The clouds were thin and the sky too dull. Something was amiss. She stared at it, dipped her brush and brought those familiar shapes to life. Each morning she performed the same ritual. She would sit at her easel, gaze over her pasture and paint the landscape framed by the open window. There would always be a pause before she picked up her paints as she needed to breathe in the scene. She would close her eyes and smell the fresh bromegrass mixed with a hint of manure. During all her years out in the country, she never painted anything other than this view from her bedroom window. She painted the slouching hills and distant forests growing behind her cow, who always stood on its favourite patch of grass as if waiting to be painted by her. Sometimes, she felt she knew that cow more than herself; she knew which pigments could capture the moisture on its nose and could replicate the patterns of its hide without lifting her eyes from her canvas. That's why on that June morning she could tell something was different. The gap between the cow’s stomach and the grass – which used to let the sky peek through – had shut. She stared at her cow, troubled, and understood that its stomach was swollen.

 

For the next four months, the woman would pray at her easel, begging for the cow’s mutation to be only temporary. As summer turned into fall and the cool breeze began to blow, the woman’s prayers remained unanswered. Every day, instead of shrinking, the cow’s stomach increased in size. The woman no longer felt at peace painting the cow. She dreaded facing her window and itched to leave her easel when she caught sight of that swollen stomach. As spring arrived, it was taunting her; each blossoming bud reminded her of the cow’s bursting belly and the sunflower anthers shared its round shape. Its image stalked her thoughts and overwhelmed her dreams. This continued until one April morning, when the cow was not in the open window’s frame. The painter blinked, mistaking it as some trick of the light. She stood abruptly and rushed into the open field with trembling hands and socked feet. Her eyes searched from left to right but the cow was nowhere in the distance. She scoured the edge of the forest, the hills and her pond, thinking it may have tripped. As dawn settled and the sweat on her brow cooled, she had looked everywhere, except in the old shed built by one of her late lovers. She had not stepped into it since he left. She did not like to revisit her past. She paused and slid the door open with a shaking hand. Inside, resting on a bed of old straw was her cow. Its stomach had shrunk. The woman would have been relieved if, in its place, there had not been two glistening calves, sucking at its teats.

 

When she first saw the newborns, the woman felt betrayed by the cow. She believed they had a sacred relationship; the woman was the artist and the cow, the muse. She feared this dynamic would be disrupted by the arrival of the calves, and it was. During the following weeks, the children would follow the cow to her patch of grass and all three would sit, waiting to be captured. The woman tried to rebel against the newborns by removing them from her landscapes. She denied their existence by painting grasses or shrubs in their stead, but no matter how hard she tried, they found their way onto the canvas. The woman was feeling increasingly weary. The arrival of newborns on her pasture had stirred her senses into a nostalgic pain she could not repress. Witnessing the cow's motherhood awakened intense feelings of jealousy, which quickly turned into dark and cruel anger. Painting the cow became a constant reminder that it had succeeded where she had failed many times over. Unable to cope, the woman snuck into the barn on a moonlight night and stole the calves. She tied their feet and dragged them to the back of her house. They brayed and cried and tears crept into her eyes, but she did not cry.

 

The next morning, the woman saw her cow, alone on its patch of grass. In the distance, the clouds were thick and the sky was still dull. Relief coursed through her. For the first time in months, she felt at peace. She sat up straight, grabbed a blank canvas and loaded her palette. She breathed in that smell, paused, and closed her eyes. As she painted, she did not open them once.