literature

La Peinture Este Belle Chap I

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"So what does it mean?" Karin asked with benign interest. She really didn't care about that moldy old role of paper her cousin had found. It was the best she could do to stay still. Her instincts were telling her to run, to avoid having to stay another twenty minutes whilst Marine prattled on about the properties of papyrus.
"Haven't you been listening?" Marine demanded indignantly, highly offended by the offense to her specifically inoffensive hobby of investigating old mundane objects from the 50s in the attic. If she wasn't so loud about it, Karin really wouldn't care.
"About what?" Karin asked genuinely stumped. Oh right, she was supposed to be compassionate right about now. Not inserting preprogrammed responses so Marine would think she was listening. Judging by the way Marine's eyebrows were knitting together stretching the limits of her face creating wrinkles… she should go ahead and pick a god, and start the religious sacrifices.
"Why do I hang out with you!?" Marine demanded. Her clogs thumped against the lemon lime linoleum that served as a floor. She stomped her feet with a surprising amount of force, at least if you took her small frame into consideration.  
"I'm not laughing at you." Karin replied scratching her chin. It really had to suck, having a hobby where the rest of the family thought you were nuts, or didn't pay attention.
"You're not doing anything!" Still, couldn't someone else pay attention? Preferably someone who thought clenching your fists while yelling was endearing. Karin drew a blank, who'd think throwing temper tantrums was endearing?
"…" Marine glared like she expected Karin to say something. Which was ridiculous, Marine was mad. When Marine was mad you made yourself a bomb shelter and waited out the storm.
Karin eyes met Marine's super glare. She figured it was preferable to get locked into a staring contest. Rather than say something stupid, again. For some reason, Karin forgot that Marine always won staring contests. She can go for 4 minutes and 26 seconds without blinking. Karin had timed it once.
"What do you want me to do?"  Karin asked sufficiently suckered. She closed her eyes taking refuge in the pleasant feeling of having her eyes nice and covered.
Like a dog with a bone Marine's eyes brightened, her eyebrow wrinkles were replaced with crow's feet, she also smiled. Not a happy smile, more like a slasher smile. It would cow any political candidate.
"Wait here!" She commanded. Not like I can slink off now. Karin thought unhappily rubbing her ears. She watched warily with newfound interest as Marine waltzed off behind a very large stack of brown packaging. They were the boxes full of broken colanders and twisted candlesticks. Even Marine had written them off as pile of broken light fixtures, from the nineties. They were that un-cool.
So it was curious, what was in those boxes that were as normal as could be. Karin herself had gone through them. Marine had made it a big cousin bonding thing. So why was she acting like she had found the greatest thing since cat's meowed? Whatever it was, it was causing Marine to not pay very much attention. She knocked over the gaudy roll of Lunar Day wrapping paper, and left it on the dusty floor.
Deciding that Marine simply meant for Karin to stay in the attic, she took a couple steps forward. Plumes of dirt rose with each step. Karin cautiously knelt down, a little wary about getting her skirt covered in the dust. She picked up the role of wrapping paper, and propped it up on the aforementioned tower of butcher paper boxes.
Karin stood back up, creating a miniature dust tornado. She calmly took the opportunity to hack up her right lung.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Marine chided as she stood up. She apparently had noticed where Karin had placed the wrapping paper. She, of course ignored the coughing fit that had unleashed its onslaught on her cousin.
"Better than the floor," Karin wheezed out, she hated the dust just as much as the junk stored in the attic.
"Oi…you-" Marine shook her head with a nasty look on her face before giving up Karin as a lost cause. Karin was too busy wiping her eyes to notice the rather amusing way Marine changed her facial expressions. She did look up when she heard a low dull grind. Marine was dragging heavy across the floor.
"Anyways, I've got something really cool." She beckoned Karin over with her right hand using all of her four fingers to make her signature clam gesture. At least, Karin didn't know anyone else who would do something like that. Considering it was extremely weird.
"Is it another gramophone?" Karin deadpanned, the grinding noise did sound remarkably like the old gramophone Marine had found.
"No! It's even better!" Marine assured and began to drag the object out from behind the boxes. It's probably a sucker-punch clown. Because of the mechanics, that could be extraordinarily heavy. Or it could be a really large one, considering some of the stuff that could be found in the attic, it wasn't unlikely.
Sometimes Karin relishes being right. Sometimes she's relieved she's wrong, and sometimes it doesn't matter either way. This time she was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't an extreme prank designed to get back at her for being apathetic. It wasn't a clown, it wasn't a boxing glove attached to a spring, and it wasn't an antique pipe bomb.
"Isn't it cool?" Marine bragged as she gave it an adoring look. It was a painting; it looked like an oil, of a glass structure. It had a Russian mosque as the foreground, and in the background the artist had painted a double rainbow.
"I suppose…" Karin said dumbly giving the painting a dubious glance. The premise for it seemed odd. Sure buildings that sparkled with radiant light were a popular topic, but a mosque? A protestant church she could understand, a crystal fissure too. She could testify now that she had seen this painting; mosques don't make very good sparkly see-through structures. Mosques were beautiful with copper roofs though.
"You suppose?"   Marine asked agitated, displeased her bombshell hadn't quite exploded quite the way it was supposed to. The way it seemed her bombshell was a dud, it hadn't even exploded.
"It's an okay painting…" Karin began. She certainly couldn't do anything like that.
"Okay? Okay! It's brilliant!" Marine defended her new adoptive child strongly. She stretched her arms around the frame in an effort to protect the painting from Karin's less than enthusiastic response.
"But doesn't it look weird to you?" Karin finished, referring to the odd angles and the way the mosque just seemed to be floating in the painting.
"A little…" Marine admitted sadly. "But look at the detail! Everything glitters!" She left Despondentburg just as soon as she entered it.
"I can see that…" Karin countered passively. Really, she had noticed the inordinate amount of bling that coated the canvas and frame. It was everywhere on the painting, not to mention the rainbow sparkles in the painting itself. It seemed incredibly redundant to say you thought that it was glittery, a little like saying clouds are made out of water, and ketchup is made out of tomatoes.
Marine cooed and hugged the painting with a big smile on her face, getting the sparkles over her magenta blouse. I really shouldn't be surprised that she likes sparkles this much.   Marine was typically more conservative with her obsessions. She acted obsessively over the attic sure, she liked old stuff, sure. She didn't normally drool though. To watch her coo and gibber over glitter was certainly disturbing. The picture was nowhere near that interesting. Karin took a cautionary step back, just to be safe.
Actually…  Now that she was thinking about self preservation. Now could be a good time to escape from the unreal perils of the musty room. Karin decided to be bold and cautiously turned on her heel with every intention of finally leaving. Quite frankly, she underestimated the age of the floor. A forlorn creek eked out of the wood, along with a plume of dust.
"Hey!" Marine demanded with the evil eye, "And where would you be going?" The gibbering maniac was replaced by a strict hall monitor. What were the teachers thinking when they gave her a position of authority? Karin desperately wanted to know, especially now that she was the one under the authorities thumb. Even if it wasn't at school
Karin kept her mouth shut for exactly sixty seconds. After the allotted 'You caught me, you know what I was doing, and you want me to explain myself?' time had been filled, she opened it again. She realized she was being juvenile, and sinking down to Marine's level.
Marine hadn't let up the creepy stare either. Say something relevant. There was only one thing Marine wanted to hear. "So, where are you going to put it?" The way Karin's voice shook didn't bother Marine at all. It was what she wanted to hear, the tone didn't matter at all.
Marine placed a finger to her lip in a way she self-professed as 'cute'.  "In the hallway?" She suggested.
"How about the bedroom?" Karin suggested quickly. She didn't like the idea of waking up to that painting very much, but Alfonse would most certainly; definitely not appreciate it in the hallway.
"But I'm never in there…" Marine said moodily.
"Well, it will go with the color better." Karin said using logic, even though logic was normally a lost cause in these situations.
"But it's green." Marine hands flew up to her mouth covering it in an expression of horror. You would have thought someone had shot her with a taser gun. Oh right, she professes to hate green but sleeps in a room with green walls without much complaint.
"Actually, it's spruce green." Karin established,  she felt an impending headache start between her eyes.
"That doesn't help!" Marine cried, denying any and all of what Karin said. "It needs some place special ." She complained. She tied her mouth into an entirely unpleasant frown. "For example: the hallway."
Karin chewed on her lip wondering how she was going to get out of this one.  Marine was already resorting to juvenile fallacies, at least she didn't have much of a case. After Marine kept staring she had to pick an argument.
"The brown wouldn't go with the painting at all." Was the negotiation she chose. "Besides, our room has that white siding."
"That isn't the problem…" Marine objected.
"I know, I know it's… the green's," Karin shook her head, "fault?" She dusted not so imaginary dust off her skirt, "But there's green in the painting."
"…Not that much."
Karin rolled her eyes and started counting on her left hand, "There's the grass, the green in both rainbows, the green in the mountain, the green in the glittery structure, oh, and oh yeah! There is a floating green cactus that's in there for no reason!" She checked her hand, "So that would make six instances of green."
"It's a happy green…" Marine protested weakly.
"It'll look awful next to that muddy brown in the hallway." Karin started lying through her teeth. The brown was actually a very pleasant color, a little like coffee or hot chocolate.
"It will?" Marine asked not really convinced. The way Karin was grimacing probably clued her in that Karin wasn't being truthful.
"Not only that, but it's just the thing to brighten up the bedroom." Karin said making outrageous gung-ho hand gestures in an attempt to convey her sincerity.
"I'll go see about that!" Marine expelled as she grabbed the painting. She picked it up like she hadn't been dragging it on the ground earlier. Then proceeded to metaphorically fly downstairs with the painting in her arms.
Karin followed Marine downstairs; she took a slower pace than Marine. A much slower pace. By the time she was out of the attic she heard a loud series of thumps. Weird, she had thought Marine liked the painting. The next time she saw it; there would probably be a large crack in the glass. Marine would still hang it up though, broken glass or not. There was relative silence after a very loud 'formaggio!' Marine's swearword's of choice tended to be cheese in different languages. If you hear 'queso' it tends to be a good idea to hit the floor.
Karin walked past the bedroom door, down to the first story, and out the door. Some Parmesan sounded nice
A picture of Karin and Marine, and the first chapter of La Peinture Este Belle. Hopefully the chapter is explanatory enough that you know who is who. If not... I'm not about to move to Bermuda.

I would appreciate heavy critique.. without being a jerk @$$.
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