Elouan stands outside the old warehouse building clutching his bag. Over a week has passed since he met Marcel; they'd spoken again each time he visited the castle for work and it'd become something of a little comfort for him. He wasn't there last time though. Elouan ate alone and barely spoke a word that entire day. Hopefully he's just been busy, but the thought that it's something else is what's keeping him from entering the building. He sighs and walks through the door.
Following Marcel's advice he arrived earlier than last time, and when he reaches the makeshift classroom it's only just being set up, a handful of people dragging chairs and tables around. His usual instinct would be to place himself in a corner until the session has started, but remembering what Marcel said about the people here being friendly, he pushes himself to approach the others.
"Do you need any help?" He says rather mechanically to the girl furthest away from the others.
"Oh, umm, yeah actually, could you help me move that table?"
Elouan nods and walks to the table, grabbing one end as she holds the other.
"I don't recognise you," she says, "you got a name?"
"Eloaun, and yours?"
"Amelia. I co-run this place so like," she pauses to grunt as the two place the table down by the wall, "let me know if you need any help, okay?"
"Okay." He replies, trying very hard to commit her name and appearance to memory. She's a little shorter than him, with very dark skin and a long black braid that reaches halfway down her torso. "What's the deal with this building," he asks, trying to make casual conversation, "it seems like a weird place for a classroom, and the rest of it looks totally empty."
"Oh this place?" She lights up at his question, like she'd been waiting for someone to ask it. "A long time ago they used to keep horses downstairs, but of course you don't see a lot of those these days, so the last owner sold it to the current owners, who run one of the factories down the river from here. Apparently they reckon that motorcarts are going to get real popular in a few years time, and all the space downstairs is supposedly 'gonna be perfect for putting them together'."
"Motorcarts?"
"Like a horse-drawn carriage but without the horse, or a train without the railway. I also don't get it."
"Uh huh." Elouan says, unsure where this is going.
"So, I used to walk past this building every day on the way to and from work, and I'm always wondering what the point of it is if nobody's ever in it, so one day I catch a guy hanging around the entrance and ask him if he knows anything. Turns out his company owns it, he tells me that story about the horses and motorcarts, and I say 'well if you're just sitting on the land not using it, can I borrow one of the rooms to practice painting in?'"
"And he agreed?"
"Yeah, I thought I was taking the piss asking but as it turned out, his son painted too but he couldn't find a teacher so he just like, let us use it. Then word spread a little, and now two years later we've got a little class of a dozen or so going. It's surprising what you can get by just asking, right?"
"Right." Elouan replies. He's not sure if he's ever asked anything like that of someone before, much less gotten something out of it. "What's going to happen when they start needing to use this building though?"
"Well I'm hoping by then that we have enough people that we can all chip in a bit of money to rent a room somewhere. If there's enough of us it won't be that expensive."
Elouan can't imagine the confidence it would take to set up and run a place like this, but Amelia makes it sound effortless. The two continue talking until the session starts and they split off to find tables. Spotting an interesting looking vase of flowers, Elouan sits down to try to draw them. They look a lot like the kinds of plants that grew around his home town, with straight stalks terminating with round clusters of tiny white flowers. Plants are hardly his favourite thing to draw, but it's a chance to practice his fundamentals; he'd read in a few books that this was important.
He fixes his gaze on the flowers, propping his sketchbook on his thighs and holding it up with one hand while the other draws, his eyes occasionally darting downwards to make sure his charcoal is in the right place. The first couple of sketches are messy and undetailed, which is on purpose. He's just figuring out the shape and proportions before committing to a fuller drawing.
Once his preliminary sketches are done he turns to a new page, slowly building up the form of the flowers while referencing the prior drawings. It's difficult rendering out the tiny heads of the flowers and he wishes he had a finer tool.
"Wow, that's really good!" Elouan looks over to see a girl leant forward with her hands on her thighs, gawking at his half-finished drawing.
He makes a slightly embarrassing squeak out of surprise and confusion. "It's you." He says, it's the girl that was modelling last time. "Hi, um, thank you. It's not finished yet." She stays leaning over, a playful expression adorns her face like she's waiting for him to say something, but before he can, she speaks again.
"So, you recognise me?"
"Of course, I mean- yes, you were modelling the last time I came here." He's surprised that she somehow remembered him, he'd very much kept to himself. She leans back and looks up in the air with an indiscernible expression.
"Oh. Yeah, that was a while ago wasn't it. Hey!" She lights up, "do you still have the drawings you did of me?"
"Uhh, sure, they're somewhere in here." Elouan gingerly replies, flicking through the thick paper of his sketchbook. The boy usually carries two, a smaller pad of cheap paper to scribble ideas and practice on, and a larger one for more focused studies that he takes more pride in. He drew Myra in the latter. "They're not very good, but here." He says, pointing to a mess of loose charcoal smears approximating her form.
"These are really nice, I love how you've captured my hair." She pages through looking at the handful of poses he drew her in. "They're very dynamic, you've got a good eye for gesture."
"Thank you, they're really rough though." Elouan feels a little bit of pride, he's glad she noticed. He only started really applying himself to art after he'd left school, and had never had a teacher outside of the library books he'd travel all the way to the nearest town to pick up. As such his style has always been rather rough and improvised, lacking a lot of the refinements that a real, properly trained artist would have drilled in by his age.
"Don't downplay yourself, you're clearly skilled, and if you keep coming here you'll only get better."
She sounds like she means it. A shy smile grows on the boy's face.
"Can I sit here?" The girl asks in a sweet tone, and Elouan replies by gesturing at the chair next to him. The girl sweeps her skirt to the side and sits down, a hand on her chin and looking at him. She has a pretty face - the boy can't help but notice - kind eyes which he struggles to make contact with and a cute nose dotted with freckles. It's framed nicely by her loose flowing orange hair.
There is an awkward pause as Elouan doesn't know what to say. She looks at him with a strange, perhaps skeptical glare which he isn't sure what to make of. It feels suspicious, he isn't used to receiving this kind of active attention, especially from a girl this pretty. Is she expecting him to say something?
"So do you draw as well? Seeing as you're not modelling today."
"Sure, I'm not much of an artist but I dabble, honestly though I'm mostly just here because of a few friends, I definitely model here more often than I actually draw."
"How come, what do you get out of it? Modelling I mean?"
"A sense of value, I guess, and they pay me a little. It's not much, and it can get a bit boring being sat totally still for so long, but it does make me feel very pretty so it's kind of worth it just for that."
"Oh, that makes sense. Sorry for the silly questions, I really don't have much experience with this."
"With life drawing, or modelling?"
"Oh! Haha," he laughs nervously, "life drawing. There wasn't much of a scene for it where I used to live. Though I suppose I've never modelled either," he laughs nervously, "I don't think I'd make a very good subject."
"I mean, you don't need to be good looking to be a model if that's what you're concerned about, life drawing is about having a real life subject more than anything else." She glances up and down at him, making him feel a little disarmed, "not that you would need to worry about that."
Worry about what? Did she mean to say he looked good? He's not entirely sure, but he also can't think what else she could have meant by that. His face feels warm.
"No, ha, I couldn't bear a whole room of people staring at me. But thank you."
"It's not as hard as you think, everyone's far too concerned with their own drawing to have time to judge you, some people even do it naked."
"Naked?" He says in an almost fearful tone. This was also something he'd read about in a couple of art books, but he couldn't imagine being the type of person who'd be comfortable exposing their body in front of that many strangers.
"Don't you know? About half the time they draw nude models here. I'm considering trying it myself."
"You are?"
"Maybe? I'll admit I'm kinda scared though."
"I can imagine, I'd be scared to model fully clothed."
"It's probably not much harder, but it is something new, and I haven't crossed that threshold yet. When I'm wearing clothes I'm showing people exactly what I want them to see, I don't have that kind of control over my body if I'm undressed." Her voice wavers, it sounds to Elouan like she's looking for a little validation.
"Didn't you just tell me that it doesn't matter how the subject looks?"
"I did, but I didn't say I wasn't a hypocrite." She shrugs. "I'm pretty confident in my looks, I know I'm very pretty, but I worry that it'd break the illusion if people saw what I actually looked like."
"I don't see it, I'm sure you'd look just as pretty without-" he stops himself.
"Without my clothes on?"
"Yeah- I mean no, I'm not saying that I- I mean I'm sure you look nice, but I meant to draw. From an artistic perspective." His face is bright red, he stares at his feet. "Sorry, I'm being awkward, I-"
"No, no, it's good." She interrupts in a kind voice. "I'm glad you said that."
"It wasn't weird?"
"Not at all. I think you've given me some confidence, thank you."
"Oh, well, you're welcome." He fiddles with his hair nervously. Someone calls the girl's attention; she gives him a smile and a little wave goodbye and skips off across the room, leaving him alone with his head buzzing and his chest aching.
Elouan feels weak. That bud of obsession he had felt months ago when he first saw this girl, which he had hoped to have left far in the past, was alive and well. His heart is racing, embarrassingly. He had hoped that talking to her would humanise her enough for him to not idolise her, but it just made it worse. She's real and she likes him, at least a little bit.
Why this? Why now? Unable to stop himself, he keeps stealing glances at her from across the room, hoping desperately that she doesn't notice. It's humiliating. The rest of the class passes by agonisingly slowly. When it finally ends he wonders if he should try talking to her again, but a nagging shame and insecurity roots his feet in place. Instead, he says a brief goodbye to Amelia before hurrying home.