I don't recall sleeping that night, but then, when something happens like what had happened to me, it seems as though we can only think of that. We go to sleep thinking about it, wake up thinking the same thing, and it's as if sleep never happened. But either way, one wakes up exhausted.
I very nearly stayed in bed all day. It was a tempting thought to imagine lying there on my mattress wrapped in the warm folds of my blankets as I stroked the bruises on my right arm over and over. They burned more now when I touched them, but it was a strangely pleasant pain, reminding me he existed, I hadn't dreamed him or simply fervently wished one of my past characters to life. Well, even if the second choice were possible, I never could have imagined anyone so unbearably perfect. He was so…beyond imagining that the memory of him was challenging to wrap my mind around. There was just no way he was…normal. Whatever he was, mere people, humans, like me, were not designed to resist that depth and amount of beauty.
But as the sun peeked through my window, I remembered the promise I'd made myself the day before (a small 24 hours ago?) that I would return to Market Street to sell my paintings. This was the soul reason I pulled myself up, got dressed and gathered my work and stool to carry to my usual spot. I'd been in no condition to paint upon arriving home the previous night (my hands shaking badly hours after the strange event), so these were old paintings that I'd chosen not to sell before, either because of quality or sentimental attachment. Today, however, the mysterious and beautiful man had caused me to have to take them. Hopefully, at least one would sell. And so I trudged through the crowd to my corner, setting up to wait for something, anything, to happen that might possibly make this day measure up to the one before. A false hope. I was sure.
The hours of the morning dragged by, the high point being the tiny old man who bought a single, low-priced painting that was not one of my best and praising it as though it were Van Gogh or Da Vinci's work. Only a few days ago, I had been content with this, the same routine day after day, each person interesting, and a story behind the painting they bought. I now had no interest in thinking up reasons or motives for their purchases, the fact that I had used to do that seeming juvenile and immature.
Nothing was good enough, nothing was colorful, I hadn't even the urge to write.
It would be at the end of this torturously long day that things would once again become interesting enough to engage my attention. I had no idea that Parvatio's absence that day (had the fact even registered?) would become significant.