"You are the worst boy, Theodore Laurence."
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For centuries, humankind has used the stars. Whether it be for navigating across unfamiliar oceans, for preserving myths and legends of great heroes who were bestowed a spot in the heavens by the gods...
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THE SPACIOUS ART studio Aunt March had rented out for Amy was beginning to feel like a tomb of good memories and artistic passion. Dozens of masterpieces were stacked along the walls with thick canvas sheets draped over them, hiding them away from ever seeing the light of day. A handful of half-finished projects were propped up on their easels, but their surfaces were as dry as bone and begging for the touch of a brush. The walls were suffocating and overbearing, and it all reminded Amy March too much of the little garret she had spent so many years of her childhood playing pretend in. She had thought the time of dressing up in disguises and acting as if she was someone else had long since been left in the past, but as she looked around the cluttered and disorganized studio, she couldn't help but feel like she was still putting on an act.
Amy sulked around the studio, tidying up here and there as she felt her burning passion for art begin to flicker out like a dull candle in her chest. Charlotte's encouraging words echoed in her brain, but she couldn't find it within her to listen. She felt like a failure. She felt like a fraud. She didn't have long to reflect on all of this however, as the door to the art studio soon creaked open and an all too familiar figure walked in.
"Hello, Amy!" Laurie entered with a contrite smile, but Amy didn't turn to look at him.
"I don't want to see you." Amy muttered as she picked up a handful of paintbrushes. Her latest masterpiece stared back at her, begging to be finished. But Amy averted her eyes and kept organizing her discarded art pencils, brushes and jars of paints. She pulled a face as Laurie followed her, trying to grab her attention.
"Amy, don't be mad at me. I'm sorry for how I behaved. Please? Forgive me?" Laurie frowned, trailing behind her as she moved through her studio in a hazy cloud of annoyance for the man she considered to be her brother.
She raised a critical eyebrow. "Have you been drinking again?"
"Why are you being so hard on me?" Laurie whined.
"Well, someone has to do it." Amy snapped. Irritation was turning her cheeks pink.
Laurie sighed and slumped down in one of the chairs scattered around the studio. His gaze flickered over the paintings of vast, green landscapes and static life paintings of bowls of colorful fruits. Amy's talent was as clear to him as the sky was blue. "So when do you begin your great work of art, Raphaella?"
A slight scoff left her lips. "Never." Disappointment and loathing traced her face as she drew her eyes away from the collection of paintings she had been avoiding looking at.
Laurie scrunched his nose up in confusion. "'Never?" What? Why?"
Amy twirled a pain brush around her fingers absentmindedly as she thought aloud. "I'm a failure. Jo is in New York, being a writer, and I am a failure." She felt like a fraud in her canvas smock, surrounded by the decadence and brilliance of Paris. She had taken lessons with the finest painters Aunt March's money could buy, surrounded herself with the most influential of minds, and commanded her paintbrushes and charcoal pencils with the cunning will she had possessed since her earliest childhood, but none of it seemed to matter. She still felt unequipped, unsuccessful, and unlucky.
