27 Cylus, Arc 719
As it so often happened, too often to keep track of considering how long she'd lived already, Eliza was to play the part of observer in her own dreams. An audience of sorts, an unseen and unheard audience of one. And while reclined in peaceful slumber elsewhere, in a warm bed, inside a quaint little cottage at the edge of the forest, with a moat outdoors dotted with ducks that nature or some Immortal had painted in color block; she found herself in her nightdress and slippers, seated on a hard, straight backed chair. The chair had a wobble, one leg too short, and each time it did, it knocked against the cold stone floor that hadn't been polished in ages.
Eliza knew this place. She remembered it quite clearly in fact. It had once been some sort of chapel or temple, more than four centuries ago now. Some had said that it had been a shrine devoted to one of the Originals. Nobody could remember which one it had been, if there'd been a time that they'd ever known. It had been there before even she was born. But the last time she'd seen it, it was no shrine or temple. The place had been leased to a painter, to use as he would. Master Roeloff, Eliza recalled with a smile. And why wouldn't she remember? He was right there in front of her. And he wasn't alone.
As a dreamwalker, even as one that was new to it, Eliza was keenly aware of when she was dreaming, and when she was not. But if she'd needed anything more to confirm it, it would be that as she sat there watching Master Roeloff at his work, a man who was dead over a century now, she spied a younger version of herself nearby, behaving like the usual nuisance that she'd been way back then. Eliza smiled. She remembered that young girl. A pest, a chatterbox, the girl with many more questions than she'd ever get answers to. It was on the outskirts of Viden, but it was difficult to guess the exact trial. She'd spent dozens of them in that broken down, converted shrine, showing up uninvited but always expected. Distracting master Roeloff from his work.
Looking back at herself, there, seated with feet and legs crossed on the floor, flipping through the pages of the master's notebook; she hadn't looked very different than Eliza looked now. Only she'd had a different name back then. Calliope Smart. Her great aunt, Olive Smart had given her the name. It had apparently been the thing to do back in those arcs, to name your child something that would get them beaten up in the schoolyard. Or at least that was how Eliza had seen it. She'd hated it, and remembered, she'd insisted that everyone call her Pete.
But in spite of her given name at the time, or the extent of the painter's eccentricities; or even the sometimes outlandish nature of his work, a great deal of what Eliza knew about painting, she'd learned from Master Roeloff.
