Letter of Marque

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

The air escaped T'yeellaa's barely open mouth in a long exhaled rattle. She regarded the image before her, letting it fill her full attention. A white square. Beyond her, the sights of her quarters dimmed in the fog of tunnel vision. Might as well be in another sector. Deep in a crouch, she stretched her hands wide to either side, fingertips splayed apart, dripping viscous red and blue in thick spatters on the mat beneath her bare feet. Ears forward, she canted her head to nearly a 45 degree angle, taking another deep breath as her back arched. Then in a fluid motion, her hands flew forward.

When the motion stopped, she was on her hands and knees, staring at the canvas in front of her face. Two crimson arcs, nearly parallel, with motion spatters glistened in the center of the white square. A thicker navy blue daub was nearly a perfect circle, a fat blob of paint trailing down to form an inverted teardrop. Frowning, the Cizerack Captain extended a claw, deftly hooking under the paint's trajectory to divert it into a fluid, artful swoosh to nearly intersect the crimson. Rocking back to her haunches, T'yeellaa looked at the image again through half-lidded eyes as she reached for a nearby damp towel to clean the paint from her fingers.