Characters: Kurayami (
paintitgray), Rabbit (
redhead_rabbit)
Date/Time: July 25th, afternoon
Location: Melee Island (and later the Bazaar)
Rating: PG-13, since Kurayami in a bad mood can develop a dirty mouth.
Summary: The stress of the last month is starting to get to Kurayami. Run, Rabbit, run...or, uh, stay and listen?
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The sun wasn't falling right on her painting.
Kurayami frowned and adjusted the easel for the dozenth time, nudging one battered leg with her foot until it scooted across the floor with a scrape of wood on wood. Picking up her brush again, she carefully added a touch of black paint to the line of Lea's shoulder, then paused.
The painting was, technically, finished. There were a few adjustments she could probably make to it, but not without Lea here to model for the finishing touches.
But she'd been puttering at it for almost a week now, adding or subtracting small things here or there, picking out additional strands of hair. Trying to get just the right sardonic quirk in the corner of his mouth. She couldn't seem to quite let it go.
Sitting back, Kurayami sighed and rubbed at her temples. To finish this piece would mean starting a new one. And starting a new piece meant finding a new model. And she knew who she wanted to paint this time, who she had been planning to paint, but...her fingers closed around the pot of black paint tightly, angrily.
Apple. Her little teacher. The Elevator had him, and she had no way of knowing when it would give him back. Their lives were so at the mercy of this damned Tree. It didn't feel right. This place was so capricious, so vindictive sometimes, and the memory of Apple's frightened voice as that bird bore down on them made her throat tighten. Her fault, for being too curious. No, the Tree's damn fault, for putting a blood price on curiosity. They'd escaped injury that time, but now Apple was in its clutches again, and...and...
Kurayami shoved back her chair, standing suddenly as the sense of helplessness and rage boiled up inside her, and flung the pot of paint as hard as she could against the wall.
It hit with a muffled clang and bounced away to roll across the floor, back to her feet. Kurayami stared at it for a moment, then lifted her gaze to the splatter of black paint dripping down the wall and trailing across the floor. The rage had faded, spent in the violence of the act. She could feel a drop of flung paint running down her cheek.
Stepping forward, almost dizzy, she pressed her palms to the wet paint and dragged them down the wall. There was something...familiar about this. About...
She turned over her hands, the palms and fingers smeared with black paint, and the dizziness vanished. What was she doing? Black stuff all over her hands, god, and this mess would need cleaning up, too. Angry with herself all over again, she turned and stormed out, pausing only to make sure there no flecks of stray paint had landed on the canvas.
Shouldering the door open to keep paint off the knob, she headed for the water troughs to scrub herself off.