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Beast
by hossgal
Fourth deck, center wardroom, aft wall.
Lee remembers being told, sometime during his initial officer training course, that certain elements of the Quorum had taken a dim view of the military pre-occupation with blank bulkheads and ultra-efficient sparseness of decoration; that those elements had spoken of the Spartan style with disdain, and even scorn.
In their greater wisdom, as the voice of the People - (and Lee cannot remember who had told him this, but he can hear the voice still, smooth and deep and rough with whiskey and decades of tobacco smoke) - as the voice of the People, the Quorum had decreed that a certain fraction of the keel-cost of every Fleet craft commissioned would, henceforth, be applied to the purchase and installation of artwork within that ship.
In the Pegasus - a craft only half Lee's age, trembling on the dangerous edge of modern tech - the sum had been spent on the services of a metal-smith, and she (Lee can not remember her name either, but he knows it was a woman) had camped in this wardroom with her drills and chalks and waxes for nearly a thousand hours to produce the image that gave The Beast her use-name.
Two and a half meters high at the shoulders, and over twice that in length, with wings - still, now, fifteen years and the end of the world later -plumed with feathers edged like diamonds, like surgical steel, that draw the blood of first-tour nuggets sent up to pet the demon steed that leaps across the wardroom wall. The feather tips are the only part of the frieze that stand free of the wall itself - the rest is still captured within the brushed pane.
Barely captured; standing before the mural, Lee can almost credit the wilder rumors he's heard - that in the late watch, the Beast's eyes come alight, and glow like the cold fires of the deep seas. That the wings of the steed rustle and whine, like whetted blades drawn over the sharpening steel. That the iron hooves beat on the deck in anger and checked fury, as the Beast rages against the will that keeps it in thrall. That if ever the lights were to fail in this
room, the Beast would slip free from the wall, and run through the ship like the messenger of Hades that it was.
Rumors, Lee assures himself, only wild rumors the old hands tell the rooks to make them lie awake in their bunks at night. Only rumors.
Still, he checks the light fixtures when he visits the room, and makes sure the maintenance crew has all the bulbs they need.
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