Disclaimer: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is not mine; it's all Gregory Maguire's. The only thing that belongs to me is this fic.
Author's Note: I wrote this two weeks ago, but never got a chance to polish it, until now. So here it is, uploaded and (hopefully) easy to read and makes sense.
I would like to thank The Bookbinder's Daughter and MercGirlie for inspiring me to write this. (Although I highly doubt they're reading this.) Thank you so much!
For the record . . "he" is Caspar, "she" is Iris. Some time when they're married.
He watches her paint; swift, deft, careful strokes brushing across canvas. Unconsciously painting what she sees.
Every small detail goes unnoticed; with her brush she creates, from a tiny piece, an entire picture.
With all the seemingly intricate details, she captures an illusion and a 'real' image; a whole painting that shows both the believable, the possible, and the unbelievable, the impossible. Leaving a person wondering whether what they see is truly what they see or is a mirage, a trick of their eyes, mind and heart – when what they see is what they want to see; a reflection of their inner desires. In a way, she plays with their minds.
Looking at her, he marvels at how with a single stroke she captures everything about one microscopic detail; the gloss of a porcelain vase, the shafts of light that stream in through a window, the curve of a leaf – they all come alive in her hands, and in her painting.
A sweep of a petal here, a stroke of a window shutter there. She sits back and looks at it, debating in her mind if that's what she wanted herself to see or not.
He looks at it, too; letting his eyes drift from an arch of a doorway, the light shining through an open window, to the single porcelain vase on a table, surrounded by flowers of pinks, blues and purples. Finally his eyes rest on her, already knowing what she's going to do next.
With a smooth quiet flourish of her brush, she signs her name – or rather, his, and leaves the palette on a stool nearby, to be used again later.
Later on he sees her beginning a new painting, this one entitled Snowflakes Falling on Eyelashes. He gazes at all the minute pieces she captures; a bold stroke of an eyelid, an arch of an upturned face, the sharp curve of a snowflake.
Making sure every snowflake is unique and not all are the same; and the upturned face in bliss. On canvas, a picture coming alive; an enraptured child in the winter, getting the first feel of the snowflakes on her face.
When she's satisfied with what she has painted, she gathers up all her paints and stores them in jars, covered on top with cloth, and joins him near the doorway. This time, he studies her.
She examines his fingers; paint stained, grubby, callused yet refined. A painter's hands – hands of divinity. Taking his hand in hers, she whispers to him –
I want you to paint me.