The Soul Painter [completed]

-Chapter Nineteen-

Location: Central

There's a painting on the planks that board up the windows now. A big, round sun, made up of thousands of spots of different colors. Mostly different shades of yellow, ranging from orange-yellow to green-yellow, with purples of all shades in spiraling trails away from the center. Some are almost blue, and others are nearly red.

It's amazing. 

Femi is pretty proud of herself, I can tell by the look of satisfaction on her face. That's all I have to go on, because besides the quiet, little "good morning" earlier, she hasn't spoken at all today. 

"What are you planning on painting next?" I ask, pulling a rag through the middle of some fellow's car muffler. He brought in the thing yesterday after hearing the mechanic isn't dead yet, to have some detail work done on it. Mostly cleaning and polishing, starting with the fake chrome trim and now, finishing with the tailpipe.

She shrugs. "I haven't decided yet. I'll probably need a little while to come up with something."

The rag squeaks when I focus my attention on one little speck of tar. 

Her eyes turn to me, and her expression brightens in a revelation of excitement. "I know!"

I blink, and stop my work. "What? You know what?"

"I'll paint you!"

"Me?" I balk at the idea. Paint me? Nope.

"Yes, of course you! Why are you so slow today?"

"You tell me," I mutter, continuing with my task of buffing the shiny tailpipe. I bet that the guy who bought it didn't know it was fake chrome.

"Do you have a board that I could paint on?" She isn't even looking at me anymore. She's painting her wrists instead, covering up the words on her skin in long, graceful swoops of color. 

In a moment of sneaky curiosity, I change the subject. "Does it hurt?"

She frowns, looking up and cocking her head to the side like a dog, as if to make sure that she heard me correctly. "What? The paint?"

"The words."

She glances down at her arm, eyes trailing over a halfway painted over "forever," but I can only see the "forev" part. 

"Well, the words themselves don't hurt, but they're annoying. Now the appearing of the words, that hurts. Kind of like a wasp sting, but a bit more intense, and it lasts longer."

I nod, thinking. "So kind of like getting a tattoo?"

"Yeah. Like that. I've never gotten a tattoo, but I bet that's what it's like."

"When did they appear?" I've set down the rag and muffler now to lean forward on my elbows, the wheels in my head turning. 

She shrugs, dropping her eyes. "I've had the ones that tell about me for as long as I can remember, but they've gradually multiplied so that now they're all over my arms. New ones appear all the time."

"You haven't ever shown it."

"When one feels pain for their whole lives, they learn to befriend it."

I look away when she looks up. Ouch. "What kind of words have been popping up lately?"

"A few different ones. They always correspond with my emotions, so a couple weeks ago they were things like broken, hurt, or gray. There's lots of gray. But lately—" she holds up her arm for me to read the words above her elbow, tiny words, "—things more like this. See these? 'Loved,' 'safe,' 'hopeful.' I've never gotten safe before. It came right before I fell back to sleep after my nightmare the other night."