“Rain and tears,”he whispers, fingers ghosting down my cheek. I pull back slightly, blinking, trying to hold on to the thread of logic.
I’m in no mood for this poetic shit.
I snatch the last sketch from his lap, holding it up in front of me.
This one is definitely different.
In this one, the artist has drawn herself into the scene.
A girl with a braid stands in the corner of the room, almost invisible, sketched in the softest graphite. Her sketchbook is folded into the crook of her arm, a pencil poised in her hand.
But it’s not her I notice first… it’shim.
The man kneels in front of the boy, face contorted, clearly crying—though with all the rain cascading around them, it’s hard to tell which droplets belong to him and which are falling from the sky.
Still, it’s clear.
The girl’s eyes are fixed on the boy. Not the man. Not the tears. Just the boy.
And something about the way she’s drawn herself—so quiet, sopresent—makes my skin crawl all over again.
An eerie feeling seeps from the page. This is not a pretty scene. There’s something chilling here—not just in what’s drawn, but in what’sfelt.
With nothing but pencil, the artist has managed to trap emotion itself—raw and volatile—in the eye of a storm.
And I feel it.
God, do I feel it.
A shiver runs through me as I stare at the boy in the drawing—wide blue eyes fixed on something just beyond the frame.
I try to separate his tears from the rain, but it’s useless. The storm isn’t looming anymore—it’s landed. It’shere. And the boy?
He’s disappearing.
Line by line, drop by drop… he’s being swallowed whole.
I blink.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
But the image only distorts further, the rain overtaking him until there’s nothing left but water and graphite and chaos.
I tear my eyes away from the storm—look back at the girl.
And then my stomach turns.
She’s staring atmenow.
The girl in the sketch.
Right at me.
Bright-green eyes—mismatched. Too vivid for pencil. Tooreal.
