She had been at her easel for hours now without lifting her brush. She could see it, her picture - had seen it for months - but had no way to reach it, no hand to touch it. Calm as she seemed, she was in fact seething; frustrated and angry, disappointed in herself for having enough wit to see but not the skills to create. Other canvases burned her periphery and she thought she could hear them mockingly calling her back from her work. She tried to ignore them. They were nothing - fragments of a past she no longer remembered - but it was hard. This new piece, the one for the canvas before her, was the only thing that she needed to hear, and yet it was the one thing that she couldn't. It just wouldn't speak. Every instinct was straining and yet the canvas was quiet, closed as a grave. She could see it and the pictures she wanted - the pictures she needed - to wed to it, but not the way to bring them together. The canvas refused to give her the key.
Something was missing, a spark to ignite it. She had will and imagination, that much was clear, but did she have talent, the skills to create it? The canvases snickered. They knew the answer.
The girl raised her head and looked at the sky through the window above. It was cold, grey as ash, confirming everything she had tried to deny. She considered stabbing the canvas with the brush in her hand, of smashing her easel, throwing her palette to the wall, but she didn't. She found that she couldn't. Roping her darkest aspects together, she then pushed them away, as far as she could, beyond even the canvases stacked on the floor. And so, holding on to the smallest fragment of the image she wanted, she mixed a colour and started to paint.
