The rejection letter from Mothwood's great gallery came folded three times, as if smaller words might hurt less. Toby read it twice on his cottage porch, wings sagging. "Promising, but unfocused." He had chased that gallery for two years. Everyone in Mothwood called his painting a hobby. This letter was his best chance to prove them wrong, and it told him nothing. He didn't know what the judges wanted. He could waste weeks on the wrong thing and get another folded no. He carried the letter inside, past stacked canvases and shelves crammed with clay pots and dried flowers. Paint stained his fingers. He tugged his copper hair loose, then twisted it back into a bun. The problem circled him. Do they want color? Scale? He could paint anything. That was the trouble. Anything was too many choices. The door banged open without a knock. Sophie stepped in, tiny and sure, her plaid skirt swishing over black stockings. She held her sketchbook against her chest. "You look like someone stepped on your tail," she said. She had known him long enough to read his face from the doorway. He handed her the letter. She scanned it and snorted. "Unfocused. Classic." She dropped onto his cluttered stool. "You know what they see when they judge you, Toby? Fae art. Same glowing forests, same pretty light. Every fae paints that. They're bored." "So I paint what, exactly?" She flipped open her sketchbook. Inside were her drawings, quiet ones, a hand, a tired face, real people caught mid-breath. "I draw what nobody else bothers to look at. That's why people stop. You keep painting what they expect." She poked his chest. "Paint you. The part they've never seen." He went still. The part they've never seen. Not glowing forests. Himself, the strange fae thing he was, the wings, the wildness under his skin. He turned to a blank canvas. An idea pushed up, fragile and clear. Not paint at all. Moth wings. Layered, patterned, arranged into his own face. A self portrait made from the fragile parts of him. "That's grotesque," Sophie said, watching his eyes. Then she smiled. "They'll never forget it." Toby worked through the night. He gathered wings he'd saved in jars, sorted them by color and pattern. He built the face slowly, one delicate piece at a time. Green eyes emerged from layered wing-dust. The patterns spread like a mask across the canvas. By morning it stared back at him, haunting and alive. He stepped away, hands trembling. For the first time, he knew what the judges wanted, because he'd stopped guessing and made something only he could make. The portrait was finished. Now he had to survive showing it to them. Sophie leaned in the doorway, coffee in hand. "Well," she said softly. "Now they'll have to decide what you are."