The Siren, Lady Everbloom

One face looks out from all his canvases,

One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans. . .

- Christina Rossetti, In an Artist's Studio


She fascinated Epicurea Fanshawe, and she was acutely aware of this fact. Conscious of the ongoing creative process taking place in the comfort of her own boudoir, Lady Szeharia Everbloom slowly plowed a hand through golden waves of hair - slowly, so that she might leave ample room for Epicurea to ponder whether it was the density of her locks or the weight of the gems upon her fingers that inhibited the pace of her hand - before rearranging several cushions in order to better provide for her comfort. She was conscious that, while she had summoned the actress to perform in her own theatre, the reality of the situation was that Epicurea had transformed her boudoir, her theatre, into an artist's studio, and that as she lay ensconced upon her pillows she was modeling for the canvas that mattered most: the artist's mind.

Lady Everbloom was no philistine, nor was she a dilettante; she believed in and was intimately acquainted with the power of art. As a child, she had stood front and center in many a portrait of idealized domesticity, a young Elven girl complete with ribbons, bows, and a pink dress; but as children are apt to do, Szeharia left childhood behind, shedding her girlish pink dress for the silken scarlet attire of a woman, loosening the ribbons and bows which held her hair in place so that she might fasten golden bracelets and gems to keep the attention of men where it belonged. She had been pronounced a beauty, and as a beauty, artists lined up at her father's doorstep to stoke the fires of their imaginations; but as artists are apt to do - even to beauty - these visitors portrayed the young woman not as she was, but as she filled their dreams, satisfying their creative thirsts at the seemed inexhaustible well that lay before them. So they painted, and so she watched; for nothing escaped Szeharia's eyes. As she witnessed their dreams laid before her, she seized them, became them, adding their splendor to her own; and as they continued to draw water from her well, unconscious that, while the flora grew ever more lush, the soil was being drained of its life-sustaining capacity. Szeharia's heart became a barren wasteland.

Lady Everbloom understood the powers of art; she had been transformed by it. With every stroke of the artist's brush, her hair acquired more mass, her complexion became fairer, her figure more pleasing. Yet these transformations took their toll upon her, for as her admirers filled their dreams with images of Szeharia Everbloom, they drew upon a limited source of vitality. Ever fairer she withered, until her skin displayed no signs of life; her eyes grew more narrow, her eyelids unable to support the weight of her lashes; her nose, eroded by the artist's chisel, grew into a thin peak, too narrow to permit much needed oxygen to a body that inhabited ever more lofty regions. She had ceased to be a living, breathing elven being and became an object, a thing, a possession born from dreams of art, yet belonging to no artist in particular; so with the last of her vitality, Szeharia Everbloom seized possession of herself, and the transformation was complete. The thing of beauty had become a thing of beautiful terror. Artists who once gave form to their dreams in its presence found that the essence of their dreams had made itself manifest before them. The thing had become too great, too real; their dreams could grace it with nothing more; and slowly, one by one, it banished all but genius from its presence.

Having thus been magnified through the transformative power of art, Szeharia sought to tap into the remaining arcane energies art had to offer; like any portrait, she sought to display herself, to sear herself into consciousnesses of others, to extend her influence as far as she could. To this end, she kept wrapped about her fingers a coterie of artists to which Epicurea Fanshawe belonged. She needed them. She required them. Lady Everbloom understood the power of art, and the power of the artist as well. She envisioned them a stream; flowing from their origins in distant, harsh places, they traversed their way down mountainous slopes (that would have undoubtedly killed many a man and woman), carving canyons and ravines - wonders for the public to behold - forever altering the landscape. Some streams, their propulsive energies spent, petered out or perhaps joined with other weakened streams and became a lake; other streams, however, grew in intensity, becoming raging rivers and thrashing wildly at the riverbank, as if through their actions, they might engulf the entirety of the land before them. Properly channeled, these streams would nourish a community; left alone, they would continue their raging and thrashing, flooding whatever they might have the power to submerge - or so she had thought. She had grown wiser; Szeharia understood that art could not be controlled, that to redirect the flows of the artist might very well lead to the riverbed running dry.

Decorated in this knowledge, Lady Everbloom had sought out a rock in the middle of one of these raging rivers, perched herself upon it, and begun to sing her Siren song. She had no need to raise her voice above a whisper, for the water is a medium highly conducive to sound, amplifying and distorting it, so that as the river surged its way downstream, Szeharia's lone whisperings became a magnificent chorus bearing down upon its listeners with tremendous force; and as stream joined stream, river with river, her Siren song continued onward, a tidal wave threatening to obliterate anything so foolish as to construct itself in her path. Those even more foolish who sought to penetrate the source of the alluring song, who wandered upstream to hear the undistorted voice of the vocalist, who tied themselves to masts and deafened their crews, found themselves dashed upon Lady Everbloom's rock, her whisperings discontinued for a quickly-passing moment to grin in exultant glee.

Epicurea was watching, taking in, etching, consuming. Szeharia's frozen heart began to pump slushy blood more rapidly, the increase unnoticeable to anyone else. Her weighted hand passing through dense waves of gold; her graceful gesture to the platter of arcane dust resting before the artist; she was modeling, and the actress was dwelling upon her every last feature. When Epicurea had breathed in enough of her essence, the actress would take command of another stage, ensconce herself upon another mound of pillows, plow fingers of similar jewelry through dense waves of raven hair, and gesture gracefully to a crowd desperately seeking an audience with a lady. Obliquely, they would behold her, Lady Szeharia Everbloom, a being transcended into a thing, an object, a possession completely possessed of itself. They would give anything to be her. They would dash themselves upon her rocks, and she would grin, perhaps laugh, in exultant glee.