Window to the Heart

(Contains themes of depression and an instance of eye horror.)

Forty-five degrees. A right angle. Inversion, and then reflection. Her fingers clutched the canvas and stained its spines in a panoply of hues as she twisted the angles, attempting to make sense of what she saw. She did it a hundred and one times, attempting to see every angle and every possible interpretation of her work. How long had she been here, held above and apart the world? Old projects sat abandoned against the walls by dust choked file cabinets and supplies. Her clothes blended into the tile floor, a brown smock smothering her baggy cocoon of cotton. Layers upon layers wrapped around an emaciated frame sullen and wraith-ish.

On perches from without her mind, only a pristine blankness could be witnessed upon the canvas, stretching out as snowfall does on a day where school was closed. Her hands fell to her side, jostling the crooked brush resting on the stack of crates she had brought from her old home. Acrylic paints dried nearby, caps cracked in endless waiting.

"Is today the day?" The canvas inquired.

"I don't... it's not right yet."

"Do you know what you want to make?"

She shook her head fitfully.

"Oh. That's okay then. If it doesn't feel right, then it doesn't feel right. I get it! Making a choice would mean you didn't make the other choices. Then you'd be in a world you don't want. Easier to dream about it then risk it all, yeah?"

She slowly rocked her head in befuddled agreement. The world was growing cold and her stomach was drawing empty. Perhaps it was time to put it up again and try tomorrow.

Before she went to pick it up however, a melody harpooned her thoughts forcing her attention out of the window. Her neck ached from the new angle, but some force compelled each step to point towards the open fresh sky.

Outside her studio on the curb down below, the source of the bouncing swing skipped and jived upon the curb. An empty hat laid nearby. A busker he might call himself, as the makeshift coffer was being filled with coins and currency. Dressed in a coat bearing the marks of a tricky life, he was an older man. Yet that didn't stop the whistling trill to slide out of his lips. But the crowd was waiting for something, and the painter felt too there was something she wasn't seeing. Her hand crammed her eyes, rubbing exhaustion from them only for the sight to have changed before her.

From his back, a black instrument case was produced. It wasn't anything fancy itself, but how he changed when those latches were flipped! Suddenly his whistling mutated into a boisterous melody filled with an energy it could express on its own. His hands flourished and disappeared behind the lid, only for him to be holding his tool in bright brown and green feathers that sprouted across his arms. The wings twisted in ways his arms had previously attempted to, making a flash of color and noise.

"Keep to the beat people! Cmon, dance along!" His lips curled to the mouth piece. A trombone made of finely polished black brass belted his wizened heart as he dipped about on his own beat. The fingers curled and danced across the valves. The joy was only climbing as his new hooves tapped the bare pavement into a stage made for him. Extra hands sprouted from his sides to resume the old clap back into the beat for added percussion, the air rippling as if the notes became stones in a pond. From her vantage, the girl in the window saw a new tail lash itself out to the beat.

She wasn't alone in the audience; others had come to his show. While the more mundane passed him by, others in the motley crowd were far more engrossed. For every confused or even disgusted scoff, a few more were touched by the man's performance. Smiles warped faces into snouts, happiness in their eyes convinced the body that it needed more to express their sheer joy. But the painter didn't feel their same infectious glee high in her tower. As the crowd only grew, she closed the window quietly.

The empty canvas welcomed her back politely. "Don't worry, you'll figure it out soon enough. Maybe stay here a bit more. Clear your mind." It spoke in her own voice now, a crisp and even tone. As she sat back down the emptiness spilled out upon the world around her much like the sigh that crawled from her teeth. Seconds poured into minutes. The pale leeched onto her skin and clothes turning them to lead. Was it worth it, to make? Would anyone like what she had to show, and did she even have anything to put there? Slowly, her form was becoming indistinguishable from the background of her workplace.

But behind her eyes, resistance had sparked. A part of her brain was moving within her skull, twisting and turning with no limbs of its own to express the wordless feeling it held inside. Just a single ember of caught from the busker's torch, but it was enough to spur movement in her fingers. The knobbled brush was staunchly resisting the leeching, yet her acrylics had been rendered into pale things - not enough to bring the color back.

As the painter stared at her brush, her eyes shimmered. The mind worked with the heart to steal the chance, working in unison to conjure forth images within the eyes. Echoes of her heart, once shut off, had been cracked open and danced with colors that existed nowhere else in the world. She craned back her head, and brought the brush high. The white empty world she saw was slowly dominated by the fine bristles of the brush before it plunged into the swirling colors that formed in the well of her eyes.

Her face was streaking with trails of vibrant hues. Greens born of digital victories, blues poured from endless fascination, and a nameless pink that glowed with the taste of potential. The brush flew across the world and the world redefined itself. The easel began to dance on chicken legs and the clock returned the hours it stole from her. The fingers clutching the handle blurred into claws and the bare tile cracked into grasses of blues and reds which caressed a winding tail of a snake. Her eyes continued to outpour the endless fuel, and with each stroke more colors were conjured. The canvas was utterly gone, and the color encroached upon the window she shut. The frame buckled, the glass protested until with a final cry of defeat it fell into shape as a ladder spilling out to the world below.

The busker looked up, antennae twitching at this unfamiliar emotion wafting from above. But to his warm surprise, a creature made of dreams slid down the exit. For a moment the crowd was taken aback by the beast; the vanished canvas twitched in anticipation. The chimera draped in her own palette twitched at the stares, leathery wings of paper folding in and out anxiously. The swirling ink of her giant eyes threatened to recede to the wave of pressure. Luckily, the tension was shattered by the man.

"Welcome to the show girly! Looking good! That uhhhh..." He pointed to the colorful window leading to her studio, crowded with the concerned furnishings and half finished thoughts. "That yours?"

She looked up, then back to the mile with two smiles that spread across her old face like cracks, revealing a new happiness beneath to match her eyes.

"I think it is now. Are you gonna keep playing?"

The man laughed and twirled his instrument. "I wouldn't be me if I didn't!"