Drawings of Reality
By: Kamui Asagi
Lain looked at the pad in front of her and turned her head to the side. She turned her pencil around and began to erase the lines she had on the paper. She had been working on the drawing for over two hours now, and still no improvement. She looked over to her left at the picture that was lying on her desk. It was a picture of Jasmine Rogers singing against a brick wall. Lain stared at her hair and watched how it fell on the side of her face, then looked back at her drawing paper. She began to draw again, the pencil moving quickly and silently over the paper trying to recreate the hair. She paused and looked back over at the picture.
"This looks nothing like her," Lain thought brushing her hair back out of her face.
She dropped the pencil on the pad, leaned back in her chair and let out a sigh. She looked at the walls, barren, except for the posters of Jasmine Rogers and "Nakaido" Chabo Reichi. Then she tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling. The white of it was blinding, and she had to look away. Lain let out another sigh.
"I'm terrible at drawing real things," She said, "I don't even know how to define real… so how can I draw it?"
Her thoughts intrigued her. Maybe if she knew what reality was she could understand it better and then draw better realistic pictures. Lain closed her eyes and thought about it. Reality…Reality…Reality. Lain opened her eyes and stood up.
"I can't figure it out. I need to do something to get my mind off of it, then it might come to me."
Lain walked over to the corner of her room and picked up her guitar. She carried it back to her bed and sat down. She grabbed a pick that was sitting on her windowsill and strummed the strings. Out of tune, badly out of tune actually. She picked up her tuner from under her bed and began to tune the dusty guitar. She moved her hand over the strings and up the neck toward the tuning bolts. Her palm caressed the strings where they went into the instrument.
"Oww!"
Lain looked at the palm of her hand. Blood. Flowing freely from the wound that was created by the dagger like end of the string. Lain stared at the blood dripping from the cut, then had a thought.
"Is…is this what reality is? Pain? Love? Hate? Happiness? Emotions? Nothingness? Life? Death?"
The thoughts came pouring out of her mind like the blood from the wound. And at that moment she was not concerned about stopping the flow of blood, because she believed the thoughts would continue flowing, like the blood, if she did not bandage it. She started playing her guitar, even though it still wasn't tuned. She played "Far Shout" and the haunting sound of it drifted through her room. When she was done, she placed the guitar on the bed and returned to her desk. She stared at the picture, and the picture stared back.
"Of course it's not going to look exactly like her," Lain said picking up her pencil again, "The drawing is a reflection of my reality. And nobody's drawing is perfect, just like their reality."
Lain began where she left off with renewed confidence in herself. She had found an answer…her answer, to reality. A reality where mistakes don't hinder something, but rather… make that something more unique.