A Jar of Fallen Stars

Portrait

It was late that night, late enough that I needed the light on that night to be able to see my work.

With a pencil behind one ear and a spare paintbrush clenched in between my teeth, I laid down long, wide strokes with a paintbrush as the rain pattered on the roof just above me.  I smiled a bit as I saw a flash of light outside my attic window and thunder crashed in the distance.

After briefly watching lightning flash in the distance, I turned back to my easel and continued putting strokes on the canvas in front of me.  I hope it turns out alright, I thought to myself absently as the watercolor ran on the wet canvas a bit.  If it doesn't, that's okay, I suppose.  It doesn't have to be perfect, and at least I'll have painted something.

There was another crack of lightning, louder than the last, and I jumped a bit in surprise.

After it had passed, I let out a breath of apprehension, and turned back to the easel, only to find that I had smeared a long streak of the wrong color halfway across my canvas.  "Ugh, great," I muttered, grabbing a wet rag from the crate beside me and wiping off the dripping red paint.

Suddenly, I heard the familiar creaking noise of someone walking up the stairs, and my heart pounded in my chest.  Oh, no...

"You know, it's like midnight?" The voice of my older brother came from the stairwell, followed by the man himself.  "Why are you still up?"

I sighed, shaking my head as I turned back to my painting.  "Hello to you too," I said sourly as I finished wiping away the red paint and putting down dark green over it.

He chuckled, sitting down on a crate nearby, a tired sort of half-smile on his face as he studied me.  "I should have known... late night painting again?"

I turned around, glaring at him.  "It's better than being kept up by your late night activities," I said, an edge to my voice.  "At least I'm doing something productive."

He blinked, opened his mouth, and then closed it as I irritably returned to my painting.  There was a long silence between the two of us before he finally asked: "So... what are you painting?"

I bit my lip, frowning as I studied the canvas in front of me.  "I do know... but at the same time I don't."

"So it's abstract?"

I scoffed.  "No.  Not abstract.  I've got more interesting things to paint than splatters and lines and circles," I muttered with a bit of a vengeance as I put down more green, and then some yellow.  "No... I... it's hard to explain, but what I mean is that it's not really clear what purpose this painting has yet."

"... Oh."  He sounded incredibly meek.

I raised an eyebrow as I turned around to look at him, smirking.  "Is that too much for your tiny brain?"

"A little," he admitted, chuckling a bit nervously.

The smirk faded from my face as I turned back to the easel again, and I heaved an enormous sigh.  "Why are you up here?" I murmured.  "You never talk to me, or spend time with me, or anything at all.... ever.  Why now?"

He sighed as well.  "I don't know.  I guess I just wanted to be with my sister.  Do I need a reason?"

I bit my lip as there was another faint rumble of thunder.  "I guess I can live with that," I said softly before dipping my brush into the blue watercolor and starting to bring more color to the portrait of my brother I'd been working on this whole time.

"Okay," he said softly.  "If that's the case.. can I stay?"

"... sure."

And so, for a time, it was just the two of us in my attic studio, listening to the rain on the roof as I painted.