"The Mission" is the fourth and exponentially more colorful Blue Scroll (yes, this is the name of the bundle, and it has a dedicated page). While posters will remain available, the bundle will also be published by philomuse as a book, as it is easier to carry and read than eight A3 posters. As with most of these scrolls, the story emerged from the painting, in a very creative, generative process involving mostly imagination and narrative-building skills.
The Mission
When the Consulate of Intergalactic Space issued a Code Red for planet Vivellia's purple veil – the heavy mist that covered Liminal Basin V3 and protected the privacy of dreams – the High Head Dragon, who besides being the most sought-after fog artisan the galaxies had ever seen was also a highly skilled diplomat responsible for maintaining the Atmospheric Vibes of the entire Stage Left of the Trentulon Galaxy, decided with characteristic efficiency and minimal paperwork to assign the matter to his old acquaintance the Mighty Giraffe, a known and remarkably competent inter-dresser, and to his unknown friend with the long dress, who was rumored to be the fabled Guardian of Memories that was just learning her powers. If that was the case, the girl with the bubbles would be the only creature capable of negotiating the midspace between water and air, where the thinning of the veil appeared — an hyperbolnomaly that was responsible for dreams irreversibly leaking into each other, effectively violating creative sleep rights, and had caused Code Red in the first place.
Telling the proud residents of Vivellia that extravivellian beings would take over Liminal Basin V3, the enormous lake that attributed naturally to memories their mood shaping colors, was a delicate issue. The High Head Dragon would have normally addressed the matter himself, but Vivellia was his homeland and since the three basic color clans of the planet were somehow mixed in countless hues and tones, it was impossible not to be related with every official and stakeholder, which would raise concerns about the objectivity of his judgement among the more conservative members of the Consulate, who were anyway not pleased with his doubling as fog artisan. Besides, the High Head Dragon would give anything to avoid meeting any of his relatives whose monochrome beliefs embarrased him.
There are two simple rules in order to succeed socially, but also diplomatically, in Vivellia: (a) Be colorful and (b) be flamboyant. The Mighty Giraffe was of course flamboyant enough by himself, but simply dressing up, even with the neon and glitter of his Ibikonos days, would not be enough to inspire both admiration and respect to the vivid Vivellians. Inter-dressing as a huge cross-galactic rooster, this vibrant archetypal bird, on the other hand, was not only considered appropriate for the occassion but it was the suggested diplomatic approach for this planet, according to the Ultra-Galactic Manual of All Possible Affairs, the acclaimed UGMAPA.
The mission included besides the two diplomats, five shades-of-purple experts, four dream-water chemists and two stellar cooks, who all traveled in the feathers of Big Cock, which was Mighty Giraffe's alias during the mission, and came up and down at each stop with a blue folding ladder. Giraffe was a natural-born diplomat and felt comfortable with the idea that his job would be to impress and establish the best possible relations with the Vivellians. Accordingly, the Witch of Bubbles, who traveled riding on the Cock's back and had in audacity what she lacked in experience, had to reach Liminal Basin V3, stir the waters of the lake, take samples both from the lingering and the newly produced haze, send some empty bubbles underwater to carry raw memories, wait for the pop-up-lab results to come out, discuss with the experts and take action. Good old chanting hadn't helped local officials contain the damage, and the girl with the bubbles was left with the heavy task of convincing Water and Air – who hadn't been in good terms at the time – to work together.
Eventually, the mission, which was followed closely by the Consulate, and especially by those who wished High Head Dragon's demise, was declared an unprecedented success, and both the Mighty Giraffe and the Witch of Bubbles – who gained then and there, through this official document, the title that would accompany her forever after – were deemed Talents of Diplomacy, a title that was invented specifically for the occassion and was assigned to obscure aspiring diplomats for a decade after, just to blow some smoke.
The Mighty Giraffe had gained his name and title a long time before that day, through his MMA (Master of Mystery Arts), but the girl with the bubbles became the Witch that very moment, because of what she had managed to do: Like a composer, she moved her hands, and like a whisperer, she whispered to the mist and the waters, translated the waves and recalibrated the purple veil above Liminal Basin V3, stopping memories from leaking and moods from homogenizing, stabilizing the clarity between the inner and the outer worlds.
Contrary to belief and expectation, the girl became the Witch not by fixing a mistake, as the dissolution of boundaries was not just desirable but necessary when in a balanced state, but by negotiating the terms of coexistence that allowed Vivellia to remain full of color, and meta-dimensional collective dreaming to retain its individuality. The shades-of-purple experts, the dream-water chemists, the stellar cooks, the Mighty Giraffe and the Witch of Bubbles left Vivellia in an explosion of the most vivid colors the universes had ever seen, and the bitter heads of the Consulate drank their black astrojuice in silence that long cosmic day.
