Butterfly Sketches (FFM Day 1)

The mountain air, crisp on the raw skin of his nose, blows errant strands of strawberry-blonde hair across his eyes.  A small doe creeps from the thickets, her pupils dilated and her ears twitching.  Her white whiskers catch sunlight through the cross-hatched branches overhead; small rosettes of tan and white are sprinkled across her fur.  Watching the animal, Kit shifts the drawing pad on his lap and presses a pencil to the page.

CRACK!

The doe, panicking, throws dirt clods at Kit as she crashes back through the foliage.  Letting out the breath he'd been holding, Kit glances down at his pad.  A long streak of black, accentuated at the end where the lead broke beneath the jerking pressure of his surprise, cuts the butterfly sketch into two jagged halves.

With a sigh, Kit holds the pencil between his fingers and stares at the shattered tip.  Hours ago, he'd retreated to his favorite fallen log for inspiration--nature, he'd discovered, offered a solace he couldn't find elsewhere.  Grammy Jayelle and Uncle Trek, visiting for the weekend, had once again resumed their favorite game:  pester Kit about his choices in life.

"Kitty Kat," Grammy said, her cigarette breath wheezing across his skin like years of dust just blown off a dog-eared book, "Tuesday night's company to a broken bride."

"What does that mean?"  He'd asked her, once, years ago.  Her mouth had opened, a steady yawn, and just before she'd given her answer, her heart had failed.  Sometimes when she says these words, she remembers the sirens and the lights and she demands Kit hide the valuables before the thieves find them.  Often, her eyes mist over and she loses herself to an unseen, unknown thought.  Mostly, she just chuckles, raps Kit across the knuckles with the ruler she carries in her purse, and asks for more iced tea.  Kit realizes perhaps she was talking about herself; a widow at only 25 with three mouths to feed, Tuesday nights were the only nights she ever took for herself.

"Kitsun," Trek would whisper while passing sweet potatoes over the dinner table, "a goldfish in space is still just a fish.  He don't breathe no better there.  Don't be a fish--go out there and be a shark."  The half-mast wink that followed, a conspiratorial secret Trek thought his nephew shared with him, confused Kit more than the message.  Kit wonders if Uncle Trek picked that line up somewhere, on the internet, maybe, or in a bar, and just thought it sounded good.

Thinking about Tuesdays and goldfish and feeling frustrated, Kit flings his now-broken lifeline into the woods with a snarl.  They're studying Hamlet in school and Kit understands, as he tears the picture from his notepad and releases scraps of paper to the wind, that long soliloquy he's always made fun of before.

"Shakespeare," he mutters, fury edging his words, "penned his masterpieces with ink.  Sure, there were dropped blotches here and there.  Yeah, he probably did a lot of crossing out and blacking up, but he finished.  Poems, plays--he brought his world to life on paper.  Michelangelo sculpted.  I imagine his fingers got in the way a fair bit, and I'm sure chips flew off in his eyes, but he had no room for mistakes.  If he messed up, he couldn't just throw a fit and toss the statue out.  It had to be perfect.  But me?  One deer is spooked by a loud noise, I break my pencil and dig a fault line through my work and all of the sudden I'm living a tragedy.  This can't be how real art works!"  

With a curse, Kit pushes the hair off his forehead and rubs his palms over his eyes.  "Stupid pencils.  Why can't lead be stronger?"  

For a moment, his hand lingers over the small, boot-shaped pencil sharpener he'd packed along.  Shrugging, he shoves it back into his pocket, nestling it beside the pocket knife he always carries.  The sun shifts overhead, leaves patterning a mosaic of shadows across his face, and Kit glances around one more time.  "Stupid pencils, anyway."