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Realistic and cartoon drawing blend. Moody, ethereal. Very intricate lines and details. Masterful composition, astronomy the wrong way up. The strokes are the life of the picture and the lights come from them. Elle dresse la carte du ciel d'en bas. Deep night inside a small brass and oak observatory on the hill above the old southern stone house: a copper dome ribbed like a beetle's wing, its long slit open, but tilted low, aimed down the hillside instead of at the sky. Through the slit, far below, the sleeping valley: dark farms and one small town, and above their roofs dozens of tiny dream-bubbles glowing in many colours, scattered across the darkness exactly like a night sky fallen to earth. High above, through the top of the slit, the real stars look faintly put out at the competition, and the red-tinged moon keeps her usual distance. The great telescope, a magnificent Victorian instrument of brass, mahogany and gears, is angled steeply downward, trained on the valley. At its eyepiece, on a wheeled wooden ladder, the astronomer of dreams is at work: a woman in her end twenties early thirties, French, in her gothic steampunk victorian timelady witch's working clothes, sleeves rolled, the ornate dark hat with the tiny closed wooden door pushed back on her head. Auburn / dark-strawberry hair (muted, not flame-bright), disheveled, ends white and rainbow, remnants of eons gone (for now); fair, warm pink-toned skin with light freckling across the nose and cheeks; smallish, youthful, cute rather than striking, a soft, present, delicate lived-in face; ice blue eyes, teal and blue liner, a discrete touch of sparkles; a tiny drawn mark under one eye, soft and imperfect; necklaces, rings and fabric wristband. One eye to the eyepiece, one hand reaching without looking to note something on the chart table beside her, utterly absorbed, the small smile of someone who has just found a new one. On the chart table, lit by a low green-shaded lamp: star-charts that are not star-charts, hand-drawn maps of the valley by night, each dream-bubble inked as a little star with a name and a colour beside it, constellations drawn between the sleeping houses in fine lines, La Dormeuse, Le Boulanger, Les Jumelles, half-legible in small handwriting. Brass instruments, a cold cup of tea, one glowing artefact from ages gone or yet to come serving as a paperweight. Warm brass and lamp light inside, the valley's dream-stars and the charts carrying the colour. Out-of-time and timeless. Studious, tender, quietly grand: somebody has to keep the catalogue of the sky below. Masterpiece, by eryn.
here they dream of fame
here of beauty
here of, oh, interesting