#jowd

Painting had been a way to whittle away the time, a way to remember in honour or in punishment depending on the day. Sometimes, often, both. It was a habit he'd carried into this new life, this old life, this new timeline: he hadn't decided which felt better to say and maybe the least comfortable route was the one to take. It was a paltry consequence for his mistakes. A reminder of what not to repeat.

Some days the paint flowed from the brush with ease. More ease even than in that cell. Regardless of semantics it was a new life.

Other days it was the black paint of shadowed eyes, or the darkest blues of the ocean's depths. It was memories that absolutely could not be painted, could not be risked, but oh how it was tempting. Memories shared with only a man who once wanted him dead—the joke of it all was clear only to them—and a zombie-like cat (who perhaps also got the joke, but not the humour in it, and there was nothing, as Jowd discovered, like the disapproval of a cat. Misguided indeed once again).

It was in those dark thoughts Jowd found himself these past few days. Papers were crumpled. Canvas cast aside. Even the black held little allure as the days went on.

It was simplicity that caught the breath in his throat. Alma sat in the armchair by the window while she read. It wasn't anything new, a sight he'd seen multiple times, yet sunlight washed over her warming her skin, caught in her hair. Beauty and normality, life and warmth.