Watercolour skull on upper arm

You will laugh when you hear what the widow Lysandra paid for. Not a mosaic, not the usual garland and wine cup for her husband's tomb wall, but a skull, painted as if someone had breathed on the plaster and the damp had taken the colour in. She stood over my bench by the harbour and insisted it must look like it was dissolving into the air. I told her no fresco-man in Ephesus would do such a thing. I did it anyway, for three drachmae more than the cups.

I ground the pigments the way Father taught us. Indigo from the Tyrian shop, which bled blue into the wet lime wherever I touched it with a loaded brush. Madder for the rose-coloured cheeks of the bone, and a yellow ochre that ran orange where it pooled. For the green I cut verdigris with vinegar and let it lie thin, so the eye sockets would go dark only where I pressed the brush hardest. Then the flicks. I dipped an old reed in soot and shook it over the wall until the room looked spattered by a storm.

Lysandra came at dusk with a lamp and stood very still for a long time. Then she asked me to add one more thing, a single thin line trailing down from the jaw, as though the skull were dripping. I did it, and she pressed a coin into my palm and walked out without a word.

Tell Mother the wall is finished. I have not yet been paid in full, but I suspect I will have to paint a second skull for Lysandra's sister, who asked for the same, only in gold.