Today I met with Sabasa and her senior in anticipation of meeting our new charge. Hesperia is a beautiful and awe-inspiring Virtue, dark and vivid with a voice that I could listen to forever. She and Sabasa bear a certain resemblance, in fact.
When I mentioned this, they both laughed. “There is a certain aesthetic quality to Muses that is not present in other angels,” Hesperia explained. “While the rest of our brothers and sisters focus their energies into presence, rather than appearance, something in our natures requires us to manifest more strongly in the physical world.”
“It often gives us away as Muses the moment we are created,” Sabasa added.
I could not help but wonder if that was a reference to my own creation; Sabasa never did say much about what she thought in that instance. “Well, I am very excited to work with you,” I told her.
“We did well enough with Myrtle, did we not?” she said, smiling back. She is difficult to read, but I believe she also was pleased.
“Yes, and thank you again for your help then.”
“It was my pleasure.”
“You both are so very pleasant,” Hesperia laughed. “But if you are to work together, you will need to get past politeness. Good works come out of emotion, and sometimes those emotions are uncomfortable.”
I admit, I was not certain what to say to that. It is true, Sabasa and I do not know one another very well yet, but I intend to remedy that. Love and inspiration should go hand in hand, should they not? But Sabasa also was silent.
“Well,” Hesperia said after a moment, with a rueful smile, “your charge, then. His name is Allen Gray, and he was an artist at one time, but life has drawn him away from art. Your task will be to draw him back.”
“Is he focused or prolific?” Sabasa asked, which confused me.
“He has the potential to be very prolific, but I believe you will do better in these early days to have him focus on a single idea,” Hesperia replied.
Sabasa nodded. “His medium?”
“Primarily visual—he did some work with sculpture and film, but his love was painting.”
Again Sabasa nodded. Hesperia turned to me then. “This will be a challenge for Sabasa in many ways, Asa’el,” she told me. “It is our hope that you will be able to help her.”
I glanced at Sabasa, who turned her eyes away from mine. I had the sense that she was embarrassed by whatever failing it was that would cause her to need my assistance, and so I did not ask anything more. “I will be happy to help in any way that I can.”
Hesperia set her hand on Sabasa’s shoulder. “I know. Now, you will have to wait a while to begin with Allen. Sometimes, we Muses are constrained by time—our presence is startling and effective, but our power wanes the more time we spend with a charge. So I would like you both to wait to go to him until later in the month. The Choice Web says that he will have an encounter then that will start the process of change in him.”
We both nodded then. Sabasa keeps her words for when they are most needed, it seems.
Hesperia took my shoulder and drew us closer together. “Use this time to come to know one another,” she said. “Make plans and see how you will work with one another. And if you need anything, you may come to me.” She winked at me. “I have been known to come up with a good idea every now and again.”
Then she was gone, without another word, and I was quite startled. Sabasa, however, seemed to take her senior’s abrupt departure with complete aplomb. She turned to me. “I am sorry if we do things a bit differently than what you are used to.”
“That is all right,” I said. “I have come to expect that different disciplines will each have their own ways to approach a case. How is it usually with Muses?”
She shrugged one shoulder, and I could not help but think that there was something artful about the way she moves. “Sometimes we will be sent in force to a single person, in a single moment, to give them the inspiration they need to find an idea that will sustain them all their lives. Sometimes one of us will be assigned to one person only for their entire career, returning again and again to draw new material from their soul. Most often, however, we watch over a few charges and choose our moments to transform their thoughts or their experiences into new artworks.”
This seemed logical to me. “From what Hesperia said, about the need to wait, it seems that you rely more on distance than we do.”
“Yes, I have noticed that,” she said. “You get very close to your charges, and the longer you do so, the stronger your influence.”
“In most cases, yes,” I said, thinking of Shannon with a pang of sorrow.
“For us it is the opposite.”
“Perhaps we can use that, then,” I said. “Perhaps we can combine forces to negate that effect—or else, perhaps alternating our time with Allen will make your presence more effective.”
She smiled. “We can only try. But come—I will show you what we know about him, and we can begin to plan.”
What we know already about Allen Gray is considerable—he is thirty-three, working in a bank, living on his own. He was an artist all through college and for a year afterward, but his lack of success was already beginning to wear on him when his mother died. Losing her drove all inspiration out of him, for she was his only family, and so he set down his brush and has not picked it up again.
There is more—his habits, his hobbies, friendships and acquaintances, a long list of information about this man. It seemed informative to Sabasa, but to me it was all in pieces, and I could not put them together in a way that I could see him clearly. I do not think I will be able to, really, until I meet him. I am also not quite sure where to begin with a relationship for him, nor do I have any idea how this relationship will interact with the inspiration that Sabasa will provide.
This is one job on which I will certainly have to learn on the wing! It makes me anxious, a little, but also excited. I just know that Sabasa will teach me so much more about the human spirit—and I hope I may have a few things that I can show her, as well.