Tuesday, January 5, 2010

[WTTWOF] When Zahari and Najhan...

...were at the art gallery.

(This is a teaser, sort of what would happen after Metamorphosis :D)

***

“Isn’t this weird?”

Najhan could feel a bucket of ice mercilessly thrown upon his existence.

He shivered.

“Come on, now,” Zahari tapped his fingers, “It’s so glaringly obvious.”

Scratching himself, Najhan squinted his eyes, deliberately losing in thoughts. Detecting a slight miniscule imperfection—or oddities of the painting even—was definitely a challenge of its own.

Especially when the referred painting was none other than a masterpiece created by Avery Ventris, who seemed to have a knack of displaying odd subjects in his paintings.

This one was no different. Aside from the blatantly overjoyed expression portrayed by the two teenagers and this one infant, there was nothing remotely interesting to mull over, definitely nothing worth mentioning.

Well, not to Zahari, of course.

“What do you think?”

The question caught him off-guard.

How he wished he could escape from Zahari’s curious inquiries, but the exit door was too far for his reach.

Well, Zahari was indeed one of the most patient people he ever met. He always considered others’ opinions as precious as his own. And that was an understatement.

Somehow, Najhan marveled in that, but on the other hand, it did make the whole situation thoroughly torturous.

“Well,” he swallowed. “These…” what do you call these figures in paintings again? Oh well, characters, he supposed, “Characters…”

“Subjects?”

Revelation struck Najhan’s head, and he found himself grinning. “Yeah, that. Characters. Subjects,” his brain was being rebellious, he was sure, “Well, those…”

He actually half-expected Zahari to cut his sentence, but he did no such things.

He sighed.

Continuing, he said, “Well these…subjects, didn’t look that old.”

Well, of course. They were kids.

The subjects’ timeline, he meant. They didn’t seem to fit the 19th Century era. Mr. Ventris couldn’t possibly visualize the children of the future, could he?

Najhan sincerely hoped that the thought would forever be engraved in Zahari’s head.

“True, that’s one of the major weird points,” Zahari acceded, “But there’s another thing that’s been bugging the hell out of me.”

Najhan knew exactly what he meant, but his façade was at stake now.

But he tried to appear blasé. “Yeah?”

“Don’t you think that these two look awfully like Ikhwan and Nadirah?”

***

Because I really love my characters you know :D

Check out the book here.

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