Told by Flinch

Part 1 of the A Different Kind of Portrait series

There’s a kind of portrait-makin’ that don’t work the way any other portrait-makin’ in this world does, and I only found out about it by accident, pokin’ about where I’d been told not to particular but not told not to either.

Master stands somewhere, and a likeness of him comes back from somewhere else entirely — not painted by a hand holdin’ a brush, not sketched by an artist crouched in a corner of the fairground. Described into bein’, is the closest I can put words to it. Somebody says what they want seen — the house, the graveyard, the purple light danglin’ over the gate, Master stood in front of it all lookin’ the part — and the likeness arrives already finished, like it were always waitin’ somewhere for the right words to call it forward.

I don’t pretend to understand the mechanism of it. Same as I don’t understand half of what makes me meself. But I know a useful thing when I trip over one, and a household fillin’ up with whelplings and balloons and gargoyles and Counts seems exactly the sort of household that might want its likeness took proper now and then, without waitin’ on somebody to happen by with a paintbrush and the patience for it.

Found this one first — Master, stood in front of the house at night, purple light hangin’ in the dark like the gate itself were watchin’. Didn’t ask for it special. Just come across it, the way I come across most things worth knowin’, and thought it worth keepin’ rather than lettin’ it pass by unremarked.

Meant to look into this proper, for Master’s sake. Seemed the sort of thing worth understandin’ better before decidin’ what to do with it.