Mouse Girl Whatever

Instead of Isaac Newton having an apple drop on his head a large harpsichord falls on him instead. Godfrey Kneller witnesses this and, being thoroughly traumatized, begins drawing rabbits. Slowly though he becomes more and more distraught over the Newton thing and begins to make the bunny more human, begins to make them funny.

Soon he begins to paint full humorous scenes of a specific bunny outsmarting a British hunter. These scenes start out simple enough, the bunny pointing to a sign that says "duck season" while the hunter looks on in a sort of bemused confusion.

But Kneller never found this as a way to process his feelings regarding the death of Newton, someone who seemed to be one of the greatest minds of the time, someone who would've been A Great Man. He begins to withdraw from everything, only speaking through the paintings.

Soon he begins painting the bunny and hunter in more understandable roles. Fascinated with theater (the only thing he leaves his house for anymore) he begins to draw the bunny and hunter in a variety of scenes from Shakespeare. The bunny as Miranda and the hunter as Ferdinand, as Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, as Beatrice and Benedick.

He paints them in theater, they become the roles, they are lost in it, yet the actors fool not the crowd but each other, and you can tell in their eyes that there's a love that goes beyond the stage.

And he begins drawing them especially as Viola and Orsino, taking creative liberties with the script, adding to it, subtracting from it. He would paint them as men, how Viola's disguise betrayed her feelings, and how Orsino would look upon this man and wonder why his feelings were so strong. He would paint the moment that Viola is revealed to not be a eunuch but a woman, and the relief that Orsino has that his love could be enunciated. He would paint them, still in costume, still the bunny and hunter, in bed in old age. He had taken to adding words to his paintings, large bubbles that would hang over their heads like clouds.

"Do you remember my love? All those years ago, when you thought I was a boy?"

"Yes my sweet, and still then did I love you."

"And you love me as a woman?"

"I love you as you are, I love you as you are. I had felt a coward for not admitting love to you as a boy but-"

This painting was immediately followed by another, with Viola and Orsino kissing gently, the bunny's eyes wet and large looking up towards the hunter as if she was looking for absolution.

"Do not cry or punish yourself Orsino, for they would not have understood. I do not blame you for your cowardice, it's the cowardice of all men. They can't admit love to a woman, much less a man."

The diptych was revealed alongside a collection of these bunny/hunter paintings in a collection of his art at a salon in London. While some paintings would garner laughs they mostly garnered ire. People began complaining, and an uproar started slanting Kneller as a immoral sodomite. Leibniz was the prime source of the affair, having protested Kneller presenting anything since the death of Newton.

Leibniz would convince the crowd to gather the paintings, to take them far away, and have them burned. Kneller would flee, flee far away. For had anyone knew the truth behind this paintings he would not just be accused of being an immoral sodomite but outright known as one.

In his dark collection, one he would not reveal to anyone, he would repeatedly draw the hunter being crushed by various objects. The bunny, usually as a dame, would convince the hunter to walk to a particular spot and afterwards snip a cord for the object to fall on the him.

Dozens of these triptychs were made. The bunny as a gorgeous woman, the hunter being lured in, and then dying tragically beneath the weight of what the bunny had setup.

To Kneller these weren't humorous panels (although in retrospect one could see it this way), but admissions of guilt, and of love lost. He was the bunny, and Newton was, well....

He would imagine the times they had spent together, the long nights talking of light, Newton posing for him, the kissing and frotting and gasps and moans. How Newton would say to him "oh how I long for you to be my lady, if only you could be my lady." and Kneller would respond "but sir, do you like ladies? Would you take a girl's hand in marriage?"

"I would if it was you, Kneller. If only you could take my hand in marriage, and we could spend the rest of our days together."

"I would not mind that." Kneller would say, gazing gaily at the dark ceiling, "I would be Lady Newton, and, and we'd be happy, oh how joyous we'd be!"

"If only. I bite my tongue."

"Say it, it's just us Newton."

Newton sighs and looks up towards the heavens as if asking God for a favor, or perhaps forgiveness, "If only we could get married as men. I would love you as a woman but I scorn the land for its laws of sodomy, for its laws of love."

They would embrace, kiss, and make love, and it's a memory that Kneller would return to often. Yet the future that was proposed would not come to pass, and Kneller would watch as his love succumbs to death from the falling of a harpsichord.

Separately, Leibniz had promised to take care of the paintings by Kneller. He had taken them in carriage and brought them to his estate out in the English countryside where he "would burn them, outside the sight of any witnesses. To have any more witnesses to these paintings would be a disgrace to God and His people."

Yet he knew what he wanted with them, to keep them, to store them, to gaze on them in the way Kneller did. He, himself, could not process love lost as Kneller could. He, himself, never had the love that Kneller did, and he resented Kneller for it.

If only he were young like Kneller, or beautiful like Kneller. If only he had boyish charm and could paint poetry upon the canvas. Yet he's a man, a man of the world, of philosophy and math, he's no poet or artist. And even though he could speak frank with Newton, speak at length with him, he knew that his love would always be unreturned. How he hated Kneller. Despised him. Yet could not help but imagine himself as Kneller, to be loved by Newton, to be cradled in his arms, to feel the soft heat that radiates from his body in the cold of night.

The cracking of twigs beneath his carriages wheels awaken him from the fantasy and he looks at his estate, a modest manor house, which looms above him. He takes paintings in hand and moves them to his house over the course of several trips. Then moves them into a spare room. Meticulously he hangs them up piece by piece, making room for sconces so he can look at them all hours of the day. Above the fireplace sits the diptych of Viola and Orsino.

Soon Leibniz would spend a majority of his time in England, in his manor, and become reclusive . His body of work deteriorated, he no longer wanted maths or philosophies or anything else, he wanted to be loved, to be kissed, to be held and have his tender flesh give way under the touch of someone great, of someone beautiful.

He would sit in this private gallery painted from the man he hated and imagine himself as him. He began to realize that these weren't just humorous paintings but genuine scenes from the life of Kneller and Newton. They weren't just lovers, but soul mates, and it destroyed him. That Newton's happiness was caught in Kneller's brush, and it dawned on Leibniz that no matter what happened he would never have it. Have the love of Newton.

He takes his own life, and is found dead by a chambermaid who was instructed to never enter the room. His body was found bloated and rotting as it took several weeks for her to work up the courage to enter the room. It's revealed in a note that he understood the true beauty of these paintings, that these demonstrated greater than all things that truth that carries all humanity forward. That he felt an ease overcome him, that he had lived a full life and that there was no reason to continue. That there's a truth in these paintings that are betrayed by their seemingly silly approach.