Once Upon a Story [ INCONSISTENT UPDATES ]

Mūsa (2)

❝ 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘳; 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 ❞

Word count: 661

— 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 🏛️ ❞

"Where is my muse?" Mirage wondered, gazing at his painting, eyes still full of wonder. She woke up alone and cold, feeling oddly empty as she stared at his portrait. For hours she laid on her side, fixated on every aspect of it.

Where are you? Mūsa. She longed for him and sighed deeply. Yet, not a breath was heard.

"Where am I?" The man wandered, confused by the change of scenery. He remembered sleeping with the painter, but when his eyes saw the light, she was nowhere in sight. It was dim in the corridors and bizarrely cold despite the summer light that gleamed through the windows.

"I am far from where I was," he said to himself.

"Hardly," a voice replied. The man turned around, meeting a woman's eyes, long and pointed like those of a fox. The left corner of her lip pulled into a sultry smirk, unpleasant for him to witness. His instinct made him wary; he would not trust her. When she held her hand to him, he refused to take it.

"You are not the artist I met," he said to her. The woman dropped her hand, disappointed. Was she waiting for him to jump in her arms, elated because of her charm and plump figure? He saw nothing in her but a vicious succubus, trying to lure him into a trap.

"Let me prove I am better than her." She walked past him and brushed his shoulder, thinking he would fall for her scent. But his skin prickled, repulsed by the touch. Her embezzled dress scratched his skin, ripping at the delicate moisture that kept it shining. He was in no way enchanted.

He followed her with a ghostly silence in his step, entering a room clad in black. Heavy red velvet drapes hung from the windows, with a few candles lighting the sombre dusty room, and nothing but an old easel center. He looked at the canvases covered in dust, and his body felt stressed from the sight; his hairs stood taught like a rope. Yet he stayed, not uttering one complaint. The woman pushed him to his knees and threw him a thick cloth. He looked at it curiously. What was he to do with it?

"Cover yourself," she told him.

He held the fabric in his fists, unable to understand what there was to cover. Where was the sin in his purest form, nude and unshaven? What was there to cover upon his untainted skin? Was there something in her mind so perverse she was sickened with his figure?

Surely, he thought as he stared at the crimson cloth. Only when the valley in his legs hid from the outside did she start her craft, painting this heavy veil over his glazed body. He felt her dissect him apart with her eyes, so aggressively and with disdain. Not once had she laid her long fingers on him, yet he felt violated on every inch of his skin. How vile it was for him to sit there and pose for her immorality.

She retracted the fine tip of her paintbrush and smirked, satisfied with her quick work.

"This will do," she said, flipping the easel to show him the portrait. He was appalled. Never had he felt so much hate for the person he was. She shrank his muscles, painting them to a feeble scrawn; his defined quadriceps became a smooth unit of simplicity, and his embossed abdomen flattened to a single plane.

She reduced his lion pride to that of a prepubescent boy, unable to understand complexity, and he scorned its face. It wasn't him; it was her distortion.
She asked him again, what he thought of it, but what could he tell her? Could he ruin her joy, break her psychosis filled with manic delirium and ideas of grandeur?

Yes, he could. And that's what he told the woman, voice unwavering, "You are not her; you are not my painter."