Team Catradora

54 -Pieces

The time passed way too fast for Adora's liking. Between her Facebook searches, her time with Razz, and exploring Mysticore, Adora found herself with little free time. It would have helped if she wasn't glued to her phone, but it was hard not to be. She found herself unable to pull away, not whenever she googled Mara, she learned so much about her and Hope. It was still so strange to think their names. Mara and Hope. She committed them to memory, and even printed out a picture of the three of them. She bought a small frame, and kept it nearby. 

Everything was going so good, and there was just one more thing Adora wanted to learn from her visit. The internet she could always do later, but here, she had Razz and her home to explore. And she was determined not to waste it.

 She turned to Aria. "Hey, did you come by some paints in storage? I was thinking maybe, if you weren't using them..."

"I think I saw some, but I'm not sure where," Aria said. "Let's look."

There were boxes upon boxes in storage, but Aria rifled through them easily. She handed her a box, in the back. "These are less recent. I think you should look in there."

Adora nodded. Inside the box was a bunch of small items-she went through them, and most of the were nick-knacks. Snow globes, pet unicorns, etc. She went through another box, and another, but none yielded what she needed. Eventually, Glimmer, and Bow joined in, and they all found all sorts of treasures. 

"Look at this..." Glimmer pulled out a stuffed horse, and Adora squealed.

"Horsie!" She pressed the toy to her chest. He was soft, his white fabric threadbare, and his stuffing loose and missing in some areas. But something about holding him felt so right. Adora pressed his head to her chest, breathing in the dust from the box. "I never thought I'd see him again." She laughed. "Can I take him?"

"Sure," Aria said, smiling.

"What box did you get this from?" Adora walked over, and found a box filled with toys. Most of which she didn't remember, but there were a few stuffies she recognized, though not as good as Horsie. She hadn't realized she was still holding him till her nails dug into his stuffing-apparently some of his seams had gone loose, and she hadn't noticed at first. 

There were a lot of horses. "Wow," Bow said, "You really loved ponies."

"They're so cute!" She squeezed horsie a moment before setting him down. "This was worth it just to see...thank you guys!"

"Of course," Glimmer said. "Let's find more!" She gestured to a box, smaller than the rest. She lifted it carefully. "What's in here?"

"Razz is going to give it to you went you left," Aria said, from the back. At the sound of that, Glimmer set it back where she found it, careful not to break it. Boxes shifted in the distance as she moved. Aria cleared her throat. "I think I found what you're looking for."

Not only were the paints there, but so was paper-both used and unused. Adora held it like an artifact. there there were, the paintings in the post. 

Adora didn't hesitate to get to work. Some paints had dried, but the ones that didn't were still clearly well used. Adora googled tips fr beginner painters, and got to work. With five blank papers, she didn't have much to do. What she found was this art took time to dry. In between, she chatted with everyone. But for the most part, she longed to get to her work, to paint where her mom had painted, too. 

She tried to paint trees like Mara did, but her trees came out bigger. Her hand wasn't as steady as Mara's, so the paint looked squiggly when it was supposed to be straight, and bled into the page. She had added too much water, she guessed. But then she tried painting a tree by outlining it's shape with water, the rest of the page being completely dry. That worked better. 

Somehow, the paper, too, helped. Making it wet didn't saturate it like in her tenth grade art project. That didn't mean Adora's painting's looked good, but somehow painting was more enjoyable to look at.

She painted, long, and dilligently. She barely heard anything, which was so opposite to anything she did. But it felt good, and right, and like, maybe, she was connecting. 

Even if she was bad, she needed this. She needed to paint. 

As she worked, someone was talking. 

"I'm just saying, dad, maybe I could do something different...maybe take a year off...I found something I really enjoy, and I want to take time to explore it..."

Adora put headphones on. She didn't need to pry. But it sounded like things were going great, for not only her. 

It was hard to let them dry without adjusting the colours. She needed to wait, apparently, so they wouldn't look like mud. It seemed she still needed to work on that, because she kept finding herself tweaking the shapes till they no longer looked like, well, shapes.

When the paintings finally dried, the colours were too lumpy, too abstract, and too muddy to look like anything. Or maybe she was being too hard on herself. Maybe they looked like mud. But hey, they were Adora's lumps of colour...or mud. And she was having too much...she wasn't sure fun was the right word. She still felt a need to keep painting, so she tried again on more papers. On some, she drew over the painting with a black sharpie. That was a mistake. The dog she tried to draw looked like a duck, but hey, it was her duck.

She was taking these paintings home.

"Before you go," Razz said, from out of nowhere. Adora jumped, but Razz took no notice to her previous concentration on Bow and the painting. She handed her a box. The box. "This is for you."

"Oh...that's so awesome, thank-but oh my god, I just realized...I didn't get you anything." Adora facepalmed. "Of course I should have got you something, I'm so sorry-"

"Eh, it's alright. What else do I need?" She pointed towards the storage room. "I have enough junk."

"Well, thank you." Adora smiled, hugging the box. Glimmer was right, it was really light. Lighter than a pillow. "I really appreciate it."

"Open it."

The lid slipped off easy. Underneath a bunch of Styrofoam lay a sword, or, well, a hint of a sword. Only the top of the sword was present, it's blade short and shattered like glittering glass. The jewel in the center reflected her face. Adora smiled at it. 

"This is...awesome! Was this something from your storage room?"

"Yes." Razz said. "I think Mara'd want you to have it. And besides, it's a heck of a lot better than that piece of plastic you have."

"Thank you." Adora embraced her. "This is...this is perfect." It felt familiar, but in a different way. Though she had never seen it before, it felt like it was always meant to be hers. But then again, she was probably reading too much into it. 

Regardless, she would treasure it close to her heart.