Cities that Never Sleep

xii

Katherine watched Finn as he painted, sat hunched over the cafe's counter, and using scratch paper as his canvas and coffee as his paint. It was the first time he was experimenting with coffee, but he still had no idea what he was actually going to paint with it.

Finn played around with the coffee, creating thick strokes across the paper. Katherine watched rather intrigued, as she caught herself studying the elegant movements of his slender hands instead of studying the chemical reactions of organic chemistry. Some streaks were dark, others lighter from the addition of cream. The color scheme was interesting to her-it was all merely brown, but somehow Katherine was fixated by each shade.

"Why don't you try?" Finn caught Katherine staring, and held out the paint brush in front of her.

Katherine stared at it for a moment, but obliged as her hands moved on their own. Almost cautiously, she took the paint brush from Finn.

He slid one of the cups of coffee he was using towards her. She dipped the brush into the cup slowly, and then watched as she stroked the brush across the page.

For some reason Katherine liked the feeling of the brush against the paper, of how the shade of brown gradually got lighter as it dried.

Finn didn't interrupt Katherine, even though her mind was somewhere else. Lost in the world of art, perhaps. There was a first time for everything.

Yet merely watching her paint his already-painted canvas, her eyes radiating with something other than determination or discipline for once, Finn thought that maybe, he finally found his muse.