a tattoo exhibit at the louvre

"..."

Eve grinned sheepishly and automatically muttered, "I don't think I can." Flat out rejection. There was no way she could talk about her paintings without sounding like their creator, or her tongue messing up and slipping and revealing who she was somehow. And besides, she appreciated Thorn's deep meanings and all, but hers weren't as philosophical. She just paints them because she had the idea. The idea would always come as the picture itself, not emotions, not words, not thoughts.

But that's probably because outside art, she never really experienced anything dynamic.

Sometimes, that made it hard for her to understand herself. But when she realized that, she thought maybe she'd try to do something after all. She cleared her throat and briefly eyed Thorn, before turning to a painting on the opposite wall.

"Look over here," she said, walking up to the painting with the small black frame. The frame was only meant to go with the silver fur of the painted creature, which looked like a slender western dragon that had fur instead of scales. Nothing more, for her at least. "Quite a majestic picture, don't you think?"

The creature was painted to be lying down calmly on an elevated ground while looking up at the sky. The angle of the picture was from a distance below it. And then the orange and pink clouds behind the creature were to show the afternoon, giving sense to the angled sun rays that made the silver fur glimmer at the tip. The creature had black spots on the head, and black tiger stripes on the back. But even those glowed like the whole thing was of the heavens.

"Think there's something behind this picture?"

She was trying to make a point. That Eve Willows was a simple painter who painted the things she found beautiful. She wasn't idealistic, nor emotional, when working with her art, the only feeling that always exists was either passion or awe, for beauty and for art itself.

"I don't think there has to be any deep meaning here, even if the creature's posture and the elevation of the ground can be interpreted in many different ways. The skies, too, look like they're celebrating the existence of this creature. Maybe it's really like that. But none of that... really mattered in this painting. Eve just... found her to be really beautiful, and preserved this wonderful scene in a canvas. A photograph wouldn't do it as much justice as this."

She shot Thorn a small smile, just before sensing that a figure was approaching them. It was the waiter with her new cup of latte.

"Miss Willows, your drink?"

Ah, never mind keeping her identity secret, she wasn't up to it anymore.

Eve took the cup and said a gentle thank you before the man left. Casually sipping from her hot drink, she turned her eyes back to the painting and gave it another good, scrutinizing look. If only she could touch it, she absolutely would, because she wanted to feel those strokes she made again.

"No." Eve already knew what she was going to ask. She got asked a lot, and it's mostly because... well, she obviously didn't have anything special in her. Her aura would always give that away.

She chuckled a few times, brushing that off. Sometimes, it really gets to her how she was so normal, and she was living with all kinds of beautiful people.

She turned to Thorn then. "I can be philosophical if I want to, honestly. But... most of the paintings I created in this island were made because... ah, maybe I did get a little too carried away with aesthetics. Manta Carlos speaks to me, you know. I just want to... preserve it and its life in the canvas. Because that's all I could do here. Like I said, I don't have powers."

Eve looked around. Maybe they should stop analyzing paintings like they were in art class. She pointed to a table by a window and asked, "Could you join me over there? It's more relaxing to chat while seated, don't you think?" Thorn really piqued her interest, and she wanted to know more about her, about a fellow artist. What kind of art does she do, if she wasn't like Eve?

"Are you being sarcastic, dear? Because there's no 'great' in Eve Willows' name." Eve chuckled, taking another sip from her cup. Her eyes scanned the cafe for one more moment, before they settled on Thorn's. "Will you believe me if I said I'm here for the island itself?" She put her cup down. "I have a regular client who wanted me to paint all kinds of beautiful sceneries. I thought they were his imagination, but he told me about Manta Carlos. I fell in love immediately." There was a glint of excitement in her eyes as she recalled the memory and spoke about it. "I made a deal with him, and he took me here, and I made it my goal to preserve the island on canvas."

She laughed, mostly at herself. The way she was acting was rather unprofessional, but did anyone ever say she had to act professionally here? She loved Manta Carlos and envied its people. That was where all her hype came from.

"Anyway," she waved her hand in front of her, hoping to dismiss the things she said just now. "How about you, Thorn? I want to know how your own art is doing."