Disclaimer: These are not my characters. They are the sole property of Squaresoft. I am merely borrowing them for the purpose of storytelling
Chapter one
"Her Eyes"
The girl with a sharp ruddy face, petite frame, was screaming. Her anger a rusty blade. Her hair was dishevelled in all manners of shapes. Presently one strand was magenta and another blue. Tomorrow it could be green or orange, dictated by her mood. (Which slowly, yet violently, swung like an old iron pendulum) Her clothes fell off her tiny frame in awkward shapes and bunches, the effect heightened by the array of colours and patterns they held together. From her ears hung several sets of dangling earrings, none matching. The few long strands of hair that had not managed to escape were held back by a thin plaid cloth that flew loose in the breeze. Her eyes were green and now quite seeming to be filled with bees. Wet, angry bees.
"Do you have any frigging idea how long it took me to sort this out for you? How many brushes I've had to wash in turpentine? It doesn't smell like roses, dammit! How many times my cat went hungry because I was too busy slaving over THIS? Look at it you, you blind bungler! It doesn't take a genius to see how much time went into the composition here!".
The owner of the gallery stood with his legs crossed, arm on table. He was much like a flimsy stick holding up the weight of the girl's rage. Her words were barbed, cutting into the flesh if you moved the wrong way. She had quite a mouth on her, he thought. Too bad nothing pretty came out, or else she would have been interesting. With her onslaught nearly over, as it seemed, he tried to dispel her fury. He was sorry that he didn't have some sort of club with which to bash her over the head.
"Sorry ma'am. We don't have any place in the show for...."
He fingered through her stack of clumpy paintings. The shock of colour and odd angles at which the faces shifted were garish to his eye. In his refined experience, they fed this to the trash. Nobody puts that onto paper, unless it's the rejected one they use to test the colours. He would rather swim through a sea of bloody daggers than call this art.
"This." He snivelled in disgust.
"Asshole!! You wouldn't know art if it bite you right in the ass!"
She grabbed the erratic display of paint and charcoal in one clean sweep of her dusty little hands. The man at the counter leapt back as if a large angry cat had lashed out at him. Turning quickly to go back behind the reception booth he built up a thick defensive wall around his fright, but not before she caught it and let go at him with another verbal assault.
"Yeah, you'd better run! Goddess blessed, you might get hit in the head by the Siren! You might just fall into a bowl of paint and actually find out what colour is all about! Cowardly bastard!"
He was out of earshot now. Her rage emitted from her like a bright red light. She began a cruel laugh, deep in her stomach. It engulfed her in the ridiculousness, the hopelessness of the whole thing. She considered knocking over the booth with one good swift kick from her combat boot. Like a roundhouse, or something. Yeah.
She let it go, reconsidered. Her grandfather preached about anti-violence, all that crap. Some good it has done his life, she fumed. If she wanted her teeth floating in a glass at night she was going to at least have the dignity of beating them out herself. The slow gentle life was not the way. Yeah, knock your teeth out just to avoid being pretty was more her style. Live lively, die quickly. Content to have given it her all.
Completely pissed, she turned away from the art fair. People had begun to stare. Then again, when one floats through town like an angry swarm of multicoloured bees you expect people to take notice. She was used to leaving a trail of eyes and confusion in her path. It suited her. She drifted fluidly from the centre of town. From the alleyway outside the tavern, she could hear nothing but the laughter of the drunken sailors. Something concrete to drown out the mutterings of the art critics.
"Bunch of narrow-minded sheep," she reminded herself. "What do they know?!" Her own words echoed through her head.
Wouldn't know art if it bit them in the ass.
Relm sat in the alley; alone. A few quiet tears fell from her eyes like dew on a quiet morning, first of winter. Like hailstones. She fancied her tears like that, cold, frozen, only falling briefly. Most people only see snow fall once or twice in their lifetime. None are any luckier with her. A brief, passing discomfort, like birthing a baby. Emotions bothered her like that. Something like a thorn in your foot. A loud squealing baby. Pain, vulnerability. Not much else.
The sun was high. It was going to be one of those days. Cloudless. Warm. Serene. Completely useless. Nothing to do but paint and think.