She decided, after an hour with her sketchbook hanging open on the first clear page, she wasn't going to draw in this one anymore.
There are a lot of reasons she goes over while she leaves to go buy books. It's been too long. Her old stuff won't look like her new stuff. The change would be too sudden. It's been two years. It's been three years. She hasn't drawn in a while. There is unfinished work on other pages. She had some things planned she can't remember anymore. She was in a different state of mind three years ago. She was in a different place three years ago. It makes her think too much about the past. The paper is too damaged from the fall she took off the hospital before darkness took her.
She needs a fresh start.
There's a little craft store near her new apartment, selling hand made trinkets and composition books made out of recycled paper. Nea had bought as many as she could justify carrying out of the store, with some pens that felt comfortable in her hand. She grabbed a pack of graphite pencils and a cat eraser she might use for a desk ornament. The woman who cashed her stuff out was very short and had round glasses.
She is now back in her apartment, with the window she can't close, legs crossed on her bed, purchases spread out. The old sketchbook is under her bed now. She watches them with less enthusiasm as she did in the shop. The sketches from her old book crawl up her arms and dig too far into her skin for her to just shake it off. One of the pens is blue.
She thinks she wants to paint a mural somewhere. But god knows how she'll manage to do that without getting in trouble. Maybe she'll get some black paint and spray the window floor to ceiling so she doesn't have to look out her windows ever again. If she can block it all out, she can focus on things that don't move, because that is what she has come to know. She doesn't want to know impassivity and silence. But she does.
Her sketch is made of circles and wispy spirals. She can't feel the spider's legs on her knees, but she knows where this is coming from.
There are birds outside her window. Nea leans her head against the wall her bed leans against, watching them watch her. It feels like she's in a fishbowl. Glass on all sides, and not a moment left alone. If she hid under her bed or tucked herself behind her bathroom door, someone's going to see her from some angle, like children in a dentist's office. On the paper, her wrist continues to roll the pen. She looks down.
A shape with auric fragments surrounding its wrist. A woman, in a void. Suffocating.
Nea closes the composition book and tucks it under her pillow. The pen rolls off into her sheets somewhere, forgotten.