Violet Mortis's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Morning came gray and cold. Violet washed the paint from her palm, careful to leave the address untouched. She walked past the three portraits she could no longer name. Their painted eyes followed her like questions. She paused at the door, keys in hand, and waited for something to tell her she was ready. Nothing did. She stepped outside anyway. A wooden board stood in the yard, propped against the fence. Missing posters covered every inch. Violet stepped closer. One face stopped her cold — a woman with sharp eyes and a small scar above the lip. She knew that face. It was one of the three portraits inside. Beneath the picture, in shaking handwriting: She can save me. Please. If you find her, tell her I am still waiting. Violet's hand went to her mouth. Someone she had painted was alive. Someone she had forgotten was looking for her too. A man stepped from behind the board. His hands shook as he held out a wallet, opened to a small photograph. Two faces smiled inside it — his own, and the woman with the scar. "That's my sister," he said. "She painted with you. She said you promised to remember her." Violet stared at the photo, then at the poster, then at her empty hands. The address on her palm suddenly felt smaller. She had walked out to find one face. Now a stranger was asking her to bring back another. Violet folded her fingers over the paint on her skin. "Take me to her," she said. He led her down cracked streets to a rusted building patched with scrap metal. Broken windows stared down like empty sockets. He climbed a ladder to a side door and waved her up. Inside, the walls were covered in sketches — the same woman, drawn from memory, growing rougher with each attempt. "She's upstairs," he said. "She hasn't spoken in days. But she kept your name on her lips." Violet's throat closed. One forgotten face was now a debt with a body, breathing in the room above. She climbed the stairs. The address on her palm could wait. Tonight she would paint someone she did not remember, from a photograph she had never seen, because a stranger believed she could save what she had already lost.