Illustration Notes for Episode Fifty-Four

This week’s illustration is the first real full-color portrait of Piper. (There was one other, actually—on Episode Seventeen—which depicted Piper and Rain in full color—from behind, at a considerable distance away, in the dark. So I don’t think that one really counts.)

Here at last we see Piper’s lovely mixed ethnic heritage (Her father—the River King—has a very dark complexion) more clearly, I believe, than in the sepia-toned images of her. She is also almost ten years older here than she was in the ‘Matt’s Tale’ images. So her hair is somewhat different now, and her face a bit more mature—despite the fact that Piper’s kind age far more slowly than we do. She is seen in her ‘bedroom’ here, where we find her at the Episode’s beginning, wearing a sweater. Yup! The Lady’s heir—future ruler of the City’s ‘fairy’ realm—does not wear ball gowns every day at home. She dresses in contemporary comfort appropriate to her times. Though you will doubtless recall that many other characters in this story wear far more elaborate and anachronistic clothing—notably The Lady and Anselm—as well as some of Anselm’s household staff. In case I haven’t explained this before, the fact that Piper’s kind—or at least, members of their elite (as will become clearer soon in the story)—can live for centuries means that they have passed through many, many different periods of fashion and style. Sooner or later, many of them find a style they’re comfortable with or just prefer, and stop trying to ‘keep up’ with later trends. They dress as who they were when they ‘came of age’ and stopped ‘becoming’ themselves. Hence The Lady often—but not always—dresses like a European aristocratic woman of several centuries ago, while Anselm prefers a ‘regency’ or ‘colonial’ look, and Rain wears clothes reminiscent of Europe between World Wars One and Two, while Piper and Shade—who are among the youngest ‘adults’ of their kind—wear modern clothes according to their contemporary tastes.

There you are. I knew you were just dying to have that all hashed out, and now you do. No, no—you can thank me later. :]

As always, you’ll find an uncropped and uncluttered version of this week’s episode image below. :]