Dianne Melanie Rahld, age 7: The eldest of the three fox siblings and first born child of Roland and Ruth.
Aiken Jacob Rahld, age 2: The youngest of the Rahld children, and the main character of a book I'm working on. (Note: He'll have a brief appearance in a different book co-authored by me and a friend. I hope to have it available soon)
Nathan Adam Rahld, age 5: Aiken's older brother, and the middle child.
This is a commission made for me by a good friend and very talented artist (wishes to remain anonymous). I was going to write a VERY LENGTHY (TL;DR) description about these cute kids, but me and (anonymous artist) both agreed a longer description would better apply to a character sheet tailored for each one of the characters portrayed above. Furthermore, I can only say so much anyways without actually spoiling some pretty crucial plot developments of a novel not yet written.
Nonetheless, I can say something so as to increase appreciation for what this picture actually means to me personally and why it is highly crucial to the development of my character's story. As I've mentioned before in the description of a previous commission, my story is about Aiken. I find it only fitting that this depiction resembles a family portrait, because it represents a highly critical moment in Aiken's life.
In short, this picture captures a time of pure bliss, innocence, and stability. Much later in Aiken's life, his biographer will ask him to explain why he keeps in his apartment a famous painting based on Milton's Paradise Lost, "The Expulsion from Paradise". He explains that he believes it represents the life journey of anyone who has ever experienced loss, and the motivation for those individuals to recapture the feeling of happier times. Well, the above picture is Aiken's "Paradise Lost". His life beyond this point becomes a quest to rediscover the feeling of contentment he has not felt, at least not completely, since this moment with his beloved siblings, and he does so by studying, more appropriately obsessing over, alternate-realities.
Everything Aiken ultimately does with his life, resulting in a multitude of aspirations, hopes, dreams, and outcomes, is driven by the insatiable urge to answer the question of whether he can ever truly find happiness again. As we can plainly see above, he is very happy and seems to glow as a result. Sadly, in most depictions following this one, it will appear as though he carries an overhead shadow. Sounds terrible, I know, but why write of a character who's entire life is basically summed up in one good, wholesome family picture? There'd be no conflict, no plot, no development, and no motivation to write an ENTIRE novel about someone who never gets placed in the position of having to regain a sense of purpose and meaning in life.
Since most of here on Inkbunny are all adults, many of us, I'm sure, can relate to this premise. A lot of us, myself included, will likely state the happiest days of our lives were at some point, long or brief, in our childhood. Everything we do with our adult lives now is basically an ongoing attempt to re-experience the same contentment we may have had in days gone by. Aiken is no different in his pursuits. Aside from this story having personal relevance, my hope is to offer up one of many possible explorations to the ways a person, in this case, a fox (my favourite animal), can achieve the goal of Paradise Regained.
