Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the month of February, I signed up to receive prompts based on artwork from museums around the globe. Aptly names MUSE_EUM, this exercise encourages us to dedicate a mere 20 minutes in the day to write whatever comes to mind, (sometimes with a bit more guidance) and to share with a group of people. It’s been fun, and I’ve experimented with a bit of prose, free verse, different POVs and narration. This is my take on Primavera - I hope you like it.
Primavera
She was lost. Irrevocably lost.
She had only wished to escape, If only for a moment, the stifling gathering at the edge of the woods. Where, under a large white canopy everyone was celebrating a betrothal. Her own.
Betrothed. The word stuck like a spoonful of too much honey in her mouth. Not that she had anything against him – not at all. He seemed to be agreeable, in his own way. A bit too shy perhaps, but that was to be expected from a third born, even if his family was old. Imperial even. Or so she was told.
No, it was simply the idea of marriage, of becoming like her mother or God forbid, her sister. At least her mother had some agency, even if it was limited to the estate. Her sister was a canary in a gilded cage and this scared Beatrice more than anything.
She stopped abruptly, relief rushing in waves. She could hear the lyre finally. Laughter and the rustling of leaves. She was close. There, just beyond that clearing, once she stepped into the light…
Beatrice stopped dead in her tracks. Had she stumbled on a dream? It even had the quality of one. Diaphanous girls blurred into one another as they chased each other in circles, their warm giggles reaching her as if under water. On the left, a man reached gracefully for a fruit on trees that suddenly seemed far more ancient than they should have been. Something triggered a memory in Beatrice’s mind as she gazed, awed at the spectacle unfolding in front of her. She had seen this before, but where? A vision, rather than a corporeal figure swooped down suddenly, carrying off a woman who had been close to dozing at the edge of the scene in a rustle of leaves and flowers. No one else seemed bothered by the incident, on the contrary. A lady posing demurely in centre stage simply cast a look from beneath her pale eyelids and turned away, while another figure, wearing a most beautifully made dress with what seemed to be pressed flowers stitched on her robe threw small bouquets from the folds of her large dress. A child, hovering at the topmost edge of the vision, half blurred from straying perhaps too close to that Other space (where everyone else must surely have come from), trained an arrow at the laughing women, wings aflutter, face a mask of childish concetration.
And then it hit, though Betraice wasn’t sure what it was that finally helped her remember where she had seen this spectacle before. The Villa of Cosimo I, a friend of her father’s, had this most beautiful painting on his walls. Beatrice could not get enough of it, wasting away hours raking in every detail and every brushstroke. A Renewal, Cosimo had said from behind Beatrice when he noticed how long the girl had been standing in front of the masterpiece he owned. Beatrice had turned inquisitively. A rebirth, mia cara. He had smiled fondly, eyes crinkling. A journey we are lucky to enjoy over and over in this short life. Wouldn’t you agree?
Here it was now, as if to celebrate her betrothal, the painting brought to life in front of her. Suddenly, the woman in the lavish dress throwing flowers met Beatrice’s gaze or perhaps she looked through her, she couldn’t tell, and it was as if darkness fell, a curtain closed at the theatre. The figures were no more.
“Beatrice?” A voice called out to her in the woods that suddenly appeared younger, mere saplings in the Earth’s long existence. Her betrothed. “You’re here, I grew worried.” When he appeared in the clearing, hair dishevelled, his youth so evident and beautiful in this light, that it was almost painful, Beatrice smiled.
Perhaps, perhaps, she could be happy in this renewal too.
How do you make sure you keep whetting your creative blade? I’d love to know!