colors, to get the highlights and reflections right. Then he works up the courage. "Most of the pieces I sold were torture scenes. I think some of my works were bought by seminaries for teaching. A few travelled to my barony to have me paint them in the act, or invited me to them for the same."

"I can see why that would weigh on you. No matter how you honed the skills, though, we will still be glad to have this beautiful unicorn here."

He doesn't respond, for a while. The eyes of an animal convey emotion, but not in the way human eyes do, and he doesn't want this one to convey pity and regret. He'll instead borrow from the eyes of a horse getting a feed bag after a long trek.

"I wish it were just that it weighs on me. I... miss it." It's easier to say, when he doesn't have to look at her. He steps back, examining the piece again. "It's beautiful, but it's not striking."

"Striking... hm. I think it will draw the eye, but it will not obviously... stick in the mind like a splinter."

He begins to mix some blue paint, mulling over her words. It doesn't quite fit--either the emotions the subjects were feeling were real and important, or capturing their pain was just a cheap trick to shock the audience, and he flips between those interpretations, not willing to embrace either.

"What is the goal of art, for you?" He asks, continuing to blend his blue.

"I've spent my whole life on the stage. I just live to act out a story in a way that lets someone be there with me, in the mind of my character. But separately also I live for, for - spectacle - putting on a great big glorious show where a hundred people are all working together to bring one grand vision to life with lights and costumes and makeup and dancing and music and lyrics and at a certain point it almost doesn't matter what the content is, I love that. Both together is best though at extremes they pull against each other."

"It is interesting, that your audience always experienced it with you. For me, it was to say, 'I saw this, I understood it, I captured it.' A moment frozen in time, to be revisited later." he muses. "Ah, that's what I need."

He quickly fetches a glass bead, and then crushes it with the pommel of his dagger, mixing it into the paint. He looks between his easel and the wall several times, and then takes a breath and makes one smooth, looping movement.

An abstract line suggests a glittering blue dove in flight, launching itself from the horn of the unicorn.

"Oooooooh..."

He sets down the paints, satisfied. "Well, Songbird? How did you fare with your paper?"

She shows him a blobby blue flower with a red stem protruding what might be either flowers or leaves. "I wouldn't call it striking."

He wouldn't either. She probably knows you can combine blue and yellow paint to make green, and it would be insulting to point that out to her? But she didn't mix either of those paints, and so maybe she doesn't.

But get a reputation as an artist and counts are always showing you their trash; he knows how to redirect. Just pretend it's poetry. "It reminds me of my story," he says quickly, "the blue petals of beauty growing out of a blood-soaked stem. Might I keep it, as a memento?"