Black. Against the paper, against her earlier, lighter strokes, it was stark. Clear. Definite. Like her impending demise, like the certainty of how her life should be.
She hovers over her paint palette for a few seconds, then goes for the next selected colour.
The next stroke is bright, flame yellow, skirting gold. The shade of Takaya's eyes, only lacking the vitality of life. The brush pauses in mid-stroke, paint pooling around the tip pressed--lightly--to the paper, as memory catches her. The first time they'd met as children, she was enchanted. What a pretty shade. The brush resumes its motion, drawing out the excess paint into a different shape, blending the anecdote into the rest of her memories.
The brush resumes its journey: water, palette, paper.
This time it's green, the shades of choice beginning to cool. The colour of life, she was once told, but the bright tone upon her page brought to mind only deadweight sufferings, of tiresome medication and painful procedures. Somewhere in herself, she trembled, but the hand that held the brush remained steady, the trail of yellow-green a soft and silent exhale.
It trembles as it leaves the page. She takes extra time to rinse the brush, watching the colour swirl and disappear, swallowed up by the murky grey water.
The shade of uncertainty, the film over stark monochrome. The no-man's-land she'd idly crossed into before. The stormy hue of her own heart.
Slender fingers wring the grey water gently from the bristles of the paintbrush. Size 4; it is the only brush she has. Idly she runs the tip over her finger, as she selects the next memory.
It adds a depth to the swirl on her page. Her choice is deep cerulean--Jin's hair and eyes, Junpei's choice of clothing. Two starkly different people, two indelible marks in her life. She would think fondly on them both, the teacher and brother, the lover and friend. The memory brings a strange bitterness, a warm fondness.
She allows a smile, allows a few tears in her solitude, then signs and dates the picture in her hands, a swirl of colours on a piece of paper. The only way she knew to hold her fractured memories together.
tangentwithtanner
jbbartram-illu
dailybridgerton
blakekathryn
titsay
kaledo-art
