The Artist And The Spectre

Chapter 6

Rowan's hazel eyes glimmered as she surveyed the landscape around her.
The sky was pink and orange, the deep blue ocean streaked with white and gold.

In the distance the town was a collection of little dollhouses perched along the shore, with their little balconies and colorful paints and quaint little stone walls snaking around the gardens.
Inland, the forest spread beneath her like the hill's own cloak, and further away still a vast prairie dotted here and there by fluffy white sheep.

For the first time in a long, long time the young artist took in the sights and felt her chest swell with warmth and wonder.

"Woah."
She exhaled, combing her fingers through her windswept hair.
"This- this is beautiful, Charlie."

"Indeed." From the corner of her eye Rowan saw that her new companion was laying back against a tree, head reclined on her own shoulder as she basked in the warm glow of the dying sun. Her usual playful demeanor had relaxed into something more quiet and contemplative; almost, she thought, bittersweet. 

"I'm glad it's to your liking."

"I don't think there's a world where it wouldn't be, really," Rowan replied unthinkingly, only half-listening as she looked around for a conveniently-shaped rock to sit on. She plopped down, trimmed down her pencil with her trusty boxcutter and swung open her sketchbook, drumming the butt of her instrument at the edge of the page as she studied the scenery.

This sincere outburst elicited a satisfied smirk in new girl; which had a way of twisting Charlie's exquisite doll-like features into something sharper, almost feline.

"So I see."

She pushed herself off the bark and glided to Rowan's side, feigning nonchalance by  looking ahead at the landscape. The young artist glanced up at her and cleared her throat.

"Uh. You can... watch. If you want. I don't mind."
Mentally cursing herself for her awkwardness, she stooped her shoulders forwards and bent her head down to hide her expression from scrutiny, beginning the first outline of the painting-to-be.

Charlie didn't hover over her shoulder as Ava had done, but her eerily intense eyes followed attentively every move of the pencil on the page. She hummed, raising one of her eyebrows a fraction above the other.

"How long have you been drawing for?" 
Rowan started a bit at the question, biting the inside of her cheek as she thought.

"I'm not sure actually. I think I've always had a bit of a... compulsion(?), to capture what I see."
The sentence trailed off, and the young girl started to fidget a bit.

"Does that make sense?"

The corners of Charlie's mouth twitched up, her blue eyes crinkling a little. She nodded.

"I do believe it does."
She sat down beside her, resting her cheek in her hand as she alternated between watching the sunset and Rowan's work. The latter couldn't help but feel like it was rude not to ask a single question, so after a bit of thought she blurted out:

"Ehm, so how did you find this place?" She gestured vaguely at the little hilltop over the cliffs they were sitting on.

"There's no path leading here at all."

A moment of followed where not a muscle on Charlie's face seemed to move. The other girl kept her gaze forward, the warm light highlighting the veins of gold and emerald tangled in the deep blue of her eyes.

"When I still lived here," she said, "I liked to play in the forest with my younger siblings. I know every inch of these woods."

"You must've lived here a while, then!"

The girl's pale lips thinned.

"Not as much as I would've liked to."

Her head angled itself towards Rowan, and in a blink her self-assured, brilliant grin was back like someone had flicked on a switch.

"What about you? What brings you here? You don't seem to be local."

It was now Rowan's turn to be evasive, although she went about it in a much more obvious and rather graceless fashion. After coughing a few times and a few silent moments, she settled on telling her she had been staying at her uncles' for a week or so.

Sensing her discomfort, Charlie quickly dropped the subject (which Rowan was immediately, eternally grateful to her for).

"Oh really? How are they? Are you enjoying your stay?"

"They're both very nice people. Uncle Omar is sweet and funny, and Yasmin really tries to look out for me, you know?" She smiled.

"You really wouldn't think this is the first time I met them!"

Oh no. 
Rowan's eyes went wide with the realization of having said too much. Her gaze timidly darted towards her companion. Charlie stared at her a mixture of curiosity and nonchalance before swinging a leg over the other and looking ahead.

It seemed as if she were saying:  I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. But if you want to tell me, I'll listen.

Rowan's shoulders, who had climbed up to her ears, slumped back in relief.

They quietly watched the sea swallow the red crown of the sun, silently enjoying each other's company while the salty wind whispered through the trees.