Title: Of Art and Origin
Summary: Connor holds a pencil like it's a knife, but beauty isn't always born of delicacy.
Connor holds the pencil like he's holding a knife, and he carves his drawing out onto the defenseless pad of paper. The fine graphite is ruptured in lines, ground to fine black dust and thicker than it needs to be.
It takes him eight broken pencils to comprehend just how much pressure the skinny sticks of wood can take before cracking into infinitesimal pieces, and they lay about him, haphazardly strewn as though frustration had gotten the better of him and they'd been thrown angrily upon shattering.
Sometimes Angel sneaks into his room and looks through the drawings – mostly of what he guesses are the landscapes of Quor'Toth. The drawings aren't as refined or skillful as his own – perfected by 200 years of practice - but there is something utterly raw and beautiful about the texture derived from rough handling and haunting scenery that brands this work as anything but bad. Some skills can be inherited, and this one - he doubts - was taught.
'My boy,' Angel dares to think, 'he's my baby boy.'
Fin.