Minted

The pigeon was called Kevin. I'd drawn him on the train from Queen Street, one of those scruffy Glasgow pigeons with one foot and a look of total contempt, and I'd posted it because I posted everything, and a man in Singapore whose handle was a string of numbers asked if I'd mint it. I didn't know what that meant. I found out. It took me an evening and a tutorial video made by someone who talked like they were being paid by the word. I set the price at what I thought was a joke. It sold in four minutes. I'd been doing illustration for six years at that point. Album covers for bands that didn't exist a year later, wedding invitations, a children's book that never came out. I'd earned, in my best year, about fourteen grand. Kevin the pigeon earned me more than that before I'd finished my tea. I rang Ash. Ash is my best friend from art school, a printmaker, proper one, ink under the nails, a press in a shared studio in Dennistoun that costs her more in rent than she makes some months. I rang her because she's the person I ring. "I sold Kevin." "The pigeon? Brilliant. How much?" I told her. The silence went on long enough that I checked the call hadn't dropped. "As a what?" "As an NFT." "Right." "Ash." "No, it's fine. It's great. Congratulations." It was not fine. We didn't speak for three weeks, which had happened once before in twelve years, and that time was about a boy. When we did speak it was in the pub and it came out sideways. She'd been reading. The electricity, the wash trading, the people flipping images of monkeys they didn't care about. "It's a casino, Jen. You've put Kevin in a casino." "Kevin's a drawing. He's the same drawing he was. I've still got the file." "You've sold a receipt." "I've sold a receipt for fourteen grand to someone who wanted it, and I've paid my rent till March, and I've turned down three wedding invitation jobs, and for the first time since college I've spent a whole week drawing what I want."

"And what did you draw?" "More pigeons." She laughed, then, despite herself. But it didn't go away, the thing between us. It's still a bit there. She thinks I got lucky in a bad system, and she's right. I think she's got a purity about it that costs her, and I'm right too, and neither of those is a great foundation for a conversation. Here's the bit I haven't told her. The man in Singapore messaged me, months later. He'd sold Kevin on. Made a profit, a big one, off my pigeon, without a penny coming back to me because I'd not set up the royalty thing properly, because the tutorial had rushed that bit. And I felt, for about a day, exactly what Ash felt. Someone's making money off a thing I made and I'm not in the room. Then I drew another pigeon. What else was I going to do. I've sold eleven now. The market's gone quiet, the prices are a fraction of what they were, and most of the numbers-for-names accounts have vanished. But there's a woman in Porto who's bought four and messages me about which one's her favourite, and there's a man in Leeds who printed his on a T-shirt and sent me a photo, and I don't know what that is exactly, whether it's a market or a fad or a very expensive way of making friends. I know it paid the rent. Ash is having a show in November. Real prints, real paper. I'm going to buy one. I haven't told her that either.