The soothing waft of honey lifted the spring atmosphere over the daffodil park. A young girl adorned in a black blouse and white frilled dress leaned against the tallest tree with a large array of artist equipment. With a concentrated quill gripped in palm and her round spectacles, the girl appeared concentrated like no other artist ever did.
Among these were two massive sketch books filled to the brim with detailed sketches and illustrations of intricately precise human and setting designs. Laid beside her was a large notepad filled with scribbles and phrases written in elegant cursive, detailing an incomplete short story. The supremely talented girl focused her attention on the sketch book, finely tuning the finale to a portrait of a young boy whose face was turned towards his left cheek.
Each sketched line was carefully constructed with a purpose, making the girl a pure prodigy in the fine arts. She blew on the streaks of loose ink on the page, watching the pieces blow away with the daffodils in the wind.
Suddenly, voices of children rang in the distance. The girl gasped in shock, pressing the sketch book against the center of her glasses in shyness. She bolted upright and hid behind the large tree, peeking only to unveil her glance at the children.
The same boy whom she sketched traveled with a pack of three others; one was male and the other two were females. They looked no older than ten. The sketched boy moved through the dirt path with his pockets in hand, curtly turning toward the young girls with an arrogant impression written on his face. He bragged to them about the privileges that he acquired as the heir of a private company, explaining how his rights were much higher than the average human.
The artist gulped down a copious amount of saliva. Feeling as if her chest was about to burst, she closed her eyes and hugged the sketchpad against her chest, wishing herself a small prayer of luck before departing toward him. Once she did, she became the center of attention among the children.
"Hey, look," One of the boys pointed at the artist. "It's that girl again."
Everyone with the exception of one girl with black hair giggled. She looked up at the artist with a neutral expression, watching her descend the hill she sketched upon.
"Okay, I've got a plan when she gets here. Just follow my lead." The sketched boy spoke to the others.
The artist approached the sketched boy, almost appearing reddened like a freshly plucked turnip. She coughed to clear her throat and nodded to herself, appearing to have rehearsed the moment ahead of her.
"Florent," Her shy voice could barely be heard in the scorching fast winds. "I- I made you s-something. Here. Look." She finished by turning her head away from the group, showing the sketch of the young boy named Florent.
"Whoa," Florent said, inspecting the sketch of his exact portrait with more than a hundred percent accuracy to his facial features. The boy and blonde girl beside him were waiting for his remark, but it didn't come. He grabbed the sketchpad and held it close to him as the artist turned away. "Is this... supposed to be me?" He asked.
"Y-Yes," The artist said, cupping her hands and placing them over her eyes. "I... really like you. So I... I drew you."
"This is really... creepy," Florent said, holding the sketchpad near his chest. He scrapped the entire page out and crumbled it up before dropping it to the ground. "You can do much better than that. I've seen better portraits from the servants at my manor. Not from a stupid poor little girl like you."
"Elise likes Florent! Elise likes Florent!" The blonde girl teased, pointing at the artist named Elise.
Stunned beyond disbelief, Elise dove toward the crumpled up drawing of Florent and unraveled it, checking to see if it was truly amateurish. The doubt piled up from Florent's disappointed words made her believe it, causing her to run back to the tall tree in destructive embarrassment. She wanted to disappear off the face of the Earth.
"What a freak," The other boy spoke, turning to Florent. "Come on, let's go home, already. You've got those servants that can make killer drinks, right?"
"Of course," Florent said, moving toward the end of the path with the others. However, he noticed the black haired girl wasn't budging. "Hey, you coming with us?" He asked.
"My home's the other way. I'll see you guys tomorrow at school." The black haired girl said.
"Whatever. See ya." Florent said, turning away and departing to his home.
Elise slid back toward the tree and hid toward the back. She snatched her second sketchpad and quill and dipped the tip in a jar of ink beside her. Her swift and careless movements knocked the ink bottle over, spilling its black contents on a bundle of white daisies to coat it in darkness. She gripped the quill with all of her fingertips, scribbling her passive anger on the notepad until it ripped into shreds with each stroke.
As she ripped from page to page, more detailed drawings of different boys were severely affected, destroying its sacred beauty and perfection. She threw the quill out of frustration before sulking and burying her face in the notepad. Her tears soaked the paper with irreversible damage, wanting nothing more than to sink below the ground and bury herself to death.
Pressing her eyes out of the notepad, she sighed and gazed up at the flowery skies. Pollen entered her nose, causing her to cover her nose as she sneezed a copious amount of green snot. Having no tissue beside her, she used the crumpled up drawing of Florent and wiped her nose before throwing it faraway. Her frail arm strength could barely get it a few meters away.
From above the large tree, the black haired girl who indicated her return to home hung on a large sturdy branch with the folds of her legs hovering her over Elise.
"Yo." She said.
Elise yelped, turning toward the girl with an alarmed expression. Her face was on the verge of exploding in redness. She recognized the girl as part of Florent's crew, adopting a careless mindset toward her. "What do you want?" Her voice cracked beyond embarrassment. "I've had enough already."
The girl extended her arms forward, holding Elise's sketchbook. "Just wanted to give you this back." She said, stepping down with both of her feet.
"You-" Elise's voice cracked as she lunged forward, snatching the sketchpad from the other girl's hands with trembling fingers. Her breath hitched. She cradled it against her chest like a fragile secret, her arms wrapping around it protectively, as if shielding a newborn from the cold. Her eyes darted up, wide and panicked. "You didn't look inside, did you?" she whispered, her voice sharp and low, like a hiss escaping a cornered animal.
The other girl tilted her head, her black hair falling in a sleek curtain over one eye. A smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. "What if I said I did?"
Elise's mouth opened, but no words came. Her cheeks flushed a deep crimson, and her gaze dropped to the floor. "Then..." she murmured, her voice barely audible. Her throat tightened, and she turned away, clutching the sketchpad tighter, with the edges digging into her forearms. "Just... leave me alone."
But the girl didn't move. Instead, she took a step closer, her boots brushing against the grass. "I thought your drawings were cool," she said, her tone light, almost teasing, but not unkind. "They're so different from what I've seen. Too real looking. How did you get them like that?"
Elise stiffened. Her shoulders rose defensively, and she took a step back, her fingers curling tighter around the sketchpad as if it might vanish from her grasp. "It's none of your business," she snapped, betraying the interest of the girl in an instant.
"My kingdom will fall, its ashes will spread across the lands, and my children will reemerge-" The black haired girl curtly stared into a phrase written in Elise's notepad, elegantly in cursive.
Elise lunged forward with a gasp, her limbs moving before her mind could catch up. She dove toward the notepad, using her own weight to press it tightly against her stomach as if her body alone could shield its contents from the world. Her breath came in shallow bursts, chest heaving with panic.
"Stop it!" she cried, her voice cracking under the weight of fear. Her eyes squeezed shut, as though darkness could erase what had just happened. "Go away!" she shouted, her tone trembling with childish intention.
But the black-haired girl didn't flinch. She took a slow, deliberate step forward, her boots brushing softly against the floor. Her voice was calm, almost curious, as if Elise hadn't just screamed at her. "I don't wanna go away," she said, her eyes fixated on her in curiosity. "I wanna see what you made."
Elise turned her head, her breath catching in her throat. Her glasses had fogged over completely with an intense blur clouding her vision. But she didn't wipe them clean. She didn't want to see. Not the girl's face. Not anyone. Not the consequences of what had just been unveiled to the public.
"It… it doesn't mean anything," Elise whispered, her voice barely more than a breath. Her fingers trembled as she slowly turned the notepad outward, revealing the page to the black-haired girl. Her eyes stayed downcast, avoiding the other girl's gaze. "I was just writing."
The black-haired girl leaned in slightly, her expression unreadable, eyes scanning the phrase she had just spoke aloud. "Writing?" she asked, her voice soft. "Like what? A story?"
Elise hesitated, her lips parting as if the answer might escape on its own. She reached up and tucked a strand of her bobbed hair behind her ear, the gesture nervous and mechanical. "Y-yeah," she said, her voice cracking with uncertainty. "I like writing and drawing. It helps distract me from… everything."
Her words hung in the air, fragile and unfinished. She clutched the notepad tighter, as if what she was showing was an utter mistake. But it was too late to retract.
The black-haired girl didn't speak right away. She simply watched Elise as her own gaze softened, and the tension between them shifted from curiosity into kindness. It seemed Elise acknowledged the safety of the situation as well.
"Put me in your story," the black-haired girl said, her voice steady, almost commanding. "Write something about me."
Elise froze. The request echoed in her mind. It was unimaginable. She never expected it.
"W… What?" she stammered, her voice barely audible, as if her own words were impossible to lift.
The black-haired girl took a step closer, her eyes gleaming the might of a challenge. "Put. Me. In your. Story," she repeated each word independently to enunciate. "Write something about me."
"I... I don't know what to say." Elise stammered.
"You can say yes." The black haired girl jested, plopping herself near the tree. "I'm gonna wait."
Elise's joints froze her on the spot. She stood there, hoping that everything the girl said was just a ruse. But after several seconds of awkwardly planting her feet like a statue rooted with age, she sat beside her, eyes glued to the girl's nonchalant face. Grabbing her notepad, she took the previously ink drenched quill and began thinking of anything to write to escape from the tension between them.
Unusually enough, the strenuous tension locked Elise into a concentrated state of mind. She wrote a single sentence describing the girl beside her and showed the notepad to her immediately after, neglecting to look at her. She felt the notepad glide off of her as she turned away.
"The black haired huntress," The girl began, holding in a short chuckle at the sappiness of the statement. "- Invited herself to stay upon the omniscient tree. But little did she know that her presence was unwarranted as she stayed behind to hunt her prey," She turned to Elise with a look of uncertainty. "I dunno what that means."
"Of course you don't," Elise said, snatching the pad. "No one understands. I try so hard every single day to impress Papa, but-"
"I'm impressed," The girl said, nudging Elise. "All those big words and I have no clue what they mean. But they sound cool. Your dad's missing out."
"Really?" Elise asked.
"Yeah. I thought it was cool how you called me a huntress. You know, you're a hundred times smarter than Florent and the others. So I think you should shoot for bigger game."
Elise shrugged, unable to discern the truth of what the girl was saying. She watched as she reached over toward her sketchpad, nabbing it. "Hey, give that back!" She whined, reaching over as the girl gently shouldered her away. "Give it-"
"Whoa," The girl's eyes lit up in awe, flipping through the pad with her thumb. "Look at all these portraits! Jeez, you must have spent years making these!"
"N-No, only a few months," Elise clarified. "We had lessons at school. I make some money off of it, but I purposefully make it worse. To not attract attention."
"You make money off of this?" The girl asked. "But... you don't really look like it."
"I know..." Elise sighed, turning her attention to the sketchbook. "Now give it back!"
The girl stood up and refused to return her sketchpad. "I have an idea. I think people should see your portraits. I bet you haven't been self-promoting at all."
"How could you-"
"Elise, trust me," The girl looked as if she struck an epiphany. "I can get this art on the streets, and people will want to see more! You're going to be famous! A nine-year old prodigy! You'll be all over the newspapers!"
"Hey, wait," Elise bolted up. "I don't know if I really want that. Like I said, I only draw and write for personal enjoyment. No one would understand that."
"You can still enjoy it! But you could get so much more from this experience!" The girl sprinted down the hill and turned around with a cheerful expression amidst her glowing face. "Trust me!"
"Wait!" Elise burned with shame and embarrassment. She wasn't sure whether or not to trust her, for her affiliation with Florent might have meant she could turn her back against her. Was there anything worse than misery at this point? Perhaps she should become a recluse for her Papa, so that no one can ever find her forever.
"I'm not waiting, Elise!" The girl yelled.
Elise stammered, unable to form words. "What's your name!?"
The girl smiled, revealing her pearly white teeth in the sunlight. "Astra!" She introduced. "Astra au Claire!"
"Astra au Claire," Elise whispered to herself. "Astra au Claire."
She sat back down behind the tree and squeezed her cheeks with her sweat riddled palm. Little did she know that the drenched ink dabbled on herself as well. She looked back at the notepad and picked it up. She retrieved the half-spilt ink bottle and scribbled quill and began to write, as a wave of inspiration hit her.