upon her with all of its childish charm and humor.
Everywhere there were pictures of Seron. They were
piled one upon another, and hung in every corner of her
shack. She was surrounded by his image. And yet she was
not finished with her work.
Frail and sickly, she had continued to paint. With
eyesight fading, her joints aching, her fingers shaking, she
kept on dabbing at the canvas with her brush, hoping to
finally capture the perfect image of the man she still loved.
On this late night, painting by the light of red coals in a
dying fire, Kyra’s breath came in short gasps. She was tired.
But she didn’t want to stop – not before she completed her
latest work.
In this picture of Seron, he was lying on a sheet that
was spread out on the grass behind their hut. A pile of
neatly folded laundry was off to the left. There was a look
of longing on his sad-eyed face. He was alone in the picture,
facing forward, with his arms outstretched, reaching.
Was that the way it really was? she wondered.
She gazed at the image of Seron. The sad eyes of her
husband stared back at her. Slowly, just as the red mist on
the Blood Sea would disappear when the sun reached its
zenith, so did the fog lift away from Kyra’s memory.
That was exactly how it was. It was Seron in every
detail. His hands, with their long, shapely fingers, his
prominent cheekbones, his jutting chin, the shoulders she so
often lain her head upon – it was all just right.
Or was it?
Kyra’s heart began to beat wildly in her chest. Was
there something wrong with the painting? Something
missing? The picture seemed to cry out to her for its final
perfection. But, somehow, she had left something vital
out, and she didn’t know what it was.
In that moment, she felt so unworthy of her Seron
that she turned her back to the wet canvas. Except there
was no escaping her husband’s sad eyes; he looked down
upon her from every wall.
She lifted her arms to him and wailed, “I wanted all
of Krynn to stand before you and look up lovingly, just
like I did. I wanted them to feel something of what I felt.
But look,” she sobbed, her arms sweeping in a
wide arc, “I never captured your love in a single
painting. Not one!”
Kyra fell to her knees and wept with as much anguish
as the night the fire took her husband away from her.
Against a deep crushing pain in her chest, she cried out,
“Did I fail you all these years? Are you
ashamed of me? Oh, Seron, am I even half the woman
you hoped I would be?”
When Tosch arrived at Kyra’s shack, he called out
to his old friend . . . but he heard no answer. Again he
sang her name out. And again there was silence.
Finally, in exasperation, he roared, “Kyra!” as loudly as
he could.
Half the inhabitants of Palanthas were stirred out
of their beds by the frightful sound.
But Kyra didn’t answer him.
Tosch had no patience left. He slammed one of his
huge feet against the door and it flew wide open.
The brass dragon’s anger instantly turned to pity
when he saw the crumpled form of Kyra lying on the
floor at the foot of a painting.
Tosch let out a deep, mournful sigh. As old
as Kyra was, he never really thought she
would act like just another human and die.
She was always there to tell him how he looked,
to tell him what he should wear – to be his friend. And now
she was gone.
She had died all alone in this old, dilapidated shack.
He peered inside and, for the first time, focused on the
picture that loomed over Kyra’s body. Tosch’s eyes opened
wide. It was Seron, just the way he used to be. It was a
magnificent likeness that caught every bit of character,
every nuance of emotion, in the long-dead painter’s face.
The dragon stuck his head farther inside and saw scores