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Jade

Long blonde hair, sun kissed at the tips. Tanned skin with the casual beauty mark here and there. Jade had always been the ladies man. Boys were all over her during her time at high school, but she was different from all the other girls, because she for one didn't even notice the boys. She spent most of her afternoons down at the beach- any spare minute she had, in fact. She would take her sketchbook down there. The old one with the discoloured pages and the black moleskin that was now fading from the hours it lay in the sand, under the sun.

Every afternoon, when school was finished, she would sit in the middle of the hill, where there were small bits of grass emerging from the white granules of sand. She would sit there and draw. The sand would warm her skin and she found it comforting. She did a lot of thinking there. The sound of the waves helped her focus. You'd sometimes catch her stare at people passing by- sketch them, then look back again and edit what she had drawn.

At first glance, she looked like a surfer, but she was far from it. Jade spent her school life drawing and painting. She'd do her homework down at the beach too, on one of the picnic tables at the very top of the hill. And when she left school, she did the same. Drawing became her career. Or at least she planned it to become her career. It was for a while. Although things didn't go as planned. Jade expected great things after graduating. She moved out of home as soon as she could, to a little apartment in a run down city.

Her apartment was so small- she didn't have anything but a kitchen, bathroom and bed in it. But that was how she liked it. Her double bed with almost a million white pillows on top. Her white comforter that she never made neat. And the soft woollen blanket that she cuddled each night, ever since she was 3. She had books scattered around the floor beside her bed. And that was about the only thing she had in her apartment. All her art supplies were kept within her studio.

A tiny room, probably the size of your bedroom. It was further down the street from her apartment. It was a block that the public eye would see it as awful, but Jade saw it as beautiful- She saw character within it. All around her studio, she has canvases- both used and fresh. All her paints were gathered on the desk that centred the room, and there were random sculptures scattered around. Sometimes when Jade worked, she would turn the music on her speakers up so loud that she had constant noise complaints. But that was how she lived. And she was barely getting by.

Jade's drawings and paintings weren't selling as much as they used to. She didn't know why. She wouldn't have cared if it wasn't the thing buying her food to eat and a place to sleep. She had always wanted to be apart of a big company and draw and design for them. That was her dream. Or even just to have a small business all to herself that was running just enough to get her by. She never wanted to have lots of money, she just wanted enough. Nothing extra.