The left half of the painting depicts Quentin, Sandy and Ellie on a bus. The world beyond is distorted in the rain, reduced to blurred bright lights that run into each other. It's a perfectly mundane scene, but the artist has captured the ephemeral beauty of the moment, and the warmth. Ellie is laughing at something Sandy has said, and the corners of Sandy's lips betray a wry smile.
Quentin smiles too. Sandy is trying to maintain her aura of impassive unreadability that she holds so effortlessly in Breadspace, he can tell, but nothing is so perfect here.
“We are going to miss it, though,” says Sandy, “I told you the bus wouldn't run to time.”
“Sorry Sandy, if only you could have magicked us straight there,” retorts Ellie, playfully. Sandy rolls her eyes.
Quentin stirs from his trance. He was composing in his mind, he realises. “Ah well. We can miss this one. This is a circle bus, we'll get back round eventually.”
They sit in the back of the bus for another hour, watching the rain run down the windshield. At one point the bus stops to change drivers and Ellie dashes out to the nearby shop, running back just in time with three tubs of ice cream and disposable spoons. It's late now, and the bus is empty except for them. Ellie curls up, tired, against the window.
Sandy looks over and catches Quentin's eye. She holds up her tub of ice cream. “To the wonders of Breadspace.”
He clunks his tub with hers. “To the wonders of Breadspace.”
The right half depicts the same three people, in a manner of speaking. Quentin is brightly coloured, covered in luminous swirls of paint. Sandy's avatar of light is still stained with blue. Ellie is the landscape itself, a sky full of clouds that Quentin and Sandy are flying through like shooting stars. The scene curves impossibly, as if a whole panorama has been squeezed into a single perspective. It's vast and turbulent and exciting, but at the same time each cloud is tinted with a rosy-pink familiarity.
Quentin plunges deeper into the subconscious, Sandy close behind. They shoot into a cloud, shivering as the mists linger in revealing their secrets. Then the fog opens out into a cavernous interior, far bigger than would have seemed possible in such a small could. Quentin skids to a stop, kicking up vapour. Sandy arcs round him and hovers a few feet above.
Quentin touches the cloud wall and teases it into a shape. A flower. It's intricate, wispy and delicate but perfectly formed. Sandy arcs her hand, drawing a ribbon, which she swirls and casts across the cavern. They make more. A cat, a song, a wave, an impossible shape which will never be named, a tub of ice cream.
Then they move on, flying through the wall. No explanation of what this cloud was, no need, leaving nothing but beauty in their wake.