In my first attempt to make art that wasn't macro-themed, I ended up making something that was macro-themed...but only a little bit.

This is a character and setting I've had in mind for a bit. Kind of a Grand Theft Auto world with anthro-type characters. The woman's name is Fiaska and I think I started this painting as an excuse to figure out what kind of clothes she would wear.

Inspired by a friend, I ended up writing a short little story about the scene. It took longer than I thought, but that's the way it goes, I s'pose.

Anyway, take a read if you please, it's about 1100 words.

mild macro, coffee, nuns

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A hand twitched on a leather steering wheel as the hand's owner sweated that he was sweating all over it. The driver had recently become the informal sidekick of the woman next to him. A sort of goat-dragon enigma named Fiaska. He himself was a human named Fret. Together they were driving down Hallavega Ridge in a hot pink Dileo TS80. Neither of their names were on the pink car's pink slip. Nor, for that matter, was the name of the driver they'd snatched the car from. But pink slips, property rights, and prudence don't count for much in the city of Gonzalago.

The radio station played a mix of K-pop and classical. The digital clock blinked 2:14, awaiting the driver's adjustment. His intention was to synchronize the car's time with the time on his phone. He was, however, distracted. Fiaska had just started climbing out of her seat and pulling herself forward along the side of the car.

"What are you doing?!"

"I'm just gonna sit up front." She said, winking at him. As she slid over the metal the suspension creaked.

"What? This is the front! That's why they call it the front seat!"

"Well now it's the middle seat," she said, as she positioned herself on the hood.

"No it's not! There's no cupholders, no glove compartment, no vanity mirrors! The dictionary of common sense says that in order for you to be in the front seat, you have to be behind a windshield like me. Look at me! I'm shielded from the wind! You're not. If the wind decided to stab you right now you'd be out of luck!"

"I really might just make you my conscience if you're gonna be this fun to ignore."

"You don't even have a seatbelt. You have to wear a seatbelt! It's the law, and I can't stretch yours all the way over to you."

"Don't worry, I brought mine," she said, tying a cord around each front mirror. She smirked. Fret realized that he had lost, and tried to save face.

"Well if you're out there, then I guess that means I can change the radio station to what I want to listen to. So it looks like you lose." She sipped her coffee as he turned on 91.3 GWHIZ, the politest, mildest-mannered, and most esoteric of all the public radio stations. They were currently speaking about how the migratory patterns of the Armenian egret can be mapped onto a function that can be used to generate atonal bebop.

However, even the dulcet tones of public radio banter wasn't enough to ease Fret's anxiety. Seeing around her larger body was difficult, and he was already stretching to work the pedals on a car meant for drivers that were a few feet taller. And then of course, things got a bit more complicated.

"I want to go faster," demanded Fiaska.

"No way," he said. So she started swishing her tail in his field of vision.

"Stop that! Now I can't see at all!"

"Oh-ho! Is that a problem for you? Well, I'll make you a deal. If you speed that booty up, I'll move my beautiful tail out of your way."

He hesitated, and then acquiesced. "Fine."

A truck full of nuns and road librarians drove past. The head nun poked her head out of a window and yelled, "Slow down!"

"Don't give him any ideas, anti-sluts!" Fiaska hollered back.

Fret interrupted. "Hey! We're going, so I'd like to be able to see again!"

"I'll do you one better, Fretty."

Fiaska rolled over on her belly and nestled her chin on her left hand so that she was staring directly into Fret's eyes. "Okay. So now you can't see anything but me. But I'm going to direct you, so pay attention. We're coming up to a right curve. Brake softly and slowly turn the steering wheel if you don't want to crash."

"Oh my god." He whimpered. But he obeyed. What choice did he have?

"Good. Now let it ease back to center. That's it. Perfect. (By the way, I'm sorry for lying). Now. Take a deep breath. I want you to speed up."

"Again?"

"Yes. I know I'm pushing you but it's fun. And I'm not sorry for lying." Fiaska paused. "Now keep calm and listen. Speed is about trust. You can snap your fingers, yeah? Think about the way that you don't have to think about snapping your fingers if you want to snap them. You get the desire and then you trust your body to know what to do. Then it's over just like *that*," she said as she snapped her fingers. "This'll be the same thing. All you have to do is work the controls like I tell you. That's it. Just keep your eyes locked on my eyes; it'll be over before you know it. Cause time flies when you're having fun, even if you're too scared to realize you're having fun. All it takes is trust. So do you think you can trust me?"

He thought of the implications of saying yes, he noted his immediate inclination to say "no" and weighed it against the possibility that he might hurt her feelings.

"I don't think I can..." he said.

And Fiaska's face moved in the direction of a pout that might plausibly have morphed into either it's full expression or into an exaggerated caricature that would read as sarcastic. "...trust myself to give you a good answer," he continued, forgetting for a moment that he could not see the road, "I don't trust anything, especially not my own mind. The mind is always trying to trick itself. Always trying to take shortcuts to speed things up, and who knows when something you overlook might turn out to be the most important thing in your life?"

As luck would have it the car then hit a bump. Fiaska jerked her head up and back to check on the road. They were still on a straight. Good. She'd gotten tense. She could feel her hair frizz out. But before she could sigh, he asked: "Can it be enough that I want to trust you?" She whipped her head back around and saw genuineness in his eyes.

She'd just wanted to watch him squirm a little. And here he had happened to utter a string of words she had not realized she had not been prepared to hear--especially not so resolutely delivered. Looking into his eyes, she saw reflected a person she did and did not recognize, and she could not be sure that his eyes alone had created her. Having found herself in a such precarious position, Fiaska climbed back into the passenger's seat.

In her first few moments of thought, she found it difficult to sit with the thrill she'd been after. However, having moved backward to retake her position in the front, she had regained dominion over the radio, so she turned the dial back to her preferred station. It was playing a real headbanger--the opening for Tondemo ton Crisis Season 2. She nodded, clapped, and sang to this righteous jam, and so made use of sensation to chase off the sensational.