Felixentric

Scene 6: Painting. Violently.

"I have a mission for you."

Like a spy? Felix sputtered. "I won't do anything to harm anyone... or hurt myself or..."

Hen's figure cast awkward, incongruous, shadows over the ground. The particles of this shape swirled and buzzed on top of the dirt when he raised his hands in defense, as if a projection of heated molecules. "Hey, woah. Chill kid. I just need you to take a field trip to the art museum."

Felix hadn't been there before, unfortunately. Not having crossed the forest limits many times in his life, let alone for entertainment purposes, he barely had an idea of how to get there.

"It's only on the edge of the city limits." Hen smiled as Felix shuddered at the proposition of entering the city.

"What's so important there?" Felix stared just behind Hen, instead of right at him, to avoid the nausea that resulted from looking directly into his spinning irises.

"Nothing tangible. Just your potential." Hen overdramatized, like a poet trying to confuse his audience instead of invigorate them.

"I don't get it."

"You're going to paint them a picture. Paint it right on their perfect, white walls. Between the canvases, just start glopping on paint, and if anyone tries stopping you... well, they won't. Not if you paint the right picture." He paused. "I mean, paint the picture right." At this point, he'd started walking circles around the rigid Felix. He had inch-long, pearly white talons at the ends of his dark blue fingers. He clicked them over the fleshy part of his palm and it clicked like the sound of two pieces of plastic, and licked his pointed teeth.

Felix didn't try escaping the orbit. "How will I know if I am?"

"What kind of question is that? It's about power." He gestured to Felix's left hand. "You already know what it feels like to be doing something right."

Verily, Felix hadn't witnessed much art, aside from the paintings he'd done on his own. Which, frankly, wasn't the best tactic to making anything revolutionary. It was like trying to write the next great American novel without having ever read a book, without experiencing a book's thick pages in a binding, its musty smell, or tasting its bones and organs. It was like being the first person to try baking a cake; no one could help with the recipe.

But he'd managed to figure out how to use paint from a young age and had just assumed he'd been doing it correctly since then. Janette often talked about how much she liked what he could do, so he knew there was something correct about it, even if it wasn't obvious what that component was.

Felix shifted his weight between feet. "So what's the point?"

Hen rolled his eyes. "Like, what's in it for me, you, and the rest of the world? Is that your question?"

"Yeah."

Hen grunted, like a teacher trying to explain something the students weren't understanding as quickly as she hoped. "It's simple. I get a new team member, you get a favor, and the world changes. It's like an interview. You're a powerful kid, obviously, but if you can do this with a strong mentality, you'll get the job."

Felix's face was blank.

"It's like hazing, I guess," Hen laughed. When Felix's face remained plastery and emotionless, his face fell. "You really don't know the bottom of an apple from the top, do you, kid? This interview won't have much of an effect on the world, other than to prove that you can help change it later. If you can do this one task without bursting into tears, you can be a part of my team."

Felix raised his index finger to ask every question on the planet, including what Hen meant by "team," but Hen was quicker to stick his nose up and ask, "Don't you read the news?"