Black ether

A young ballet dancer, in white petal-pleated dress, bejeweled about the middle with hair done up and head slightly bowed, on the toes of her left foot she faced the flames and smoke. Her arms were straight outstretched so that she framed from top to bottom the soldier in the fire, left hand pointing to his feet [sic.] and right the top of his head, thereby forming as it were the sides of a not-quite right isosceles triangle and he the hypotenuse. She floated in a black void as if she, illustrating a point, or on the cusp of some magic, would  command release of the solder from his peril.

The soldier stood straight suspended in fire and as if at his guard post before the change at an appointed hour, smartly dressed in red jacket and blue pants and a musket with bayonet at his side all uniformly at attention. He stood without expression. His feet must have been cooking and his head must have been swirling like the flames and smoke that surrounded him bottom to top. Would he awake from dutiful unquestioning with the redeeming life form holding him in her arms?

It seems neither beauty nor art nor some magical intervention can break the spell of those so dutiful and consumed unawares in a moment of, I don't hesitate to say, unconscious catastrophe.

But all this is mere speculation on an imagined image made lifeless and external on a printed page.

What draws one is the two figures in the order presented all consumed by the blackest of black ether and the perfect paisley patterns of smoke that reveal what we are viewing is not real, at least not of this world. The life the picture creates is in our minds, as well as the comparisons and comments we would make about what we see. What we experience may be far different from that which you see.

Thus, lifeless it is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steadfast_Tin_Soldier