There was a lonely Spanish painter whose pleasures could not be painted.
He lived in solitude, in a small hut in the Amazon Rainforest, where raindrops filled the forest, and renewed the colors of the verdant greens of trees, and the turquoise blue of waters, the autumn red of roses, and golden brown of sands.
There was a beautiful toucan, whose beak was colorful as rivers of rainbows.
He caught the colorful toucan, and trapped him in a cage.
The toucan was crying, for he did not want to be imprisoned in a cage.
And as the toucan cried tears, the painter saw that his pain was paint. His tears were colorful, they were watercolor tears of paint. The painter used the toucan’s pain to paint.
He stroked his brush down upon the toucan’s face, and the toucan’s colorful tears, fell upon the black brush hairs on the tip of the paintbrush.
And when the tears of the toucan fell on his brush, it enchanted the brush with colors of magic. For when he painted using the painted tears of the toucan, what he painted on the cage of the canvas was set free, and came to life.
He painted butterflies with the painful pain of the toucan’s tears, and after he painted them, the butterflies flew out of the white chrysalis of the canvas. And he painted flowers and roses, and they bloomed out of the white soils, of the garden canvas, and he picked the painted roses out of the canvas. They were real and smelled just as a garden rose would, held in his hand, his paintings came to life.
He then began to paint a beautiful woman on the canvas, wondering if she would come to life, to erase his loneliness, and fall in love with the painted lady.
When the painter held something near the toucan’s eyes, and when the toucan looked and stared at it, the color of the toucan’s eyes would change to the color of the object he stared at, and when he shed a tear, his painted tears were that color, which the painter used to paint this woman. Using the bluebells for her blue eyes, the black soil as her dark hair, the white sands as her fair white skin, shining as moonlight.
Her lips as pink as pearlescent pink pearls he found near the sea. And until he was finished, he looked at the painted lady in awe. But she did not come to life, and perhaps the toucan’s tears could make everything come to life, except a woman.
He could paint mountains on the canvas that would appear before him in the distance, he could paint raindrops, which could make rain fall from the sky. He could paint fruit trees, and he could pick the fruit off the painted branches, as he reached his hand into the canvas, and picked it out, beginning to eat the succulent fruit.
But a woman he could not paint life to. Suddenly, a painted lady butterfly, blue as a blue moon, blue as the painted lady’s eyes, flew upon the chrysalis of the canvas, fluttered her painted wings thrice, and suddenly made the painted lady come to life, as the winged butterfly flew off into the rainforest, out the window. The painted lady had seemed to cry in the prison of the canvas, as a drop of paint fell on and dripped on the outside of the canvas, wanting to be free to step into the wavy shores of reality.
And now she came to life, with her blue blooming eyes, speaking and kneeling on her knee at his feet, with her head bowed down, “Thank you for freeing me from the cage of the canvas, Master. How shall I serve you? I am forever in your debt.”
He asked her to be his lover, to keep him away from loneliness, and together they fell in love. She kissed him on his lips with her pink painted lips, which were painted with the pink tears of the toucan, as the painter had made him stare at a pink tulip to change the toucan’s eyes to pink, making him shed teardrops of pink paint.
As they fell in love, and she held his hand, walking side by side with her head rested on his shoulder, through the beautiful rainforest, they came to a beautiful waterfall, whose waters were divided into seven colors, the colors of a rainbow. The waterfall was the Rainbow Waterfall, a falling rainbow, which flowed into seven streams, each river was a color of the rainbow. If the painter dipped his brush in the watercolor rivers, he could paint on the canvas, making things come to life.
But suddenly it began to rain from the sky, and as the rain fell on the fair canvas of her beautiful painted body, her painted flesh melted to a colorful puddle of paint, and she was no more. And as the rain cleared, a rainbow was built through the sky as color bridge, and ended where the painted lady had melted to a painful puddle of paint.
And now, he began to paint another painted lady, and captured painted lady butterflies to make them awake from their painted prison, set free from the white cage of the canvas, the concubine of the canvas.
And sometimes he took the Painted Parrot he captured in a cage, and played music on a victrola to her. As the record spun on the phonograph, the music played of a beautiful female singer, the parrot would copy her voice, and could sing as a female singer. When the parrot sang upon or to an object, she stole the color of the object, leaving the object colorless. And the color of the objects transferred onto her feathers, changing the color of her plumage to the last colors she sung to. The parrot would shed painted tears of color too, when trapped in a prison; for he had traps for toucans, and prisons for parrots. The painter would stroke his paintbrush on the colored feathers of the painted parrot, and the color from her wings would transfer to the brush, as paint.
And the painter played a piccolo, called the Painted Piccolo, with seven flute holes, each hole was a color of the rainbow. And when he played it, the music restored the color of the colorless objects, that the painted parrot stole the colors from, for she was the Color Thief.
The piccolo could even make rainbows appear.
