Solo Not the Best Time

[Leas]

60th Day of Winter, 512 AV World's End Grotto Morning Leas was perched on a chair in the communal lounge, hunched over her work on the table with a fierce intensity. Her eyebrows were knitted into a small v, crinkled in the middle like they always did when she was frowning. But she was happy despite her expression, glad to be working on a new piece. The drawing she was sketching out had just now started to take life after an hour of planning. Finally, she'd decided to just draw Serra Danalla, the proprietor of the very busy inn. The woman had gone above and beyond the call of duty to make Leas feel welcome and comfortable, and from what she'd been seeing, every other guest as well. That was a lot of people to deal with, and Serra made it seem effortless. Leas had managed to buy some nice charcoal sticks, a blank leather bound book that she was going to use for personal sketches, and a dozen pieces of paper for other drawings. Ones she hoped to sell. The book was in her room, along with all but one stick and sheet of paper. So far, all was going well. Her tongue stuck out ever so slightly as she drug the charcoal across the paper, carefully giving life to the portrait loosely based on Serra. Lightly, she shaped a round, bare shoulder. A neck found its place, and then the other shoulder. This woman had her back to the viewer, but her head was turned, giving a profile view of the face. Curls spilled down her bare shoulders and disappeared into the area Leas' charcoal hadn't worked to yet. She wanted to create the face first. The face usually spoke the loudest in any art. The woman's lips were a trick; she couldn't quite get them turned properly at the corner. Tilted up? No. Leas carefully wiped the lips away. Down? No. Again, the lips was smoothed out. She sat and stared at the undrawn face, blank from the chin up. She glanced up at Serra, escorting an old man to his table with gentle hands. Her lips were kind and seemed to always be turned upward, stuck in a natural smile. But Leas couldn't quite get them right. She looked around the room at some of the other patrons. A couple sat not too far away, the man's back to her. The woman though, she was facing forward. Leas looked at her lips, watching they way they moved. How she smiled, and once how she frowned at something the man said. They were full and beautiful, with a pronounced cupid's brow and natural pout. Not the annoying kind of pout, but the kind that melted your heart. Leas smiled, and for a moment their eyes met. She quickly looked back down to her drawing, blushing over having been caught staring. But now the lips would be perfect, like the stranger's. Very carefully, and after having wiped her efforts away several more times, the mouth was there. They were parted ever so slightly, as if the woman appearing on the page was about to speak, or maybe taking a deep breath. Leas smiled at the perfection there in that mouth. It was almost like a sideways heart, so feminine and alluring. But now she felt the shoulders weren't shaped right. Too masculine for such a face her drawing was starting to have. And so she carefully wiped away the fine lines marking the base for the shoulders and laid them back out, less broad and softer than before. This was turning out to not look like Mrs. Danalla. "So much for that," Leas murmured to herself, wiping some curls away from her eyes.