Sagittarius 13. Sitting for her portrait, Mona Lisa feels as if millions of people are watching her.
As she sat for her portrait she could feel him painting the landscape behind her, feel it gradually taking shape, the blue fogs and winding road, the dark trees growing on jagged rocks. He was putting her in her place, somewhere she could feel herself being for centuries, that seemed not to pass but to be all present at once, with their many eyes passing in front of her as she looked out at them, smiling.
The eyes that studied her face and the landscape behind her were numerous as stars on a clear night. She felt their thoughts falling on her face like a faint, refreshing light.
Having seen her finished image she left the artist’s studio, and as she lived the rest of her life she often remembered herself sitting there, in the studio where the landscape had appeared behind her — a landscape she would never turn around to see, but which she could feel holding her, just the way eternity did.