Chapter One - Memory 1: Since First I Saw Her
GABRIEL (Holy Rome)
I have many memories, both good and bad, from my thousand year life, but my favorites all involve little Italia. I never knew her name, but I gave her one in my mind, Ilse. It meant noble maiden, and to me, she was beautiful and unattainable, like a noblewoman is to a peasant. I knew almost as soon as I saw her I was ruined for any other girl; she was small, no taller than I was, her features were delicate and her face was framed by short chopped auburn hair with a wayward curl sticking out on one side. She wore a light green, long-sleeved dress with a white pinafore and a red ribbon bow I recognised as one of Ms Hungary's old outfits and a small white headpiece covered the back of her head.
In short, Ilse was the cutest and prettiest girl I had ever seen, and I knew I had to talk to her. The problem was, whenever I tried I was too nervous and felt like I had forgotten how to speak, and I found myself only able to watch her. Every time this happened, she ran from me, my stare coupled with my normal serious features seemed to intimidate her. It took me what felt like decades to finally buck up enough to talk to her without forgetting my words, and that was when she taught me to paint.
Her artwork was always as graceful as she was, while I could barely draw a stick figure. I wanted to be as good as she was, but it seemed she possessed a talent I just didn't have. No matter how hard I tried, I could never do anything that looked even remotely good. Everything I did looked childish and ham-fisted next to hers, but Ilse always told me it looked beautiful, even if I didn't believe it myself.
I remember sitting with Ilse for hours, painting the view outside my house; I was good at landscapes, she drew life. There was one painting I treasured, the only one we made together before I had to leave her. It was an image of the river that ran by my house; weeping willows, long grass and cattails lined its banks, and every year a pair of swans nested there. We painted them together one year, I drew the riverbank around the sketched outline of the swans and their cygnets Ilse drew, then we painted it together. It took days to complete, but when we did, it was worth the time.
That painting hung in my room for as long as I could remember after we made it, and I would look at it so often it was burned into my memory, just like the face of the girl I made it with. It hung alongside various other pictures and paintings Ilse made, but to me, the one we made together was the centerpiece, and was one of the only paintings I could remember as clear as day for years afterwards.
AUTHOR NOTE
This story will be uploaded kind of erratically until I get a proper schedule going ^^
I owe so very much to my wonderful editor Emily, you can find her here (just replace the dashes with dots) at: www-wattpad-com/user/nvenumocafekitty So go and check her out!