Beauty in the Ashes

An elegant brow arched and she cocked a hip to the side, placing her hand on it. “Yes, I’m well aware that I’m a bossy, nosy bitch. Happy?”

“Very,” I smiled, rubbing the top of the cat’s head. He curled his body into me, his purrs becoming louder. “Need any help?”

She whipped around to face me. Her still damp black hair slapped against her skin with the movement. “I’m guessing since you have no real food to speak of in this place, that you don’t know how to cook. So why on Earth would I need your help?”

I suppressed my chuckle. “Point taken.”

“Go paint a picture or something,” she muttered, turning a knob on the stove so it would heat.

“Bossy, bossy, bossy,” I muttered under my breath, letting Brutus down on the floor.

“I heard that!”

“I meant for you to,” I smirked, backing towards my easel. “I think I better go paint that picture now, before you toss me off the roof.”

Her lips lifted in a smile at the memory. “This won’t take long.”

While she cooked, I worked. I should’ve been working on a commission painting, but right now I needed to get this image out of my head.

My hand glided over the canvas, the pencil leaving behind a light gray outline. I didn’t sketch much, preferring to do everything in paint, but when an image was this clear in my head I knew sketching it would provide a much needed depth.

Brutus tried to jump in my lap and I brushed him away, so that he didn’t mess me up.

The image quickly came to life. To anyone else looking, they would’ve seen a bunch of gray lines that made no sense. But I saw the end result.

I blended a deep blue-violet for her hair and worked on that first. It filled most of the canvas with its long and flowing waves. Smearing it with my fingers and adding water, I let it drip. I always loved the more drippy watercolor paintings. I guess in some part of my brain, it made them seem more meaningful. Like each image was melting and would only last a little bit longer—making me want to memorize it before it disappeared forever. My paintings were always a chaotic mess of colors, spinning and merging together to form the image I desired. For me, it symbolized the chaos of life and the ever-changing colors that made up our environment and personalities. I didn’t know what someone else saw when they looked, and I didn’t care. Art was subjective. It meant anything to any number of people. The point of art was to find your own interpretation. No one was wrong and no one was right. The artist was the

only one that held the true knowledge of what lay behind the eyes of the painting—but what it meant to us, wasn’t important. It was what it made people feel that mattered.

I dipped a clean brush into the brightest blue I found and blended a bit of black and white into it until I had the exact right shade of her cerulean eyes. When I was confident that it was perfect, I pressed the brush lightly against the canvas.

Once her eyes were painted I focused on creating a magenta for her lips. I wanted them to pop and compete with the beauty of her eye color.

Next, I moved on to her eyelashes. Instead of going with the traditional black, I made them a rainbow, then the let the colors drip down the canvas.

I didn’t pause when Sutton sat down on the floor beside me, watching me work. I wasn’t used to people being around while I painted, but I didn’t care. With her, I was comfortable.

Soon, the image I’d seen in my head stared at me from the canvas.

I set the brushes aside and appraised it.

“Is that…me?” She asked, her voice soft and hesitant.

“Yeah,” I nodded, “it’s you.”

“Wow, it’s…just…wow. I have no words. It’s beautiful, Caelan. Completely different from the other I saw, and that one was amazing, but I love this one more.”

I knew which one she was talking about, the one I’d demanded she give back. That one had been a more realistic portrayal of her. While this one with it’s rainbow of colors, could have easily been someone else.

“It’s my favorite too,” I concurred.

She didn’t know that I had even more paintings of her lying around.

She’d invaded my every thought, and become the only thing I wanted to paint.

We sat looking at the canvas for a little while longer until her stomach rumbled.

She smiled bashfully and stood. “The food is getting cold.”