Women in the small kingdom of Aeriana are disappearing.
Iris Daniels, a budding painter in the East Territory, is trying to keep her head down. In a kingdom filled with abilities, music, and Destined love, Iris is determined to build a career out of...
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"Historians have traced Acemarks back thousands of years. The connection formed between two Destined souls traces even further back. Preserved cave drawings indicate..."
—Signs of Destiny, documentary, Channel 9
The East City Gallery of Modern Art that Iris delivered her pieces to was only a ten-minute walk from her apartment.
When she first started painting on canvas, she didn't have anywhere to put the experimental pieces once they were done, so instead of taking them out to the trash or donating them, she'd gotten up late one night and simply deposited a few of them in the back alley of the gallery nearby, figuring maybe the gallery knew where the discarded pieces could go. It somehow felt wrong to just toss a canvas once she was done, no matter how she felt about the piece itself.
A few days later, she'd dropped off another painting, one with red swirls of fire that licked up an old historical building. When that one disappeared, she'd figured the gallery had been taking care of them.
From there, she'd just... never stopped.
Iris had assumed the gallery curator, an older dark-skinned gentleman with a kind smile—at least, as his internet picture showed—was tossing her pieces out. After all, surely she wasn't the only one to leave paintings on or near the gallery property.
Then one day she'd found a note tucked under a rock near where she put the canvases. I've left the back vestibule door open. Please put the paintings there.
So she did.
There was a guard in the gallery overnight, right in view of the vestibule. The first few times she'd snuck in and carefully tucked her pieces under a silk blanket folded in the vestibule, she'd expected the guard to get up, to ask her what she was doing sneaking paintings into the vestibule at three in the morning with her hoodie up and hair tucked underneath.
But the guard never asked. He never even moved. And after the third time, when he'd met her eyes and gave her a nod, she'd finally relaxed.
Two paintings after that—an angel with shorn wings curled on the ground, and a woman huddled around a child—she'd found an envelope tucked under the silk blanket. And it'd been filled with money—more than she'd ever expected. A painting after that, she'd found a key and detailed instructions for a lockbox at the post office.
The lockbox's contents had made her knees weak. She'd immediately locked it back up, found the bathroom, and, hands shaking, ran water over her face.
Since then, she'd delivered a painting a month to the Gallery of Modern Art.
She wasn't naïve enough to think that she could do this forever, or that the gallery wouldn't eventually tire of her work. They must've found a few buyers for her pieces. It was the only reason she'd have received any type of commission.
