I don't own any of it.
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Her world of bright tones and family and the ease of belonging had fallen heavily down around her in the days that followed. Sitting in among the newly minted world of subdued hues and blank expressions, she solemnly reflected upon the chain of events that had had to transpire to turn her into one of those divided gray people whose lives were made up of a Before and an After (capital letters mandatory). They had always been that way, building up lives of minor satisfaction around a series of defining moments, more often negative than not. That kind of life had never made sense to the artist who lived, inherently, in the moment.
But now (in the After-world she inhabited, too many thoughts began with those ominous words), she had her own past to long for wistfully in the bleakness of the present. The family they had built here had crumbled as easily as a playing card house, and it had caught them all by surprise. They had been certain that they were stronger than this, brashly arrogant, as always, for a group so easily shattered.
The first loss had come just moments after they had celebrated, joyfully united in a world, which, quite literally, had been filled with song. In her mind, that last moment of untainted happiness was the brightest of blues…the color of her dancing eyes, of the bouncing laughter which so poignantly reflected his love. The pretty sky blue had been splashed in with that terrible red, however, and, try as she might, the purity of the family portrait was forever destroyed. She could have fixed it, she thought, amended it, made it a masterpiece in it's own right once their numbers had been restored. It would have been changed, of course, irrevocably, by the violent splash of red, but they could have absorbed it into the spectrum of their history if given a break.
But the next loss came too suddenly, too unfathomably for any adjustment. He had been the youngest, the pet, and his betrayal introduced darker, more sinister tones to the work. No longer did the world reflect the love, however dysfunctional, that kept them together. The blackness of evil, which had, by their work's necessity, lurked always at the edges of the frame, had somehow been allowed to enter, and the portrait was inevitably tainted.
And now she had lost her lifeline. This loss had lacked the violence of the others. It had been civil, banal even, but the pain it left in its wake lacked none of the potency. She could not, rightfully, add any color to her mind's family portrait for this one. No, not even the darkest black or most vibrant red could encompass the fundamental break down of her support system. This pain was more akin to the tearing of a hole in the center of the canvas, or looking at her palate to find only grays and browns at her disposal. The world had been rendered ugly by the loss of trust, and it offended her artist's sensibilities. She feared, deeply, the loss of her color-world, and hated this new isolation. Separated by geography from the one person who could help her piece back together a relationship with a much wider rift than an ocean, she sat silently studying the canvases which still reflected, with newfound melancholy, her lost Before.