Morning light cut through the studio windows. Cold. Gray. The kind that made everything look washed out.
Sienna stood in front of a canvas. New. Blank hours ago. Not anymore.
Her brush moved slowly. Each stroke took effort. Like pushing through water.
The colors were wrong. Too dark. Too heavy.
Bruised blues. Violent reds. Blacks that swallowed light.
Not the colors she usually painted with. Not the ones critics called "luminous" and "hopeful."
These colors hurt to look at.
The image forming wasn't anything specific. Just chaos. Shapes bleeding into each other. Lines that didn't connect. Spaces that felt empty and full at once.
Heartbreak. That's what it was. Painted in layers.
Her hand shook. The brush slipped. Left a streak across the canvas.
She didn't fi
