November Will Remember

part III

Finally updated! I've rewritten the previous chapter so please make sure you read it again, if you have the time. I'm very particular on how I want this story to be.

I hope you enjoy this chapter! Please comment and vote if you can <3

i.

Some people say that their art is a reflection of their reality, be it ugly or beautiful, sweet or bitter. With me it's a reflection of my own subconscious— it doesn't exist in the world around me, I don't paint my reality. So she was right, I paint the things I'll never have. Maybe she was giving me an example of herself when I painted her.

But whatever the result of my own hands, my paintbrush, and artistic temperament is, it exists somewhere deep in my mind which I have no control of. My encounter with her yesterday had me understand this. I knew it before already, but having her, especially a stranger tell me this was only a reconfirmation that what I made with my own skill was involuntary.

She was familiar with my parents. Familiar with what happened, she even felt familiar now that I think about it. I don't know how she knew, but she was a stranger to me who I knew for months. She was familiar with my nature. I wasn't a stranger to her.

My eyes keep drifting back and forth from the newspaper and the coffee percolator. Alfredo is showering and it's ten o'clock. I want to take a walk, let my sunburnt skin burn a little more. My skin's darkened by a shade, I've noticed.

Alfredo comes out from his shower, wiping his hair with a towel and grinning at me, "you're in quite a mood, aren't you?"

Maybe I look angry, or pissed off but I'm not. And now, I'm just in deep contemplation.

"Quite honestly, no. I'm just thinking. "

He pours himself a glass of coffee from the percolator and adds some milk. "Best to forget her, Damien. Lillian isn't coming back."

Yes, he knows it too. He knows how upset I've been for many nights because of her. She and her fascination with flowers, especially with the lillies which comes from her name. And now I want to see her. I had reinvited that urge to go over to her dormitory and say hi and ask her about the plants that she grew—the few that we grew together, now have probably died from thirst.

But I can't, I can't fucking go back. Not after the colours on my palette finally bring life to my ideas. I want to blame Lillian for making me colour blind after she left, but I want to thank her for giving me sight to see something that even colour can't create.

  "No it isn't Lillian. It's someone else."

"Moved on, eh? She as hot or pretty as Lillian?" he asks, the last part with a smirk.

I think about what he says, about her being pretty. Her black hair is just plain black and slightly long, no additional gloss or shine, and her olive skin is just as average. She's the type of face that would be a muse to Picasso. She isn't pretty, her hair is too straight and her face isn't ornamented with delicately carved features. It's slightly like a softened square. It's almost as if God himself didn't spend any time on her face, but oh did he spend an eternity on her movement and grace. I see many scars on her arms, and her index finger has a burn mark.

A dancer is an instrument of moving art, she was a different matter though. Her movements spoke of the beauty that she had, which couldn't be seen by the eyes or felt by the hands.

"She has insane amounts of something that I can't spell."

"What?"

"Exactly Alfredo. That's the question, what. What is it that I cannot spell about her that stands out so prominently."