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[failure]

Hello, I'm stuck in an empty office w/ no work for the next six hours so I'm bringing back the old school Drabble meme.

1. Tag in
2. Leave prompts
3. Write

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Mari-Silas - art

[failure]

"What is this," Marnie asked, eying the wall of Mari's storeroom. She'd been exploring, flipping through her neighbour's paintings the way some people flip through records. Mari kept the paintings in her storeroom carefully labelled and exhibited, usually, but this one had no markings, stayed up in a corner of the room, apparently meant to occupy as little space as possible. Flopped on the sofa she kept pushed against a wall of the room, Mari half opened an eye, then closed it again.

"Oh, nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing. It looks like a drawing of a dog on fire."

"It's good you've learned to identify your animals."

"Oh, hush. Why do you have a child's drawing of a dog on fire?"

"I have a lot of paintings," Mari pointed out, pointed to the boxes, pointed to the walls, the shelves. "Better ones than that. More interesting."

"Yes, but these are of people," Marnie said, waving impatiently at the boxes. "This is the only non-human painting you seem to own!" Mari let out a bark of dark laughter. "Obviously non-human," Marnie added, wanting to roll her eyes. "Plus it's so...unskilled. Everything else in your collection seems to be professional, but this..."

"It's a self-portrait," Mari interrupted suddenly, then shrugged as though she was surprised at her own voice.

"By the dog?" Marnie asked, doubtfully.

"Yes," Mari hesitated. She could still see him, panting heavily, setting fire to the grass. So eager to please. "He saw I was getting paintings. Of people I loved. So he made one of himself. And I drew one of me for him. But he ate that one."

The last time she had been able to smell smoke without the tight band of fear wrapping around her chest and choking her - the only time after the Hour had been attacked by the Citadel - that had been with Silas. She missed that ridiculous dog, but it was too much to suppose that he was still alive, still here somewhere. She missed him, missed being part of his pack. But growing up for Mari has always meant losing, whether she is seventeen years old or five hundred and seventeen. She does not expect to see him again, just as she expects to feel that tight grip of fear around her airway at the smell of smoke.

"I like the frame," Marnie was saying. "Little dogs! Chasing each other around the wood!"

"Yes," Mari said. "I thought he'd like that touch."