The artist heard of a place they were living better than most. Where there was no violence, where there was something like camaraderie, where there was giving and working together. He heard of this place and crossed the river one day. He waited until night fell. As he climbed a ladder he had dragged out from a ransacked store, a boy came outside. The boy watched as he used his spray cans on the buildings. He brought the boy up on the ladder and let him spray crooked lines and primitive faces. He worked them right into the painting.

On one side of the wall, he painted the city full of dark figures with bones and hooded eyes, scratching and wailing. Farther along, he painted the river, glowing with diamonds of light under the full moon. On the farthest part of the wall, he painted a temple that grew with vines that seemed to move as the paint dried. He painted dawn and a cerulean sky, and beautiful people who were not bones, not skeletons, not death’s-heads. The hands worked together over a ball of bright blue light that burst and shone and fl like lightning, bringing the dawn ever closer to their joyous faces.