a line at the edge

Ashe the woods are lovely, dark, and deep but i have promises to keep    Painting had once been something she did so often, such a long time ago. She’d had a whole room just for her art - her pianoforte, her painting, her poems. Kalt would sit and play his guitar quietly while she created. Ashe had stopped all of it when she lost her father. She had played the piano once since - at Jasper’s funeral. And she had painted only once since - her father’s portrait over a year ago.    Then after Kalt and her mother had tended to her, she'd asked him for paint, for brushes, for canvas... and she couldn’t stop. She didn't sleep, only paused when her lover bade her to for necessities. She painted and painted and painted, the brush gliding across the canvas and sweeping color and life where she knew there was none. Kalt had played his guitar, soothing frayed nerves as she worked. She stopped only to ask him to alter it so it would be dry paint instead of wet, so she could continue until it was finished. She ended up abandoning her mixing pallet in favor of using an entire table surface, sitting cross legged on the ground with the canvas propped on the wall. She couldn't stop. Every time she stopped, there was that hollow and dark chasm yawning open in her chest, threatening to swallow her whole. Live. His voice never left her, and his face didn’t either.    Two days later, she finally emerged from the obsessive trance she had been drawn into. She’d been bathed, her clothing changed before she even began her project, but she hardly looked any better. Aside from the evidence of healed cuts and burns, her right arm possessing the worst of it well past the elbow, there were heavy and dark circles under her eyes. Lips were pale, her hair a disheveled mess. Paint covered her hands, her fingers, smeared on her face and stained her shirt from Kalt, her leggings. She hadn't changed when she finished, simply stating she needed to go. Now she walked in the early evening with a flat, square item over half her size held awkwardly in her arms.    Her steps slowed when she got to the Guildhall, the sight of it jarring. Painful. Her face crumpled in anguish, and she had to look away at first. Standing before it, she took a few moments to collect herself before she approached. Once she might have strode right in. Now she adjusted her cumbersome package and knocked on the door three times. ”Remi?” she called without entering, some part of her afraid to cross the threshold. Knowing what she wouldn’t find within. and miles to go before i sleep.