"What's wrong?" Kraft asked from behind him, already resting a hand on his shoulder and tightening his grip.
"I'm fine!"
Kup shuddered, unable to shake off the hand. It seemed to be tightening further, so he hurriedly assured Kraft he hadn't been distracted. The spot Kraft had pinched earlier still ached faintly. This time he'd thoughtfully switched sides; a little longer and they would have been symmetrical.
Freed from the threat on his shoulder, Kup looked up at the sheer face of the boulder again. The image stood over twice a man's height. Below, a segmented, elongated shape that was neither snake nor insect lay in the center of the lamplight, its long, coiling body filling half the wall.
It should have been the centerpiece of the image, yet it had received little attention from the artist. Its overlapping segments resembled scales, though they could just as easily have been shells. And its winding form could well have belonged to a soft-bodied creature like an earthworm.
Inside the long body, whose shape fell between several different forms, were numerous human figures sketched with just a few strokes. They were entirely unlike the broad-faced human figures above the dividing line. The former were mass-produced, little more than symbolic outlines; the latter were emphasized, distinct individuals with their own features.
Every one of the features distorted by the widened faces stood out clearly. The artist had deliberately emphasized the realistic details of their contours, with such care that they seemed no less detailed than portraits painted from life.
Still, he had never seen people who looked like that. Or perhaps they looked more like people who had been flattened and stretched, rather than born that way.
The indistinct, stylized thing and the realistically rendered faces worked together, emphasizing the contrast between the