10/3/22 Map Maker

 Map Maker

He sat quietly at his desk, ink and quill in hand, a dim light brightening the darkness of the night and a slightly aged roll of paper laid out in front of him. Two weights held the paper down and the man began to draw.

His hand was steady and his lines precise. This map was going to be beautiful. He started with the strange shaped outline of the large continent, then drew in the thinner lines, creating the borders.

So strange borders are to him. They are just simple lines on a map, and yet they are so important to everyone else. It is all one world, to cross that line in person would have no physical effect on you, nothing would change. 

And yet, devoted to his job as map maker, he drew the lines anyway, no matter how confusing they were to him. More and more lines get put on the page, then the ornate handwriting, marking the names of the bordered off areas.

After an hour he had himself a map, but it was so plain, no color, no life. It was time to add color and shading, make the map appealing to look at. If forced to read the map for long periods of time, wouldn’t it be nice if it were visually appealing as well as useful?

Starting with the solid blue water then moving to the land, color is brought, bringing the old paper back to life. The worn down edges were no longer visible as the color pulled the eye away completely. No man would look at that map and say, “Wow this paper is so old,” he would only admire the beauty of the illustration.

This was not just a map to the man, this was his art and he wanted it to be enjoyed as well as used. He took much pride in his work and others appreciated him for it. To have one of his maps was brag-worthy, a rarity not many enjoyed.

But there was one map he would never give away, an illustration he worked on for years. It was a map of an island, not a real place but a dreamland of his. It was his favorite map he ever made, the only one that did not depict a real place, the only map that he sadly could not follow.

The End

10/3/22