Painting Memories

Neo Lyn sighed as she ran her brush over the canvas in front of her. She had no idea how she gotten herself into this. But one of the crewmembers decided it would be fun to challenge the crew to paint a fictional subject from memory. So here she was. Sitting out in the warm sunlight with some paint, a bowl of water, and her canvas scattered in front of her. It was a nice day. The waves were calm so they weren't bothering her as she tried to paint out a fictional subject. She had no clue what she was doing. She had no clue what she wanted to do. Several ideas ran through her mind, but none of them really stuck with her. So after about an hour of just staring at the white, blank canvas, she forced herself to pick up a brush and just start painting.

While she made wild gestures over the canvas, she still didn't know what she was doing. But, slowly, something started to emerge from her crazy strokes. As she started at it, her hand automatically stroking more and more paint over the canvas, she noticed something was emerging from it. She just didn't know what it was. One of the messy blobs looked like a fat monster of some kind. It was painted with dull colors, greys, a few whites, dark blues, a lot of black, and a little red and yellow for it's wild, scary looking eyes. Then there was a smaller figure. It was painted with lighter colors with a small, dull halo hovering over what she assumed to be its head.

The larger figure was standing over the smaller one. And something looked to be coming out of the larger figure. The something was pointing at the smaller figure. It almost looked like…a penis?

A startled gasp left Neo Lyn's mouth. Her paintbrush made a distance clank on the deck when it fell from her fingers. Her hand shot up to her mouth, but not quick enough to stop the painful cry that bellowed up from her stomach. She knew what she had painted. And it wasn't a fictional subject at all. It wasn't fiction at all. It was real. It had happened to her.

"Neo, what's wrong?" someone asked her.

She couldn't tell who it was. Her mind was to locked onto the painting. The painting that was supposed to have been fictional. But it had brought back a painful memory that she had long ago buried. Another cry left her mouth. Hot tears streamed down her face.

Someone grabbed her, pulling her into their arms. "Neo, it's okay. I'm here. I'm right here. You can hear me, can't you?"

"L-Law?" Neo Lyn stuttered. His soft voice slowly pulled her back to reality. She was safe. Safely tucked into Law's arms and on the deck of the Polar Tang. She wasn't with that monster anymore. She was safe, and always would be.

"I'm here," Law said, stroking her hair. He gave her a few minutes to calm down, his eyes looking at what she had painted. He kneaded his eyebrows, coming to the conclusion of rape as he stared at her painting. "Neo, are you all right now?"

"I…I think so," Neo Lyn said, her cries slowing down with a few hiccups.

"You want to tell me what happened?" Law asked carefully. "It has something to do with this painting, doesn't it?"

"It does." Neo Lyn nodded. It took her several more minutes, and several deep breaths to finally tell him. "My uncle tried to rape me at one time before I escaped. I had forgotten about that. I guess I just pushed it aside in an attempt to forget it. But it came out here. Trying to paint a fictional object turned into a real event."

"It's okay," Law said soothingly. "He won't ever get the chance to do that to you again. I'll kill him if he does."

"Thank you, Law," Neo Lyn said, breathing a sigh of relief knowing she was indeed safe with him and her real family.