Fruit of Omni

Process Diary

The Vlasik came before the picture did. I built the species first — sleek black body, white mask of a face, two red eyes with nothing behind them, horns swept back and a throat ruffled in white — and then I had to find somewhere it could stand. It is not a monster. It is an animal with a mask on, which is worse, because the mask is not removable. I put it under a tree with purple leaves and gave it one thing to want: the fruit, glowing cyan, out of reach on the branch. The star-speckles along its back are the only part of it that looks up rather than forward. The sky behind is the last ten minutes of a sunset, reds going to purple, and the palms are already silhouetted, which is how you know this is the end of the day and not the beginning. It reaches anyway. That is the whole piece: not whether it gets the fruit, but that it keeps reaching for something it has never tasted and does not have a word for. I invented the creature so I could watch it want something. It has been wanting it for four years now, and it still has not looked away.