The Elsewhere Chronicles

See disclaimer in the prologue

Cloud scowled at his paper and the ugly smudges all over it that the dirty gray eraser had rubbed across it. He'd have to get another one, curse it, and he'd already been through three today.

He was fine enough when he was given some kind of direction, but this? This was just plain too much, and he was going to go absolutely insane if he had to keep at it.

He looked back up at the woven basket of wax fruit, fixing it with the evilest glare he could manage, all but baring his teeth as his blue-green eyes flashed, pale with annoyance. He was supposed to be drawing it as a still life, and he'd been fine with that until his art professor had decided to change things around on him.

"I want to see style," he'd announced, clapping her hands sharply to get his class' attention. "Specifically, your style. There'll be plenty of classes this year where you'll play around with paint, or draw structurally, or fiddle with abstraction. This time, I want to see what you want to do and only what you want to do. How do you usually draw or paint? Do you use colored pencils or a grayscale? Whatever it is, I want to see it—this is art class, darlings, and anything goes in art class unless you're turning in a blank sheet of paper that you call a polar bear blinking in a blizzard." Some people had laughed at this; not Cloud. He'd still been staring at the professor in dismay at the earlier announcement. "Knock yourselves out, and if you want any pointers, go ahead and ask. You've got two weeks to finish, and I want to see mini-masterpieces."

One week had already ticked by, then half of another, and still Cloud had no idea where to begin.

Frazzled, he shoved the ruined paper away and looked around the room.

Zexion, huddled in the corner and screened by his usual protective layer of black, was slapping paint on canvas with a moody intensity that would've scared Cloud if that kind of thing bothered him. Zex had paint in his hair and on his face, as well as spattered over his shirt and jeans, and Cloud wondered idly if the chemicals in it hurt when they rested on the raw red scars that crisscrossed the young man's arms. Depression hung over silver-haired, dark-eyed Zexion like the blackest thunderheads—the same depression that had birthed the painful-looking wounds he'd scattered over his limbs—but the anger that usually threaded those clouds with lightning was all going into the monochrome painting he was slicing into existence.

Julius Vandole—the unofficial campus drag queen, though he would violently murder anyone who called him that to his face—had finished fussing with the set of oil paints in front of him and was now doing his nails, patiently covering them with layers and layers of shimmering green lacquer, which Cloud thought was definitely better than last week's lurid pink (it had clashed horribly with Julius' bright carrot-colored hair). Watching for a few moments, Cloud decided that the green Julius was using was exactly the shade of bitter envy he himself was experiencing. Julius was done already, and his little oil painting looked magnificent. Cloud had gone over and taken a peek, and just that was enough to make him want to grind his teeth in frustration.

Style came so easily to them.

Though Cloud wasn't really all that into paint, anyway.

The blonde sighed and gritted his teeth. Well, he might as well get this over with.

But just as he shoved back his chair in order to get yet another doomed sheet of paper, he bumped into someone standing behind him and looked up. Crap. It was the art professor.

It just had to be the art professor.

"Looks like you've got a case of artist's block," Zalbag Beoulve observed with a crooked smile.

Cloud face faulted into the desk before him with a long-suffering sigh, then nodded minutely.

"In my opinion, you're just trying too hard. You need a break, Strife—and I think you can safely use the rest of today's block to take one." Cloud looked up at his teacher, nonplussed. "You're a good kid—I doubt you'll just run off and get into trouble if I let you wander around campus for the rest of this class. Who knows, maybe you'll find some inspiration. Make sure to take your things with you, especially your sketchbook. Forget drawing the still life for now—just scribble whatever you'd like in there. Go on, now." The professor clapped him on the shoulder, then moved on in order to monitor one of the other students—actually his younger sister Alma, who was finishing up her own piece, which was done in pastel chalks.

Cloud shrugged to himself and looked around the room one more time.

Well, it wasn't like he'd get anywhere comparing his failure to his classmates' success.

With another self-pitying sigh, he shoved his art supplies back into his shoulder bag and tramped off, closing the door to the art room firmly behind him.

Campus was unusually silent at the moment; today, class schedules were arranged in blocks, and every student but Cloud himself seemed to be either listening to their professors or studying in their dorms. The atmosphere was peaceful, but right now Cloud wasn't sure whether it was more or less annoying than the general buzz of the campus when it was crowded.

Not a single soul around… the solitude was half loneliness, half freedom, and Cloud decided it was something he could grow to like, even if he couldn't enjoy it right away.

But as he reached the grounds in front of the main building—the park in miniature that lay before the sidewalk and the parking lot, and then the ugliness of the city in the distance—he realized that he'd been wrong: There was somebody else here.

A girl in white, sitting on the edge of the granite block that formed the base of the iron statue of St. Ajora Glabados in her armor with a sword in one hand and the other open, outstretched; the perfect noble pose for the saint the school had been named for. Cloud frowned for a moment, then recognized her: Namine.

At this time of day, she was probably cutting class—not like it made much difference, though; Namine was a straight-A student, so she could get away with things like that, unlike most of her other friends. She was totally intent on the sketchbook in her lap, drawing away with what looked like some kind of colored pencil, wearing the big, clunky, old-fashioned kind of headphones you just couldn't find anywhere anymore—the really huge kind that covered your ears completely and didn't let any kind of sound out at all—which were plugged into her shiny silver Walkman. She mouthed the words to the song she was listening to as she drew, swinging her sandaled feet back and forth just slightly where she sat.

It was just so picturesque that Cloud couldn't help himself.

Yanking out a sheet of tracing paper for when he was finished, he took out one of his thick carbon pencils and sketched her as quickly as he could without being sloppy, in angular stylized strokes. He kept Namine herself in black and white and the statue behind her a vague dark gray, but when he was done with her figure, he pulled out a pale blue Prismacolor and shaded in the sky.

By the time he was done, Namine had turned to face him and was slipping off her headphones with a smile, just leaving them hanging about her slim throat. Cloud shook his head to himself minutely. No matter what, Namine always, always seemed to be able to tell when someone was drawing her.

"Aren't you supposed to be in class?" she asked mildly, setting her sketchbook aside.

Cloud slipped the tracing paper over his own picture, closed the thick Mead book, and tucked it under his arm. "Couldn't work. My professor sent me out here for today."

She nodded, understanding in her eyes. "Artist's block, isn't it?"

"Worse—we're drawing a still life in our own style. I don't have a style, so I don't know what I'm doing at all."

Namine just smiled at him. "Everyone has a style, Cloud."

"I don't."

"You only think you don't." She picked up her sketchbook again, considered the drawing she had out, and laboriously turned the page. "You do like to draw, though, which is what's important. You'll figure out what your style is eventually." Flicking her attention back to Cloud and giving him one of her brief smiles, she patted the open space on the marble block beside her. "Why don't you sit down?"

Cloud sighed, but did.

"Since you don't seem to want to go back to class, just stay here for a while," she advised, already turning back to her own artwork. "Draw whatever you want for a change."

---

"This is some really excellent work," Zalbag said, sounding almost impressed as he flipped through Cloud's sketches from the previous day. "Whatever you managed to run across yesterday, I think you've got your groove back."

Cloud shrugged one shoulder, embarrassed, as page after page of Namine, then Leon flew by.

"Ready to give that still-life another go?"

"…I guess."

"If it doesn't work out by the due date," the professor continued, "I'd be happy to accept any one of these in lieu of the original assignment. Art has to be free, after all."

Cloud accepted his sketchbook back, then took his seat and stared steadily at the waxed fruit at the center of the classroom. As he did so, Namine's parting words echoed through his head.

"Artist's block isn't anything you really have to worry about. I get it all the time. It's a part of the field, and if you want to keep the art major you're working on, you're going to have to learn not to work with it, but around it—to let things lie until your inspiration comes back.

"There's a lot of heart in the work you do—I know you can do this, if you really want to."

Cloud sighed, shook his head to clear it, and drew.

When he got the assignment back a few weeks later, he was surprised to see that he'd been granted full marks on it.

(TBC)