She wasn't an artist, by all means. But that didn't mean that she never experimented, every now and then. Art was a…strange thing, after all, and she doubted anyone could live their lives without at least attempting to draw something, even if it was only that stick figure doodled in the mud by a four-year-old finger.
She'd had her fair share of tries, and in all honesty she had never found it very difficult to put what the image she wanted on a sheet of paper. All she had ever needed to do was close her eyes, and watch the picture in her mind's eye…and she drew it. They more or less turned out the way she imagined them - all the important details she saw in her head were carried down to the quill in her hand, and the picture materialized thus, exactly as she had seen it.
That rule seem to follow her in whatever she tried. Suns, planets, the bookshelf in the library, the luma napping on the rug next to the hearth. It was almost like photography, the picture and the subject ended up so alike.
And it was because of this that she looked upon the first page of the storybook she had written, and found that the outlines of objects were blurry and misted, that the colors were faded and pale.
For that was truly the picture of the distant past, in her memories and in her heart.
How long had it been now? Decades? Centuries? Years meant so very little, now…they fluttered past like autumn leaves, like the countless stars of the universe she traveled, one blending into the other, their lengths and limits no longer certain. Time mattered little in the deep expanse of space, after all - it shifted and rippled like a restless ocean, swifter here, slower there, uneven, the edges rough and hewn. Calendars were useless, minutes and hours trivial. It carried no sway, no impact.
No, the years couldn't be measured, not anymore - she only knew for certain that it had been very, very long ago indeed. To remember a time when stars were just pretty pinpricks in the sky; when trekking from home and up the hill was a long, grueling journey; when butter and bread and apricot jam were sufficient rations for any trip. When all it took was a hug from Father, a kiss from Mother, and a nudge from Brother to make everything better again.
To remember a time when she had been the child.
It was like peering down a deep, deep well…peering down so far the vertigo caught at your head and made it spin. It was like searching through a darkness that had no end, looking for a scrap of paper that had drifted away into the wind and disappeared.
…But she remembered those days, all the same. She always spotted the coin drowned in that deep well, always caught the scrap of paper that had been lost to the darkness. Because one simply couldn't forget those things.
Perhaps the memories were faded and pale. Perhaps the outlines of objects were blurry and misted. Perhaps the pictures were clouded, distant, soft echoes of a time long lost.
Perhaps they took the guise of a worn old storybook, recounting a fairytale long forgotten by others. Perhaps it was now a story only known by the children of the stars...
She wasn't an artist, by all means. But the pictures more or less turned out the way she imagined them - all the important details carried down to the quill in her hand and drawn thusly, exactly as she had seen them.
And it was because of this that she looked upon the first page of the storybook she had written, and found that the outlines of objects were blurry and misted, that the colors were faded and pale.
For that was truly the picture of the distant past, in her memories and in her heart.
And it was all she had left.
