An artist drowns in detail. Tenali captures the horse in one breath and one line—the spirit over the hair count.
Day fourteen: canvases littered the studio like abandoned battles. The emperor frowned; the horse yawned.
Tenali asked for dawn, a white wall, and a pot of ash. He led the horse into the yard and waited. The animal exhaled into the cool air; breath bloomed against limewash—an elegant silhouette alive with steam. Tenali flicked one sure line for the bridle.
“There,” he said softly. “Exact enough to move.”
The artist sputtered about detail. Tenali bowed. “Detail without life is a corpse of accuracy.”
The emperor studied the fog‑portrait fading to memory. He paid the artist for humility and Tenali for truth. In the stables, grooms copied the trick to record foals as they grew: breath‑sketch after breath‑sketch, a gallery of living time.
The wall dried; the lesson stuck: capture the spirit and the eye forgives the count of hairs.
