The Runic Artist Chapter 1: Prologue - Banksy was Right

Read chapter 1 of The Runic Artist by Ellake on NovelPedia.

Prologue - Banksy was Right A note from Ellake A/N: This chapter has been edited since release. Banksy was right. That was Nate’s first thought as he jumped the fence onto the railway tracks. It wasn’t the first time he’d done so. But it was the first time he’d almost landed in a pile of shit. So, Banksy was right, tramps really did shit everywhere. Carefully stepping away from the hopefully cold pile of excrement, Nate adjusted his black hoodie and took in a deep breath. It smelled, of course, but it felt like teenage rebellion, like a small slice of freedom. The noises of the city in the background served to highlight the separation he now felt, being somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. It made him smile. Nate started walking carefully over the tracks, extra vigilant now. Not for other people, though maybe he should’ve been. He just didn’t want to step on something gross or twist his ankle. Trying to drag himself over the fence with a twisted ankle was nothing but pain and frustration. A lesson he had learned in a previous foray and an experience that he wasn’t keen to revisit. Say what you would about Nate, he tried to learn from his mistakes. Thankfully, it was a short walk to the train carriage he intended to decorate. Nate didn’t consider himself a vandal, though he was confident others would disagree. He’d read a quote once by Banksy that basically said that graffiti was a rational response to the in-your-face advertising of the modern world. Trying to remember the details he thought it was something along the lines of billboards, logos, and adverts were forced upon people without their consent and that turning it into something beautiful or thought provoking was art. Perhaps it was a bit hypocritical of him since graffiti was the same, but he could comfort himself with the fact he wasn’t trying to sell anyone anything. Maybe he was just a vandal after all. His musings were cut short as his target loomed in front of him. The train carriage was one of the newer models with a giant strip down the middle of what Nate thought was a Tic Tac advert. It was hard to tell as someone had already graffitied over a large portion. Not an art piece, though. They’d just half-assed some letters that he figured was a tag. Tagging was a bit different from graffiti as a form art, so he didn’t feel bad about painting over the top of it. As he spent a moment putting down his backpack and tools of the trade, he saw himself reflected in the window of the train with the ever-present city lights shining behind him. Nate liked how he looked, and based on a few of the girls from his school, he wasn’t the only one. Standing at around a hundred and eighty-five centimetres, he was fairly tall, sporting a lean build, with shaggy shoulder-length blonde hair and dark green eyes. He looked a lot like a surfer, though he’d never tried. Maybe if he lived closer to Sydney’s beaches, but he was just a poor kid from Sydney’s southwest. Smiling at himself, he stepped back to take in the graffiti on the train and go over his plan. He’d spent most of the last three weeks at school refining the image he intended to overlay on top of the existing art. Painstakingly redrawing lines and links to achieve what he wanted. He’d love to have told people that it meant something. That there was a message in the image he intended to create. But there wasn’t. He just thought that it was beautiful and that beauty was its own reward. It was also a challenge. The lines had to be clean, the image clear. He wanted it to look like it had been printed onto the side of the train, not painted. To that end, he’d worked on a bunch of stencils that he was confident would create the image he had in mind. Nate didn’t sign most of his work. Thinking about it like that made it sound like he was prolific in his graffiti. He wasn’t. He only added graffiti where he thought it would be beautiful or thought-provoking. That meant that he had maybe ten or so artworks around the city. He thought t