Title: Charcoal Pencils
Rating: G/K
Character: Squall
Summary: Charcoal doesn't come in different colors.
Notes: Mainly, I wanted to write aboutlittle Squall. I firmly believe that, had he not been a Knight, he would have been an artist.
Squall has this spot. He doesn't talk about it, he doesn't think about it very often, and he prefers to keep it to himself. It's his 'special spot,' or so he calls it. A little nook in the corner of the beach, tucked beneath a fallen, dark gray rock that collapsed during last year's big storm and to form a perfect little cave that's invisible unless one is standing right in front of it. He pulled out a little entrance, dug a way through the smaller rocks that had fallen, and filled it with an old blanket and a pillow that Matron kept tucked up in one of the closest of the orphanage. It's just big enough to hold only him and his sketchpad, a little pouch of thick charcoal pencils that Matron bought for him for Christmas a few years back, and that bedding, but it's comfortable in there.
There's a perfect view of the ocean out to the right. The waves come close to the little place at high tide, licking at the entrance, but they know not to come in, and they only splash around the tips of his toes when he sticks his bare feet out on the hot afternoon sand from the tiny opening. It's the perfect picture to sketch, and he's getting pretty good at it, with all of this practice.
To the left he can see the very tip of the orphanage. They can't see him, where he's at, but sometimes, he just sits out there and watch the others as they run around, playing war or building sand castles with little motes and little beds for Selphie's little doll with the curly blonde hair and scratched, painted face. He likes watching the others. It lets him think, observe, without them knowing it. It makes him feel a little bit better that he knows them more than they probably know themselves.
Neither direction really compares to what lies directly ahead, out over the beach and running up along the grass of the plains nearby, though.
When he sneaks out at night, carrying his ever present sketchbook and an extra blanket under his arm to ward off the creeping night's chill, if he gets there at the perfect timing, the absolute perfect, he can see the sunrise. It creeps up over the horizon, a fiery beast bringing the light of day with it, and the beach glitters like a thousand little broken pieces of glass, the ocean a gentle, soothing symphony of noise in the background (he doesn't care much for symphonies, but he makes the exception for the one that the sea plays for him at night).
He wants to draw that, more than anything else. He wants to capture the sunset, capture the rays of dull orange and red light and spill it out onto his paper, almost like taking the rays themselves and using them as his pens. It'd probably be the only way he could ever manage to accomplish it, but he knows that that's silly. You can't pluck the rays of the sun out of the sky, he knows that, and you can't paint the rolling sound of the ocean, and he knows that, too.
He's tried every night since he's found this little spot, his workshop and secret base and 'special spot' all to himself, but he's never been able to.
There just aren't enough colors in that little pouch of broken charcoal pencils to do it.
