Art Class 101 - A Bowl of Fruit & Other Ojects D'Art

A new class at a new school. She had to be brave. She had to go. She had been early and had found a spot in the back of the class, near the window. At least that made her feel sort of safe, cornered by walls. It meant she didn’t have to worry about people staring at her from the back. Staring, judging her work. As if she wasn’t nervous enough as it was.

Lorelei had started to fill in her canvas with soft blue hues and white puffy clouds. In one corner she added little ravens, flying off into the sky. A moment of silence. She hesitated, unsure of herself. She wanted to add in the radiant light, the angelic wings. Put the image that was in her mind on to the canvas. But she was deadly afraid she’d ruin what she had made so far, if she made one wrong move.

In the corner of her eye, she spotted the tall teacher draw nearer. She slumped in her seat, willing herself to be invisible. She hadn’t really interacted with him yet, aside from a greeting she had mumbled upon entering, but he seemed intimidating. Luckily, he stopped at a nearby table and she could relax again.

But then she heard him go off against the other kid for painting something mundane and uninspiring. Then he addressed the entire class – and she felt her heartbeat triple in speed. What about her work? What had she done so far? A blue sky, some ravens... Basically nothing. Lorelei nervously ducked down, reaching for her backpack. As she got back up, she bumped her head against the desk, wincing in pain. With trembling hands, she put the bag on her lap and started to zip it open.

It looked like her "summer vacation" was over. Or at least, the days Allen and Wren had declared to be vacation days, even though they had clearly not been that. Shhht. Wren was happier living with the idea of freedom, let her. Because today she had again been trapped by the shackles of what others called "a timetable", aka the device of doom that assigned you to classes and teachers, a piece of paper that was cursed so that it was capable of forcing people to go to their classes. Her mortal enemy. She hadn't thought they would cross paths again so soon, but it could not be helped... En garde, you stupid piece of dead trees!

This complicated, yet beautiful, line of existential reasoning was the reason Wren would have given the teacher as an excuse for her blatantly late arrival, were it not that she was actually not that late in class. It was like five or ten minutes after the bell. Wren had intended to defy the curse of the timetable - by arriving shamefully late - but instead her lack of direction in this new place had brought her right to this doorstep. Oh, woe is me.

Sure, Wren had contemplated turning around - even though she had already been spotted - and walking away, only to return half an hour later, but something, someone, made her change her mind. That small, nervous wreck of a person in the back of the class. Wren couldn't help it. She felt like the shark in Jaws when he spotted another unsuspecting surfer. This trembling girl looked like the perfect prey for a bully like her. So instead of leaving, Wren decided to take her chances and look for entertainment in this classroom.

'Hello!' Wren greeted everyone in class cheerfully. 'Sorry I'm in time, sir... I mean, I'm late. I'm new here, got lost and stuff. But I'm ready to go now! Wren Máraz, present!' She couldn't just go provoking the teacher just yet, she had to stay in class long enough to scope out her new prey. So Wren swallowed her genius remark, corrected herself, and smiled at the teacher. She was ready to express herself, yeah, but maybe not on a piece of paper.

She casually walked all the way to the back in the class and sat herself down next to the pale girl, who was nervously trying to draw something. Like, a sky with birds? Wren didn't really care anyway. So, instead, she dumped her bag on the floor, took out her art supplies, secretly laughed to herself as the nervous girl bumped her head into her desk, and then innocently turned to introduce herself. 'Hey! I'm Wren, nice to meet you,' Wren beamed, with an almost suspiciously nice smile. It worked most of the times - the first time people met her, anyway.

She had initially planned to ask the girl next to her what the assignment was to start the conversation, but just before she had started to introduce herself, the teacher started nagging about the work of another student. A bowl of fruit. A BOWL of FRUIT??! How dared he draw something as mundane as that.. Or whatever. So, the take home message here was that the assignment was to draw something "that inspired you". Allen? Nah, just kidding haha. No, she had to dig a little deeper than that. Wren actually thought this assignment was not so bad. She hated concrete directives, like draw a perspective drawing of the person sitting in front of you, or anything that actually had her display her non-existent arts and craft skills. But something like this, she could do anything as long as she could back it up with a believable story. Sounded suspiciously like her daily life.

The girl next to her seemed about ready to cry her eyes out about the mundane-ness of her sky with birds, so Wren decided to comfort her. First make them feel good, then rip them apart. The mindset of a hunter. As the girl was zipping open her backpack, Wren slid closer to take a good look at her drawing. 'Ohh,' she started. 'That looks pretty! What are you going to draw next?' She picked up the drawing and held it against the light, as if that would clarify a deeper meaning within the piece. 'You know, I think I get it,' Wren nodded thoughtfully. 'It's about something like freedom, right?' Flying birds, a wide open sky. Surely there could only be one meaning to this. Wren put the picture back on the desk of the girl and nodded to herself. Yeah. She was feeling this, actually.

In a sudden flash of inspiration, Wren pulled her accursed timetable out of her bag and straightened the slightly crumpled paper out. Freedom.. She looked at it for a bit, then started to grab different brushes, colours of paint and a blank sheet of paper. She dumped it all on her table, not paying attention to anything anymore. Her creative spirit was telling her to just go with the flow, to do what she had been dreaming of since she had received her timetable. She started ripping it up.
Uneven pieces fluttered to her desk, four, five. She left the pieces fairly big; it was not her intention to completely destroy the timetable. Then Wren arranged the pieces haphazardly on the blank piece of paper and got her brush out. She dipped it in paint, water, paint, water, paint.. until, on each piece of ripped paper, a (admittedly clumsy) scene began to form. Things, or remnants of things, that inspired her. Comforting red - of the Springs family and the home she had been welcomed to; a deep blue - of the colour of the hair of the person who was the biggest inspiration to her, Wren herself; a bright blend of yellow that faded into orange - the colours of her brother's favourite shirt.

And so Wren brushed over the five pieces with decisive strokes. The colours started to blend in the open spaces she left between them, producing some sort of mosaic window effect on the paper. It was not as if the colours were coordinated well, or that the piece would clearly communicate its meaning. But Wren, who put down her brush after that artistic frenzy, was quite pleased with herself. 'Yeah,' she concluded proudly. 'I'm free of that stupid timetable now!' Maybe it was not the meaning of freedom that her neighbour had had in mind, but for Wren the replacing of the boring classes and designated timeslots with things that drove her to at least attempt to be a better version of herself - or abstract representations of those things, anyway - was the pinnacle of artistic anarchy. With a flourish, she finished the piece by writing her name under it, and then she turned to the girl next to her. 'Sorry, I was talking to you and then I kind of got lost in this myself. Tell me more about your piece!'

Ília has tried to come on time, but had found herself lost in her memories earlier within the chilling waters of the spring in the forest, and by the time she realized what time was it she found herself coming late to the class. Not that it was a serious infraction, or so she thought, having been swinging between free time, special classes, and some additional lessons (most of which out of her own research), she always found time to practice a little of art.

With material lent by Edwin and a few she bought herself after carefully looking into it, the sun-haired girl of sky eyes looked at the empty canvas, pondering what to paint out of the many memories in her mind. And once again, she dove into her memories:

"E-Excuse me sir, I'm a humble artist and-"
"Yes, I heard from locals you accept paintings and I got this one piece here."
"Ah, Hades, he was my puppy but he died two months ago."
"What?! Why?! It's my best painting!"
"... I... See... Sorry then, Mr Steil, I will bring a different one tomorrow."
"Thank you for your time, Mr Steil."

"I got it now.", Ília mumbled herself and got the brush and palette, promptly starting her piece: For the background she covered most of the canvas in blue, added vaguely distinguishable petals of yellow, pink and purple, and carefully traced the outline of a dog's upper torso fading to blue, marking where the eyes should be and then taking a breather. Her hands started to shake a little, which was a reason to hesitate in start the dog itself, afraid of making mistakes.

Lorelei had barely dared to look up when a girl had claimed the desk next to hers. Instead she kept trying to focus on her canvas, filling all the corners. She couldn’t help but notice the bright colored hair of the girl – inwardly she admired the bravery it must take to choose something so bold. But she tried not to stare. She didn’t want to look nosy after all.

But she was noticed by the girl – Wren. Luckily it didn’t seem so bad, as long as the teacher didn’t mind some chattering. ‘’H-hey, I'm Lorelei,’’ she answered with a soft smile and an even softer smile. Luckily Wren focused on her own assignment for a while, so that Lorelei could continue looking busy. She blushed lightly when receiving the unexpected compliment. ‘’Oh really? Thank y- wait, wha-‘’ Before she knew it her artwork was taken by the greedy fingers of the blue haired girl. But it was hard to protest too much, Wren only wanted to take a closer look, right?

Yeah, it was fine, Lorelei decided, as long as she was careful. ‘’Yeah, something like that,’’ she answered, nervously twirling with her hair, afraid to take too much credit, but secretly relieved that her theme had been recognized. ‘’It’s not done yet, but I am going to add more,’’ she continued, hoping to subtly hint Wren to return her painting. But no, instead Wren started ripping up a piece of paper, seemingly stricken with a sudden burst of inspiration.

Lorelei laughed awkwardly and leaned over to the desk to get her painting back. She managed to wiggle it out from under the art supplies Wren had haphazardly thrown on top of it and recovered it with only minor smudges. She quickly started to polish up the damage. Then, she started on the angelic wings she had had in mind. To fly, to be free. To reach for the skies. Creamy white feathers started to take shape slowly. It had to be good. She had to focus. She had just started to get back into it when Wren demanded attention again.

Lorelei tucked her hair behind her ear so she could see her neighbour and smiled. ‘’Oh, wow. It looks very energetic,’’ she complimented her work. ‘’Original.’’ Something that couldn’t really be said about her work, filled with clichés. Hopefully it was deemed better than a fruit bowl though. ‘’It’s just- As a child, I used to look up at the sky and think about how much was out there. About how one day I would just fly away and explore…‘’ She smiled warily and shrugged. ‘’It’s stupid, I know.’’ As always she tried to diminish herself, talk her efforts down before anyone else could criticize her.

So, this perfect prey - she meant, this meek girl, was Lorelei. Wren nodded happily towards her, then proceeded to steal her work and comment on it. Lor - Wren had immediately decided to shorten that bother of a name - seemed really taken aback by that, but not completely unhappy. Good. So far, Wrens expectations matched. She was very shy, not outspoken, probably very easy to waltz all over. Perfect. That was all she asked for! However, Wren had decided to not directly attack this girl, but instead get closer to her and wait for a better moment to sink her teeth in. Because of that, she decided to act upon her own genius burst of inspiration to start her own, gorgeous art work. So beautiful.

Meanwhile, a different person had entered the room. Were they interesting? Hmm... Wren couldn't decide immediately, but she could she that this newcomer wasn't half as interesting as the perfectly bully-able kid next to her. Just seeing that girl prance around and working on her painting made Wren lose the wild inspiration she had a minute ago, so she was glad her work was totally finished. It was as good as it was going to be, at the very least. She decided to stick with Lor and only greeted the new kid that had entered the room, but did not direct any further attention to her.

Instead, she focussed on Lor, ignoring the fact that she was hard at work on her own painting again. Lor did seem a little disturbed, but she was too nice to tell Wren to get lost and instead complimented Wren (a very crucial thing to do) and then started talking about the whole philosophy of her painting. It was kind of cute, actually, to hear her murmur about the concept of freedom. Cute in a way that her behaviour showed how weak and impressionable she was. Lor could not have been a greater person for Wren.

'That's cool!' Wren exclaimed, after hearing her explanation. 'So this really means something to you, huh? I wonder what the teacher will think of it.' Just testing Lor's stress response with that last comment. She already looked like a tiny little mouse that was being hunted, and Wren was curious to see if her face could scrunch up even more. 'It's not stupid at all,' Wren also deliberately rebuked Lor's last comment. One well-calculated move at a time, she could definitely become a "friend" to this girl. For now. 'I think it's nice you can use it as inspiration. Can I watch if you're adding more stuff?' Because she was totally interested in what was happening and did not need any excuse to further observe this girl. Wren laughed innocently at Lorelei, forgetting about her own assignment. She was only focussed on entertainment, until something would snap her out of it.