Illuminations

by T. Kingfisher

It was bad enough being bored. Being bored and inadequate was nearly unbearable.

(Rope would have been better, but grown-ups tend to ask rather strange questions when you demand to know if there is any rope suitable for tying yourself up with.)

“You must feed your heart,” said Uncle Alfonso. “With beautiful things and places you have never seen and books that bring you joy. Then your heart will grow back and you can paint again.

Aunt Nadia often got a little weird when she was working on a painting, as if most of her brain was involved with art, and the bits that controlled talking were wandering around unsupervised.

“Spoons like to be with other spoons,” said Payne. “They feel more comfortable in a herd.”

She was getting very tired of holding everyone’s apologies in her head.

Hers was a soul that would gladly burn itself out in pursuit of art, and then give the art away at the end, because it was the act of creating that mattered, the act that made her feel alive.

“Besides,” said Aunt Nadia, stirring her coffee with a palette knife, “if you weren’t around, we might have silverware again, and I, for one, wouldn’t know how to act.”

“It’s easy when bad people die,” he told her. “And it’s not easy when good people die, but at least it’s straightforward, and you know exactly how you’re supposed to feel. But when someone who was good and bad dies, someone you loved, but who hurt you…then you don’t know how to feel at all. If you’re sad, it feels wrong, and if you’re not sad, that feels wrong too.” “That seems complicated,” said Rosa. “And hard.” “People are hard,” Uncle Alfonso agreed. “Grief is hard, too.”