Art by the incredibly talented @chrisfroot HUGE thank you! I cannot express enough how much I love your art and this piece ♥

If you find yourself interested in commissioning them, you can find their commission post [here].

All day, she's been able to feel Ava. It's the first time they've prayed to her and she's trying to be normal about it, to not interrupt them, to let them finish. But then it keeps going, and going. Belle can feel every stroke of paint that Ava makes on the walls of this shrine to her. In a way that's indescribable, each droplet of spray paint is her, the cans, their finger on the nozzle, and there's an intimacy in being placed just so over and over again in order to create their vision. Their vision of her, she realizes.

Being the art and the act of the art and the subject of the art doesn't mean necessarily that she gets to see what it looks like. It's more an impression, the feeling that making the art gives them (and her), rather than exactly what they're painting. And they're making so much of it that it's a constant wave of those feelings one after the other, and it hardly matters, doesn't it? What it looks like exactly? Ava is such a talented artist that it would be impossible not to look at their creations in awe, but these are for her, and that's at the forefront. Greedily, she drinks in their intention and the act of creation, filling her bones with it, pumping it into these false veins.

She spends all day giggling out of nowhere, buzzing with an influx of energy. It's different when it's someone who knows her, really knows her. The specificity, the way they're giving without asking or taking, the way they breathe love into all of this paint. She shares the feeling with Tolya, wrapping it around them so that they can both soak in it like a cat in a sunbeam. Even busying themselves with other things (things she finally has the energy for) she's stopping to bask. Giddy, almost high, full and AWAKE. Does Ava know what this means to her? They must. They've spoken about it, recently even, and it didn't even occur to her to ask this of them because they already have a god and she doesn't-

Oh god, are they going to get in trouble for this? The hive would know, surely, what they're doing. Creeper doesn't seem like the type to abide sharing, not when it comes to feeding another god. She'll ask later. Selfishly, and she guiltily packs this away in a box deep inside her, she doesn't want it to stop. Not until they're finished.

And what a finish.

There's intent that she can't place before their big finale, still praying but no longer creating so she can't quite feel out the shape of it. So she peeks. It's risking a headache - they're not a human, this is so directly related to her, but she rides this invitation to see them. It's an odd perspective, theirs but fuzzy and only in flashes. Sometimes from the paint or canvas themselves, no eyes to see but a sense of space and movement. Smashing cans of paint (she's giggling again, struggling to focus), placing bags of...explosives? Some kind of toy, it feels like. She can't grasp their plan beyond the intention. This is for her. This is for her - all of her, she realizes at the last second.

When the truck crashes and the marble falls and the match strikes and the explosives go off and the building crumbles, miles away Belle doubles over with a gasp. Tiny whips of light lick across her skin, arcing like sun flares. She has just enough cognizance to prevent herself from burning the plants inside her, letting the energy splay outward onto the woods instead. Later, she'll be grateful they weren't near anyone that could be blinded by this. Her own eyes are glowing too, light bursting forth from them and from every scar in her skin. She stays together, barely. Beams of light dance across the trees and ground around them, burning pinprick holes in the soft plant flesh. Frantic, Belle presses a hand down on her abdomen to make sure that Tolya is okay. She laughs again in surprise at the intense reaction and the sound comes from every bit of light as well as her body, echoing in the sunlight around Ava too. She reaches out for them through the miles and lays herself against their cheeks, their chest, and their beautiful, creative, destructive hands.