Lavender Mist

A Girl that Faded Away

The painting of an unreal lake looked back at Timothy from a smooth page of a heavy book, that was laid on a desk in front of Timothy. He glanced at his glowing watch. An hour had passed in Timothy's search. For an hour, he slowly walked through the library, where there were no longer many people, from shelf to shelf, rapidly scrolling through any book that had something to do with art. However, the last book that he decided to study was the one he searched for such a long time. It was on the very top of a shelf and Timothy shifted on his toes several times, reaching his arms towards the cover, with a big, black title: "LOST PAINTINGS". For no special reason, he knew that the book stood there for a long time, squeezed between the others, collecting dust. It looked like it had been a while since it had left the hands of its last reader.

Seeing Timothy trying to reach it, an old librarian helped him, by climbing on a short ladder and bringing the thick book down, and then she brushed the dust off of her with her hands and submitted the book to the boy. When he asked her what it is about, the librarian briefly laid her eyes on the cover, shrugged her shoulders and left Timothy alone.

The boy freed himself of the load by putting the book down on the large, library table, and then he dived into the letters on the pages. On every right side, he saw an art piece that was either missing, stolen or simply never exhibited in museums, before the eyes of the public. Reading names of the artists and their paintings or sculptures, Timothy almost forgot about what he was looking for and about the time, which was passing more and more quickly with every turned page.

However, the train of his curiousity was interrupted when he opened the last page, with the quite well familiar lake.

The picture of his dreams was lonely, next to an empty paper on the left side, where there was supposed to be its name, the artist, time of creation or at least an assumption about the way of its birth. Nothing was known about this painting, but it was there, in front of Timothy's eyes. And, when he paid attention more carefully, he realized that its page was separated from the rest of the book.

For several times, the boy went over his thoughts, that were spinning in a constant loop, and then he looked around. The library seemed like it was completely empty. A few people were still there, but, to Timothy, it felt like they were present only physically. Their eyes were hollow and tired, after probably a difficult day at work, and they, for sure, couldn't wait to go home and slumber. Only Timothy was full of endless energy and curiousity. Distinguishing that nobody cared about what he was doing, he pulled a wooden pencil out of a pocket of his overly large pants. He felt like he was the only one that knew about this painting, so he assumed that he had a right to name it.

He lowered the black tip of the pencil on the paper and started wondering. He was so excited about "owning" this art piece, that he didn't manage to think of a name, that he would give to it. Therefore he decided to make his task simple and only wrote: The Lake. A small part of him questioned what would happen to him if someone in the library were to find out that he wrote in the book, but he assured himself that nobody opened it anyway. He used the small, wooden ladder, that the librarian left behind her, and returned the book to the same spot, where he had found it. Slim crossbars quietly creaked under his feet, but that sound was enough to fill up the mute library. Hoping that he hadn't drawn anyone's attention, Timothy sneaked out of the building, with no words or goodbyes.

***

Maggie had never entered the school in such a confident manner, like that day. She would normally dread the chaotic crowd of children and their voices, that would come from every direction, talk about various stories and play with her sense of hearing. She dreaded surprising conversations, for which she had no time to think of answers and a way of acting. She knew that, on every step and every corner, she could bump into someone that she wasn't familiar with enough, and that frightened her. However, this time, she didn't care about that. She thought about something else, had different intentions and no time to worry about strangers, that were circling around her, whose voices and words her brain didn't swallow and shape.