soul mates au; solar/wheein

Wheein’s windows are dirt streaked.  

The morning stillness breaks in the hum of static noise.  

The lights flicker, floors squeaking with her foot steps, spoon clinking as she stirs her hot tea.

Wheein takes a moment, eyes scanning over the dozens of canvases she’s filled after hours and hours of work.

They’re all the same, shades of grays that Wheein knows are meant to be something else.  Something much bigger than the watery lines she presses to her canvas, the pots of used paint diluted water, than the way the gray sky breaks up with the soft lines of the white clouds.

Wheein stops in the middle of it all, drops the hand stirring her tea, she sighs.  Takes a drink.

“What should I paint today?”

The words fall softly into the silence, as always.  

When she pulls the curtains back the sun streams lin, slots of light that Wheein reaches to grab, watching the way her shadow distorts the dust floating, the squares of light on the wooden floor.

The streets below are empty, the sun a bright spot on the grayness of the sky.

Her sketchbook lays on the window seat, she reaches for it, sitting as she flips through the pages, finding a blank page.

Her mind wanders off, eyes glazing.  There’s many things Wheein doesn’t know, hasn’t seen.  

Her pencil presses to the paper, curving as she leaves a circle behind it.  The grayness of the graphite darkens with each new cycle, sloppy lines unable to overlap.

She knows, technically, that this is gray, that the paper is white.  That when she paints in the sky, the bottle reads blue and it’s right.

But knowing is not the same as being a part of it.  The clothes she’s wearing are all gray but Wheein knows they’re something she can’t see.

The circle on the page has gotten darker, black.  Her fingers run over the page, fingers finding the corner, turning to a new page.

The sun light from the window casts over her eyes briefly, a flash of something that she’s never seen before.  And then clouds roll into the sky, dimming the light, Wheein looks through her windows, eyes catching the girl walking through the street, wearing a dress.  

The light halos around her, fuzzy and soft and Wheein takes a deep breath.  The light breeches into the grayness of the world, like the soft rays of the sun piercing the stubborn clouds.  The sunlight imprinted on her floors, reaching past the glass of the windows,  casting shadows.  The dress the girl is wearing.  

Wheein looks down at herself, eyes catching the pop of color, her shirt the same as the girl’s dress.

They’re all yellow.