Note: So... I'm not a visual artist. I have drawn like one g/t thing in my life and there's no way I'm redoing it lol. So we get this. More feels. Yay?
I promise next prompt won't be totally depressing <3
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Demessa wasn't one to venture out into the garden, but her brother wasn't in his room or anywhere else in the house. It was the only place left to look.
Being out-of-doors always felt too open to her, as it would to any sensible borrower. It felt like anything could jump out at her from any direction. The faster she could find her brother, the faster she could be back in the comfortable, confined safety of the walls and floorboards. Luckily for Demessa, he only had so many usual haunts.
She found him before too long, sitting atop a decorative rock embedded in the soil between plants. Drawing her dressing gown tighter against herself to stave off the morning chill, she circled round to the bottom of the rock's gentle slope.
"Aren't we getting a bit old for this?" she bemoaned. Indeed, she was aged in her early fifties, and her brother in the middle of his forties. Such things as sneaking out of the house without telling anyone were beyond childish for them. No response came from her brother, who sat hunched over his book.
"Orrick, please. It's been hours, you're lucky the beans haven't--"
"And so what if they did?" Orrick snapped.
That took Demessa aback. Not once could she recall him ever being short with her or their younger sisters. Never had she seen the daggers in Orrick's eyes as he glanced up at her before returning to his sketchbook.
With a deep, steadying breath, she continued her approach. "What are you working on?"
Orrick stiffened at the question, his hand freezing in the middle of his sketch. As she got closer, Demessa realized that he'd started several sketches only to abandon them halfway through and start another. They lay around Orrick, torn out of his sketchbook and weighed down with things he had on hand.
All oft hem sketches of his recently vanished wife.
"Orrick..."
"She took them," he said falteringly. "Some of the pictures I'd made. They're gone. She wanted to keep them." He reached out a shaking hand to point at all the images of Zepheera, drawn from memory. "She was happy, see? I saw it, or else I wouldn't be able to draw it!"
"My goodness, keep quiet!" Demessa hissed, sliding to sit alongside Orrick and wrap her arms around him. She knew he'd been devastated by Zepheera's sudden departure, enough to make his way back to his old house on his own. The house where they'd met. He was obviously taking it harder than he'd let on.
"I'm sorry, Orrick. But she's gone, and you cannot keep doing this to yourself. Please, come home."
At her touch and her words, all the tension bled from Orrick. Demessa suddenly found herself supporting her brother's weight as he all but collapsed into her.
"What'll I do without her?" he breathed, and she realized he was sobbing. She tightened her embrace around him, holding him close like they were kids again.
"I'm sure you'll find something. Someone new. There's bound to be another woman for you," she tried to insist, knowing it was too much to ask for that to be enough to give him hope.
To confirm her worry, she felt his head shake no against the crook of her neck. "Not like her."
Demessa felt her heart break as she understood that he was right. That Zepheera had been a unique individual, one who got on with Orrick almost perfectly. Why she would leave such a loving husband behind, Demessa would never comprehend. Nor could she easily forgive the heartache burdened upon her brother.
"Come on," she urged. "Let's clean this up, and go inside. Things will get better, one day." She promised this with a confidence that did not match how she felt, seeing her brother in this state. Orrick had a long journey ahead of him before he would feel better. If he ever did at all.
