Slide the point of her nail along the dirt, make a line. Lick her finger and dab it in the dirt, a small patch of mud, slide it across and make a smudge on the ground. Little by little, lines and smudges turned visibly into a face -- easily recognizable as Leigh. The rat-girl looked at her picture and smiled slightly, then drew a rectangle around it, and began to draw another face outside the rectangle. Line, line, smudge, squiggle. She pulled a few blades of grass out of her work area and smoothed it over with the flat of her hands, starting anew. Smudge, smudge, line. She looked up. Mouse was watching her silently, lips pursed gently as she looked at the Leigh picture.
"It's not that good," Affinity said. Mouse shook her head slightly, then returned to staring. Affinity shrugged and went back to drawing Sinfi. Mouth, eyes, cheekbone, hair. She paused, looked at it, toyed a little with the plastic bead bracelet on her wrist. Maybe the next picture should be the old guy who gave it to her. But that thought was forgotten before Sinfi's picture was finished. She stepped back and looked at it critically. She was startled to realize how proud she was of the drawing. "Does it look like anything, do you think?" she asked Mouse.
"Like Sin-Fi," Mouse said after a long pause. She looked at Affinity with a strange, faraway gaze, her eyes swirling opalescent, then going lavender.
Affinity blinked, almost startled at the suddenness of the change. Though now it looked as though Mouse had always had lavender eyes. "Did you know your eyes change color?" she asked directly. Mouse didn't answer this time. Affinity, after waiting, tried another tactic. "Can I draw you next?" she asked.
Mouse looked sad. "No, no. No draw Mouse." She hugged Affinity, and as she did so, she scuffed the two drawings into unrecognizability, not seeming to realize she'd done it. Affinity returned the embrace, then looked down. By the time she looked up again, Mouse had retreated back into the cave. Affinity sighed, seeing her work undone, though she had realized by its very nature it would be impermanent.
She set her mind to finding a better medium for her self-expression. As she thought, her fingers played with the plastic beads.
