Amentia

Chapter 1 - A tree-like drawing

Liverpool, England.

Nina turned the alarm off with her eyes closed. She spent several minutes stretching, her joints cracking as she did so, while she tried to properly wake up. She wasn't particularly excited to get up, as she was feeling a bit frustrated with her work. She grunted and protested like she used to when she was little, turning her back to the alarm clock with the sheets over her head, as if the clock was the parent she was trying to hide from. There was no parent present, but she imagined the clock splitting in half right under the digital numbers and opening up like a mouth to speak to her.

"Don't think I don't see you under the sheets there, girl," the clock said, its tone a comical distortion of her mother's voice. "You're too old for this kind of thing."

Nina turned around to smile at the talking clock. A row of buttons above the numbers moved to make a frowning face, which Nina found so amusing she actually chuckled out loud.

"Just five more minutes, Timey," Nina said to her old companion.

"Oh, don't you start with that again, you're a grown woman. Get up already," replied Timey and closed its mouth, turning back to its original, solid state. There would be no conversation this time, it seemed. As usual, the clock had the final word, much like her mother, so Nina had no choice but to get out of bed. Still, she enjoyed teasing it; it always put her in a good mood.

She thought about her work while she brushed her teeth. Although rewarding, illustrating was a difficult job and it required a lot of patience. She was still quite new to the whole process and was struggling to get comfortable in it because she was used to drawing for herself, but at least it was more interesting than greeting cards. While she respected greeting cards, they simply lacked a lot of personality, which is what made drawing so fun for Nina. But illustrating allowed her to have a bit more creative freedom, even though it meant she had to follow someone's ideas of theme and style, which was something she had never been particularly keen on. It was an exciting challenge.

She eyed her drafts spread on the table while holding her coffee mug with one hand and a toast with the other. The trees still didn't seem right, and the princess' hair wasn't lovely enough, according to the editor. That had been one of the vaguest comments she had ever heard, but it had also somehow made perfect sense.

Pursing her lips, she drank the last sip of coffee, left the mug on the table, and picked up a pencil. She finished eating her toast without noticing while she sketched three different sets of hair hoping one of them would please the editor. When she looked up from the table, she realized two hours had passed since she had sat there; time really flies when you're stressing about your art. She took a break, stretching her wrist, cracking her knuckles, and eyeing the new drafts closely. There wasn't much else she could do for these sketches until she heard the editor's opinion, so she cleaned them up a bit, scanned them and sent them in an email.

She leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head. She hated the waiting. To distract herself, she went out to do some grocery shopping, counting her pennies carefully. She sighed with relief when she arrived back home and saw the reply email on her computer. It was the second set of hair, then. Well, at least part of her frustration was over. The trees still posed a problem, though; and they were an important part of the book, so they had to be perfect. So after lunch, she left her flat to go to Greenbank Park to get some inspiration. It was spring, so the trees and the flowers were at their brightest and most colorful. She walked around a bit, stopped to look at the lake, but eventually sat down in her favorite area: the Old English garden. She sat on a bench under a green, leafy tree, from where she had a perfect view of the wooden arch with plants for a roof. She'd always thought it was dreamy-looking spot. She was surrounded by perfectly-mowed grass and beautiful flowers, as well as other trees of different colors. If she didn't get any inspiration to draw trees from here, she wouldn't get it anywhere.