I was in the middle of a very complex pattern, working with a shiny, metal and a special carving knife sharp enough to pierce the metallic surface when my phone rang. My concentration broke, and I jerked my body, startled at the unexpected sound.
The tip of the knife grazed the end of my index finger, and I hissed in pain and dropped the offending weapon. Blood started to build at the surface of the cut and I stuck it in my mouth, searching for my cell beneath the mountain of sketches at my desk.
Cursing who ever was calling, and indirectly responsible for my small injury, I managed to find my phone. Using my chin I flipped it open and muttered a slightly agitated "Hello?" into the mouth piece.
"Kagome!"
I recognized the voice of my best friend. She sounded unusually excited. Sango was generally a very collected person.
Her excitement slurred her words and I could barely understand her.
"Hey, Sango, rewind and play back in slow-mo, okay?"
I heard her take a deep breath and start again.
"I just got a call."
"Uh-huh." I nodded, only half interested as I fiddled with the necklace I had been working on before she called.
"Are you listening to me?" She asked sternly.
"Uh-huh."
"Guess who called me."
I sighed, pursing my lips and pushing my dark hair out of my face. "I don't know..." I paused. "Miroku?" Miroku was always calling Sango, so I was sure I had guessed right.
"No!"
"Oh..." Maybe not.
Sango proceeded on to tell me about some prestigious family member that had called her up.
"Oh, that's great." I said, picking up that this was somehow monumental, but I was still unclear about how this affected me at all.
"It is great. Would you care to know why this is great?"
"Sure."
"They're interested in your jewelry. The family owns a really nice, well respected, and fairly expensive store, and they're interested in your jewelry. They want you to come by and show them some of your best stuff."
Sango suddenly had my full attention. I could feel my eyes widening and my jaw dropping.
"Are you serious?" I scarcely whispered.
"Yes!"
Then next five minutes were filled with Sango and I screaming in high-pitched girly voices. When we calmed I asked her, "How in the world did they even find out about my jewelry?"
Sango gave a thoughtful pause. "Well, I may have stopped by and flounced all the jewelry you made for me."
"Oh my God! Sango you're the best! You're the best friend in the entire world." I squealed.
Sango laughed. "Yeah, I know."
"When?"
"Tomorrow."
I knew tomorrow was going to be an eventful day, a very monumental day. One that meant something and I was never going to forget. But I really didn't know how special that fateful day was going to be.
When tomorrow finally arrived I was dressed in my best pair of jeans, and a pretty white blouse with maroon heeled-shoes that matched the jewelry I was wearing. I thought I looked nice. Professional, but not too much so. I wanted to make a good impression, but not feel like a total phony. I hate feeling like phony.
When I pulled into the parking lot I noticed there was a vast difference between my car, and the rest of the cars. Mine was a piece of crap; their's cost more then the whole apartment complex I lived in.
I parked more carefully then I usually did, taking extra time to make sure I didn't dint any of the gleaming immaculate exterior. I think when Sango said 'fairly expensive store' she actually meant 'excruciatingly expensive store that you'd be privileged to clean toilets in'.
I suddenly wished I'd borrowed a dress suit from Sango.
The store was about 50 times bigger then my apartment. It was made out of brick, and there was a fancy little bridge I had to walk over to get to the door. There was a lake behind it.
As I walked cautiously across the bridge (not that I thought it was dangerous or anything. It was better made then my car.) I realized that there was a guy leaning against the rail starring down into the water below. I paused briefly, resting my hand on the railing and looked down, curious at what he was looking at.
From a distance the water had looked sparkling and clean, like a body of water made completely out of Dasani, but up close I could see that it was tainted and murky. I voiced my observation out loud.
The boy merely pulled his beat-up black beanie hat a little further down, nearly covering his eyes, which were about as murky as the water. A few strands of long platinum hair slipped out from it's confinement at the sudden movement.
I'm not sure if he actually said something, but I could have sworn he whispered, "like most things."
I turned my head and looked at him, wondering if I had heard him right. His intense gaze moved from the water to my hand that was resting near his on the rail. I think he was looking at the scooby-doo band-aid.
"What happened to your hand?" He asked, bluntly in a deep, gravelly voice. He sounded disinterested, so I couldn't figure out why he even bothered asking.
"Oh." I wiggled my injured finger. "I accidentally cut it." No sooner had I gotten the words out, he started walking away.
I stood there for a few moments in the wake of his rudeness, before frowning and walking off too.
When I got through the doors I was met with very snobby stares. 'Fantastic' I thought sourly as I made my way to the front register.
The woman there, who was dressed in designer clothes, and had her dark hair twisted into a stylish bun glanced at me, then went back to filing her pointy, french-manicured fingernails.
"Umm...Hi." I offered a small, polite smile. "I'm supposed to meet someone named..." I glanced at my hand where I written down the name of the lady I was supposed to talk to. "Kagura?"
She looked at me again, then sighed. "That would be me, darling." She said in a disinterested, bordering on sarcastic tone.
"Oh. Okay.." I said slowly. "I'm supposed to talk to you about selling my jewelry."
I suddenly caught her interest. She turned around and grabbed something in one of the drawers behind her.
She held up a familiar object. It was a necklace I'd made for Sango for her twenty-first birthday, last year. It was heart-shaped. The outer-side was a dark silver, and the iner-side made out of tiny onyx stones. A small band of amethyst crystals were connected to it, allowing a small obsidian stone to hang down in the middle of the heart.
I felt my own heart swell as I looked upon my handiwork. I smiled. "Sure did, sweet heart."
She missed my perfect re-enactment of her tone, and became a whirlwind of action. She led me to a small break room where I set my little suitcase down.
I began showing her my creations. She looked really impressed, and even asked me if she could bye a hairpiece off me at the exact moment. It was a really neat hair-clip made out of black and ruby red stones. When she stuck it into her bun, the little red stone I'd carved into the shape of a feather hung down about three inches. It looked really cool.
"How much?" She asked, besotted with it, pulling out her wallet.
The material to make it cost me about 40 dollars, and their was minimal labor involved.
"100?" She asked, looking for a pen.
I must have looked shocked.
"What? 150? 200?"
"Umm...actually."
"Okay. 250?"
"Yeah." I said hardly believing it. "250."
Dinner was on me tonight.
As I was packing up my things, and looking over the contract that would let Kagura sell my jewelry exclusively from her store, the boy from earlier came in.
At first glance I thought his cheek was bleeding, but when I took another look I realized it was red paint smeared across his face.
Kagura's eyes lit up when she saw him, and trust me it wasn't with love. Then she remembered I was in the room and made an effort to hide her obvious dislike.
The boy glared right back at her without saying a word. He merely lifted the hood of his grey hoodie over his hat.
To my surprise he glared at me too. Unsure of how to react I just looked away and cleared my throat that had become dry during the interview.
"Kagome, I would like you to meet Inuyasha. My cousin." Kagura's glare had faded to detachment and boredom. She started to fiddle with her fake fingernails.
"Inuyasha this Kagome. She's an artist too." Kagura sneered in his direction as he opened up drawers and started to search through them noisily.
He paused and glanced at me again, then went right back to searching.
The hostility in the room made me want to run away, but I forced myself to sit still and pretend to read the contract.
"Inuyasha is a very talented artist." Kagura said smiling, almost bragging in her sarcastic voice.
Inuyasha grabbed a tube of red paint, and a small paintbrush and whirled around, slamming the drawer shut that echoed.
"Fuck you." He said as he passed Kagura on his way out, getting right in her face.
Kagura looked displeased, but all she did was, after he left, was point to a canvas on the table I hadn't noticed before.
The background was a deep black of the universe with the earth in muted colors. Behind the earth it looked like the sun was emerging, but it looked wrong, surreal. Like the sun was burning out, about to die.
The moon was in front of the earth, and a sad angelic being that I couldn't determine the gender of was sitting on the edge of the moon, head bent in sorrow as he or she watched the sun flare and fade, and cease to be.
The picture sent a shiver of terror through me, and I couldn't look away. It was beautiful. In a sadistic kind of way.
Kagura looked amused at me awed state, and chuckled wryly.
"At least he's good for something."
I looked at her, shocked by the statement.
She just shook her head and walked me to the door, giving me instructions about the contract when to send it in, and when to come back so that she could see my new creations.
A bittersweet feeling flooded through me as I got into my car.
As I drove off, I noticed a figure in the window on the top floor, and I thought I caught a little glimpse of silver right before I left.
That night Sango and a few of our close friends celebrated, but my heart wasn't really in it. The whole night the painting I had seen stayed in my head like an unwelcome guest. In the morning I focused all my energy into making a new piece that would help pull the image from my mind.
About a week later I was sitting on my couch watching Tv with my cat sleeping happily in my lap when I came across an art program. There was nothing else better to watch to I settled on that channel, scratching Buyo between the ears as I watched the display of new um and coming art.
"Here we have a new piece from Inuyasha Taisho."
I heard, which caught my attention immediately. The camera zoomed in on a vividly dazzling painting. It was simple but there seemed to be a mind-grabbing hidden meaning behind it. It was merely a feminine looking hand with long fingers, the index finger had a small, bleeding cut. From the cut the red-black blood dripped down like raindrops and collected at the bottom. It seemed like a puddle, or a lake or some body of water. The glistening pristine water looked clean enough to drink, except where the blood dripped down. From there it looked like the water was slowly darkening.
"It seems we see nothing but breath taking brilliance from this artist." The designer-clad woman chirped like an obediently trained parrot.
"Yes." The man beside her added, "Breath taking for certain, but definitely morbid."
"Wow, Buyo check that out." I said, practically drooling over the picture, wishing I could capture that kind of feeling in my jewelry. I caught sight of the selling price and nearly choked.
Sango came back from the kitchen, soda in hand.
"Man that's a hell of a lot of zeros." She said, rasing an eyebrow. "No wonder his family is so loaded."
"Wait a second. That hand looks familiar." I said suspiciously.
I stopped petting Buyo and examined my hand. My hand matched the one in the painting perfectly, all the way down to the cut on my finger to the color of my maroon nail-polish.
Sango glanced at my hand then at the TV.
She took a sip of her drink, her eyes locked on the screen.
"Well, damn."
A/N:
Yeah...this shouldn't be long at all. I'm thinking five or six chapters at most. I'm going to enjoy writing this, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it. Drop me a line and let me know what you think. Around here reviews are like candy, and everyone loves a sugar rush. If i'm inspired the next chapter will be out in a few days. I'll write more informative author notes then. Don't feel like it now.
xoxo