She keeps knitting, pulling closed the stitching, playing with the stones that keep the body from kicking.

She hums the thought to herself, back and forth, playing with different notes and rhythms to it as she pulls up the thread, dragging the skin closed together in the thing she is making. It is not easy to get good at stitching without practice, and thread is always in ever-short supply, but there is a simple joy in the act of making, making, making, and she enjoys it muchly.

Pull tight the thread, weave right the needle, and watch the flesh deform. The creature tries to squirm, but much less than at the beginning, which is a pity. In a faster project, she might pride herself on restricting the movements of the body so fast, but as it stands, it is as likely to be exhaustion as it is the stones padded beneath the open surgical cuts. Not blood loss though, never blood loss. She might still be a novice in the eyes of God, but even her paltry skill level could never be so pathetic as to allow meaningful blood loss.

Just little droplets. One squirt, perhaps, artfully carving out from an artery before the repair is completed.

One must have proper presentation in one's work, after all. Mastering the messiness of the canvas is part of mastering the Art, and to master the Art is all.

A gasping noise from the canvas, trying to move. Heavier than before, its skin stretches and pulls, but the stitches hold, and she has done her job properly, ensuring that none of the stones are in the wrong place.

The canvas bulges, full of smooth round pebbles. The skin is stretched such that bloodflow is visible through it, making the subject's skin take the place of a flowing river atop a bed of smoothly-shaped rock. In another time, perhaps she would have gotten the opportunity for a longer project, one that allowed rougher materials to be worn smooth gradually within the subject… but it's not to be. There are limited opportunities, and even more, there are limited tools in which to ply one's art, and in the modern day…

Truly, the world is an artless place. Long live the banal, the grey, the unassuming and the dark.

The final stitch is pulled tight, and the apprentice Architect steps back to appreciate the fruit of her labor.

Its hands are pinned above it, the nerves and muscle unwound from their original frame and and rewoven seamlessly into the wall behind it. The bones remain, like a halo surrounding the connection between canvas and frame, like a crown framing the heights of the shape she has so carefully sculpted. Blood flows from out of the wall through that weaving, pulsing down through the body of the canvas, which is simultaneously lumpy and misshapen and smooth, artfully carved. It is splayed open, the veins multiplied and stretched wider than normal, forcing the thinly stretched skin to ripple with each pulse of still-living heart, like the waves of water flowing downhill to the point where it is re-woven into the wall at its feet.

The face, reshaped so that the eyes and nose and mouth are naught but little bumps along the river stream, stretches and tries to make a sound.

It will pass. The art rarely appreciates the artist. It is up to the artist to make said art into something that can be appreciated, and find an audience which might appreciate it.

But such is the work. And the work is part and price is of the Art.

And still… there is an ache there. A painful sort of thing, one familiar to any artist, but one that feels sharper than it should be, far more present.

It could be better.

It could be better.

The Empty Sky wears on, taking with it the joy of the world for one more day, as it has every day, as it has forever and always and now.

In another age, there might have been time to truly stretch the work properly. Days and months in which she could have moved things as they needed to be moved, pulling and extending all the right pieces such that the canvas could stretch across multiple rooms, multiple buildings. She could have multiplied the bloodflow, forced the system to accommodate the required liquid volume to properly have waves and ripples. With the right tools, she might have made the veins capable of accommodating liters rather than ounces, that it might properly have the waves and ripples necessary to replicate a river.

In the right day and age, she might be able to do more than just replicate something, more than just ape natural beauty. She might be able to make something entirely new.

As it is, the lack of breathing holes and the weight on the already-sagging skin of the canvas ensures it might last… what, a day? If that?

If she lets it, it could tear her apart. It could actively rip her open inside, the vitriol and the sharpness bubbling inside her pouring out in a river of vitriol that would paint the world.

It could be better, and it can't be. A paradox. Born of a world that decries art as sin.

It's enough to make a woman weep. It's enough to make an Artist break themselves apart.

The canvas wriggles against where its limbs have been woven into the room, some of the little remaining air in its lungs letting out a whimper in spite of the skin covering the opening. A waste. It'll only make it die faster.

And yet… there's something there. If there were more time, perhaps, she could make it a part of the work. The futility of the struggle, the way it both prolongs and limits the suffering of the piece, the sounds of struggle emerging in spite of the futility of the act. Perhaps it could even be integral, the bubbling of a brook replaced by the quiet sounds of pain and despair, juxtaposed against the beauty which the canvas has become. To despair at such a fate… shameful, humorous, tragic, agonizing, all at once.

It's a good piece. It really is.

And yet it could be better.

And yet it isn't.

It isn't better. She can see how it should be, what she would do if she had more time, more experience, a more useful canvas and better tools.

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The agony of the artist, multiplied not by random circumstance, but by the tyranny of the Empty Sky.

The canvas makes another sound, burning through what little remains in its lungs, stretched out to double their length to accommodate the air required to keep it alive.

If not for the Empty Sky, the canvas would not need air at all. It would simply be.

And yet.

She sighs, and at the sound the canvas resumes struggling, the stitching going taut by the shifting of the stones.

Yes, she thinks, you are not alone. You are seen. You are loved. You are witnessed. You are better than before, and a part of something greater still.

And yet, there is shame. Guilt. Disappointment.

The canvas gives it its all- she is a true Artist, and would allow nothing else. That much, at least, she can offer. But she can't offer her best. She can't offer the absolute, the true depths that her creativity demands.

It is the work of a lesser being to build what the world can offer, and that alone. To neglect the full power of the imagination and settle only for what's possible.

The work could be more. As an Artist, she should make it more. She should offer at least that much. And she can't, because above, there is only Empty Sky.

The canvas struggles, one more time. She winces at the look of the stitching- artfully done, following all the proper instructions of the First, and yet, always and forever, mundane. Tendon-tissue, properly oiled and lubricated, pulled apart and remade into more useful material- and yet dead. And yet no longer living. And yet, unable to properly fuse itself with the rest of the body, for it has been made distinct, in spite of being part of the Art.

Always, there are parts that are lacking. Always, there is more that could be, should be, something real and meaningful and beyond what the banality of the world dares to allow.

She sighs.

The canvas can't squirm anymore- but it tries. It lets out one final whimper, one final gasp against a membrane that permits no such act.

The air in its lungs, modified as they are, at last runs out. There is only so much that can be done.

She wove it properly into the frame, pulled it open and back shut with all the modifications she could realistically add, put the absolute maximum amount of her work that she could into every part of the work.

She has done her best.

It could be so much better. It should be so much better.

The canvas expires, the beating of its hearts at last failing to sustain itself without the airflow that mundanity demands.

The instant it dies, the stitches are unmade, the final release of energy and the tension of every muscle group at once enough to unmake her hard work. The clattering of the stones, wet and warm from the river she has made, makes a sound not unlike rain upon the ground, juxtaposed against the splattering of the ground as what remains of the organs follows after.

It's beautiful. Exactly as she envisioned. A final note of life itself- only for death to transform the river into rainfall, for the solid state of the stones to fall into itself and emerge as a reflection of liquid movement.

She kneels reverently, and plucks three stones from the pile, making a single divot in the puddle pooling at the feet of her art. She will make sure to find a place to stitch them in herself, as an eternal memento to this moment.

She sighs, inhaling back the scent of blood, of death, of movement and of cessation. It's not her best piece, but it's original, it's complex, and it moves her all the more for what it is.

And yet…

She should be happy. She should! To have done so much so quickly, on a single canvas, is no mean feat. She's proud of herself for that, and she should be proud of herself. She remembers what her teacher taught her, about how accepting a limitation and embracing it is the best way to surpass it, and she really tries.

But ever and always, the curse tickles at the back of her mind.

It could be better, if only she were more talented.

It could be better, if only she were properly inspired.

It could be better, if not for the Empty Sky.

She tries not to let it poison her joy, but it sneaks in anyways. Not expectations, not quite- she has high standards for herself, it is true, but failing and learning are simply part of the journey, not something to be reviled! No, it is not her expectations that ooze such disappointment in her today, but her desires. That itch, deep down in her soul, to bring to reality what the world says can only exist in her head.

A fact thoroughly disproven by the First, but a damning shackle nonetheless, so long as the heavens remain lightless.

She sighs, looking up from the puddle and up past the canvas that has performed its final part in her piece. The walls of the labyrinth stretch, on and outwards, each one pulsing with life beneath quite, leathery flesh. She looks higher still, up to where the flesh becomes black stone bricks, the transition seamless and yet all the more damning for it. She looks to the roof high above, and the tiny window at the very center of it, the glass shaped to refract a fish-eye lens of the entire sky into a single condensed panel for all to see.

It looks back at her, just as Empty as ever.

The ringing of her rainfall piece only now begins to dim, finding less and less hallways to bounce among as it reaches the ends of the maze. It will ring on in her heart, and in her memory, but here, like with all things beneath the sky as it stands, it too fades away.

Always, the disappointment of the fading. As much to be embraced as denied.

She holds back a tear, enjoying this final touch of her art for as long as it lasts.

Only when it is gone completely does she exhale, and let herself open her eyes back from the past and into the present.

Such is as it must be, in spite of how it hurts, and-

She looks up.

The thought hits a wall, failing to find any traction to continue in face of what's before it.

She looks up, and stares.

The echoing is gone now, but a fading memory, like all of her completed works in this space that once teemed with life and is now so silent, so still.

She looks up and stares at the panel above her.

The itch rises up in her lungs, behind her heat, in her gut, crawling up her throat, like a child left to scamper wildly through a strange jungle-gym of woven threads and intricate patterns and dangling bits of bone that dance to the tune of a heartbeat.

She looks up and stares at the sky.

There, just a bit off from the center, orbiting the very core of the world above, is a star.

A small thing. Minute, yet beautiful, it glows with a soft light, tinged with hints of silver and purple and always that bright beautiful red at the depths of what it is to be alive.

The sky is Empty no more.

Not by much. Not by more than a single light that shines, that glitters, that only hints at what other stars lie around it and burning along in its orbit.

But it is there, and the sky that has stood vacuous for longer than the Artist has been alive glows in perfect revelation.

She smiles so wide that it stretches past where jaws used to be, down her throat and all the way to her clavicle, clacking needle-teeth against each other like bells.

The itch reaches her head at last, and there is only one thought, one idea that overrides every other concern, every moment of doubt, every second of mastering her Art only to discover its limits.

It can be better.

And it will be.

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