Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
how does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
and pretty maids all in a row.
Black walls outlined in pink crayon surrounded a girl. In her left hand she held a yellow crayon, and all over one wall were bright yellow markings. They looked like roses floating on the wall, avoiding a wooden frame and its broken canvas. The girl leaned back after completing one last petal, examining the flower she had drawn, before grinning and tossing the crayon in the general position of a crayon box. She leaned down and grabbed a crayon that was as green as her dress, then started to connect the roses together with a series of lines. The lines went off-course here and there, where they formed pointy leaves. The girl growled in a little frustration as she tried to form a sharp point with her crayon, tossing her head to get blonde hair out of her face.
"Hey, Mary, shouldn't you rest for a bit?" A blue doll on one side of the room spoke up. His friends, all in a neat row in front of him, nodded in agreement. "You've been drawing for quite a while now."
"Not yet, Tim!" Mary replied, squinting her eyes as she started to draw thin veins of green over the blank spaces on the wall. "Just need to finish this, and I'm done."
"Mary," protested another doll. "You've been drawing non-stop since forever! And every single time you complete something, you erase it and draw another thing! What's with that?"
"None of your business," Mary huffed.
However, she knew that what her friend said was true. She had been drawing and drawing since a few years ago. But what other thing could a painting do when she had been stuck in a stupid gallery for centuries?
Mary was drawing to stop thinking of the other world for a while, something that had been suggested by one of her older sisters in red. That certain sister had caught her reading about the 'real' world once again, and had promptly rebuked her. "What's wrong with what we have now?" she asked. "Isn't a world where you can create everything you want good enough for you? You can't do that in that other place."
"But I want other people to talk with! Real people!" Mary said. "Not like you guys aren't great, but I'm bored! I want be in father's living world. I want to live."
"Our father created this world for that very purpose, sister! We aren't made for his 'real' world, and you know that!" the lady in red groaned, running painted fingers through her seemingly perfect hair.
Mary shook her head to get rid of the unpleasant thoughts once again, going back to the vines as green as her dress and the roses as yellow as her hair. Then, she stood up and surveyed her masterpiece. Roses and vines covered the wall, and a neat row of blue dolls guarded the wall perpendicular to the plant-covered one. She had drawn many plants on the other walls and pastel-coloured shells on the ground. Silver bells drawn in grey crayon hung from the black ceiling with bright red rope. With a sigh she waved her hand and the room was clean once more, save for the dolls and the books and the mannequin heads.
Boy, how she wished to go into the world her father had lived in. Would she be able to make a new friend, one of flesh and blood? How was it like to breathe in air? How was it like to...?
Mary sat down beside the crayon box once again, picked up a crayon, and started to draw.