Prelude

The artist was a young woman, the youngest of a large farming family. She painted the view out of her window, the family farm, the wheat, the cows, and the clear sky, all as a gift for her aging mother. 

Traits: Landscape, meaningful

Act 1 Brand New 

Bethel Meeler Oretha Vago was the youngest child of seven to a farming family in a little village of Dewhurst, just north of the city of Memank. Her parents were old by the time she was an adult, and her mother’s memory was fading fast. 

For her mother’s birthday, Bethel had been painting the scene from her bedroom window. It had taken her the better half of the year, and although she wasn’t a talented artist, the care and effort shone through the paint. 

She spent long hours perfecting the grass and deciding and then changing her mind where to place the cows. Eventually it was complete and it sat in her room, covered in a sheet until her mother’s birthday.

Oretha Vago Vikram Finlay turned 67 on the day she received the painting of their farm and it quickly became her most cherished possession. She put it on the wall in the dining room so guests could enjoy it while they ate. And every morning she would stop to admire it. 

When her son inherited the farm and she and her husband moved into the city for better care, she would spend hours rocking and staring at the painting. She was bitter they had to move away from the country and the painting let her pretend she was still in that old farm cottage. 

When her grandchildren would stop to visit, she would take them up on her lap, still rocking, and describe the farm to them. She’d tell them about the wells, and the clear sky, the cows, and the wheat. Everyone started to refer to it as “Grandma’s Farm Painting” even though she wasn’t the painter. 

The painting is starting to yellow and age from it’s time exposed to the sun. The clouds and the cows aren’t as white and the blues have started to melt to green.

Act 2 From Hand to Hand

Luciana Abra Bayrem Vago was ten when her great-grandma Orthie died. She cried and cried and cried and didn’t understand why her grammie was gone. Oretha never admitted to having a favorite grandchild but everyone knew it was Luciana. 

Luciana would spend the entire time pointing at the painting, asking about the cows, and the wheat, and the farm. She didn’t remember the first time she saw it; it was simply always there every time she visited. It was as much a part of her grammie as the woman herself. 

No one questioned who would inherit it and her mother hung it up in Luciana’s bedroom by the window where sometimes she would pretend she was in the old farmhouse and it was a real window. 

Sunil Kay Inessa Tallak was the nephew of Luciana and though they were barely in contact, he was the only living relative to inherit her belongings. He had never seen the farm, or knew anyone who had. He had never seen the painting before but knew it wasn’t a masterpiece or an undiscovered painting by a master. 

He had no connections to it, and it held no significance to art history, or the city at large, but still he was able to find a small museum, one dedicated to the farmers in the small towns around Memank, that would take it for a small sum. 

They displayed it next to a diorama of a farmhouse interior, describing how it would feel to live on a farm. People would point to the cows and say “look cows,” and other monotonous things. Some people would pretend it was a window like Luciana and wonder what it was like to live in the cottage. 

The painting was retitled Through the Window  and restored by a professional, but not a master. The clouds still weren’t as white as they used to be, and the sky was still a bit too green, but it was closer to its beginnings than it had ever been, despite the cows being painted brown to cover the white smudges. 

Act 3 Fading 

The museum was not popular and soon closed after a decade. All the items within were auctioned off including the painting, bought on a whim, and taken to a city far away.

Marinta Maymalark gave the painting to her spouse, Bragdi, as a surprise gift. The reception was middling and it was placed on the wall of a guest room, hardly used and rarely seen. 

Months went by without anyone entering the room until Marinta slept there one night. Then another night, then a week and a month and then never again. 

They had argued time and time again about little things as a proxy for larger issues. Never once did they really say what they were really arguing about. It was always someone forgot to clean, someone forgot to put away clothes, someone said something in the wrong tone. 

Eventually after a year had passed and no one had seen it, it fell off the wall, breaking the frame and tearing a corner. Bragdi took the painting, the other items in the room, and left them at a thrift store. 

The thrift store kept it in a box with a dozen other paintings, none of them of any true value. It sat there for the better part of a decade with only the occasional hands picking it up to look at it then putting it back in the box. 

Eventually someone paused, taking the time to look at it, to go over the window pane, look at the brown cows, and the green sky. 

Theressa Wolbrecht bought the painting on a whim after seeing the discount price. She hung it up in the living room of her first apartment along with the other cheap furniture and decorations. She had never been to the country, she never would, but sometimes she would take a glance at the painting and wonder what it would be like to live somewhere so green. 

What happened to the first steward? How are they remembered?

She lived a quiet life with a loving family out in the country. She painted more paintings in her spare time, but she was never considered a painter of any renown. She died when she was an old woman and her funeral was small but filled with people who loved her dearly. After three generations the only people who knew of her were the people who tended to the cemetery.