Art Night (2026)

Branwen and Enid had nothing to do.

The dark sky lurched with rain, and water had begun dribbling into the den. Saoirse, their mother, had been tilling peat since that morning. Their father hadn't been present in weeks.

The girls returned from collecting what they could off the forest floor. In their search they found a bramble-bush, their tongues blazing fuchsia from berries that tumbled from their clay bowls.

They had completed every task.

They cracked hazelnuts drying on the threshold with the knapped quartz mortar stone.

They mixed the shells' dust with clayish topsoil and hearth ash, lining the threshold so the water's flow might abate.

Awaiting Saoirse, the sisters investigated charcoal extracted when milling for ashes, plying open porous chunks to catalogue their glassy innards.

Enid observed the fire's light play on the broken char in one hand and mortar in the other, smoothing dust from the mortar's knicks to reveal its shine. She flaked the charcoal gently using the mortar and bent to memorize the huffing sound it made.

"Your hands won't forget that charcoal," Branwen, five years Enid's senior, muttered from beside the fire. She arranged surviving twigs into short towers on her haunches.

After ten additional seconds scraping, Enid plucked her small clay bowl from beside her, perching it inside her folded legs. The bowl collected sheets of dark fines.

The scraping lost its thrill after Enid obliterated three black sticks, and she sat examining her hands. Her skin no longer shone in the firelight, and the dry, prickly sensation between her fingers irritated her.

From the periphery Branwen watched Enid drag the fronts and backs of her hands on the grass that hatched the cave's floor, and, when that wasn't efficient, across the stone.

Sneaking occasional glances at Branwen, Enid pushed her hands into the fines on her legs, then over her chest, her forearms, her shoulders, and her face and copper hair.

Branwen said nothing. She watched.

Enid rose from between the dark parallels and moved to the wall. She twisted at the hip to make full eye contact with Branwen, who'd craned her neck. Enid revealed her bowl of char behind her back.

Branwen turned to face the fire again, embracing her legs and humming a tune.

Enid noisily scraped the bottom of the bowl with her fingernails while she swirled the dust. She cleared her throat when she made the first swipe, then coughed, turning to witness her sister’s ignorance.

Enid’s bare soles crashed down on grass and stone with a series of inoffensive slaps honed to a spot within Branwen's diverted line of vision.

Orienting her bowl gingerly on the floor, Enid spread her narrow legs with gall. Small black fingertips tickled the descending cave ceiling.

At the fire, Branwen tried expanding her vocal range with a sustained high note. It cracked loudly.

Moving her hips in full range, Enid swept her fingers across the ceiling, eliciting rainbows from the void. With her rear jutted at Branwen, Enid walked her filthy hands down the side of the damp wall and dotted the sides with her fingerprints. She searched for Branwen between her legs.

The humming stopped. "That looks nice."

Enid whipped around. "What do you mean?!"

"The wall. I like it."

Enid scoffed, jaw agape.

"May I try?"

Sole slaps echoed to the threshold of the cave, just before the rain barrier, where Enid folded her arms.

"No."

Branwen brought a finger-shaped lump to the cave's wall. She dragged the tip of it across the rock surface in an unsteady line. It slipped from her grasp and broke.

More deliberately with a second piece, Branwen dragged a straighter line underneath. Then a perpendicular line intersecting both.

"What do you think?"

There was silence.

Branwen gently curled the charcoal into her weak fist. She trained the tip in a small open circle, smiling at her handiwork. Then another line—a body. Two diagonal legs, askew. A line across for arms.

"It is you!"

Enid looked up.

“It is not."

"It has legs and is black with coal--it is you. You try." Branwen walked a piece of charcoal to her sister.

"I cannot."

"You can--hold it in your fingers. Come now." Branwen wrangled her protesting sister near the drawing that was now developing into a mural. Enid’s fetal croissant shape transferred onto Branwen, who lowered her armadilloed sister at the end of one outstretched arm.

Branwen tobogganed Enid and placed the charcoal in Enid's palm, lacing their fingers and wrapping them round.

"Do not stop." They drew a misshapen circle on a bare patch of floor together.

"Look! You can do it alone."

"It will not be as good."

"It will be," Branwen contested, lifting Enid's arm to the cave wall. "Do one of me."

Enid laughed and began to scrape the charcoal twig against the wall. Another deflated circle, somehow with sharp edges.

"Your butt."

"Now do the rest."

Enid drew a stick radiating from the butt, cackling, then another circle. "Your head."

"Keep going."

Branwen drew another person, this time with a softer shape: thighs, fingers, a defined torso, some long hair. She tried to draw eyes, and those were difficult. Just two short lines. The person looked angry, Branwen decided.

"Mother."

Now a larger figure, long hair, a spear in hand. Enid joined, etching in an oblong lump with two horns.

"Father chases a goat."

"I have not seen him do that."

"And now he does." She drew another lump.

"A badger, too."

"He does not catch badgers with spears. The berries you ate were fermented," Branwen laughed.

"Now one does--I have made this decision." Enid rocked on the balls of her feet.

Hesitantly, Branwen scraped the charcoal across the wall. A larger face, to experiment better. A line for the nose. The eyes became circles, also. Long hair, some in the face.

"That is you!"

Branwen sketched a rounded rectangle for the body; a long, thin neck; straight, gangly legs with pointed feet. "I cannot keep going."

"Yes, you can! Keep going!"

Branwen dotted the pupils, and it became horrifying.

"Now it is horrifying!" cried Enid.

Branwen cast the charcoal to the wall. She balled ash from the fire pit and dashed it across the picture, and Enid scuttled in to join the fun, slapping and punching the monstrous figure in the face with filthy hands.

Tears of frustration danced on Branwen’s face as she dragged blackened palms down her arms. She folded her legs dangerously close to the flame, letting her shins sear.

Enid sat beside her sister and wrapped her arms and legs around her, enveloping Branwen in soot.

"Look at me," Enid said using their mother's inflection. She wiped the tears repeatedly from Branwen's eyes, and the coal fines mixed with tears.

"You are no monster. You are Branwen; you look like a warrior."

Her fierce eyes narrowed. "There is no proof. I will never see me."