Art Night

Branwen and Enid had nothing to do.

The dark sky lurched on heavy 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 two girls had returned from collecting what they could off the forest floor. In their search they had come across a bramble-bush, their tongues blazing fuchsia from the berries they couldn't fit in their clay bowls.

That afternoon they had crushed all the hazelnuts drying on the threshold with the knapped quartz stone they watched Saoirse use as a mortar.

They had recently mixed a pulp from the shells' dust with topsoil and ashes from the hearth and lined the threshold so the water's flow might abate.

Now they had nothing to do but wait for their mother's return, and they played with the larger pieces of charcoal they had extracted from the fire while milling for ashes, cracking open the porous chunks to inspect their glassy innards.

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

"Your hands won't forget that charcoal," Branwen, five years Enid's senior, muttered from beside the fire.

After ten seconds of silent protest continuing to scrape, she plucked her small clay bowl from beside her, perching it inside her folded legs as she continued to scrape. The bowl collected sheets of dark fines.

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

As Branwen leered from the periphery, Enid dragged the front and back sides 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 dragged her blackened hands over the fines on her legs, then over her chest, her forearms, her shoulders, and her face and copper hair.

Branwen said nothing. She only watched.

Enid rose from between the dark parallel streaks she had made on the floor, carrying her bowl of fines, and proceeded to the wall, twisting her body to make full eye contact with Branwen, who'd craned her neck to watch behind her. Branwen turned to face the fire again, hugging her legs in the cold.

Enid noisily scraped the bottom of the bowl with her fingernails while she swirled the dust with her fingertips. She cleared her throat as she made the first swipe, and coughed afterwards, turning to see they had fallen on deaf ears.

Flustered, Enid stomped, her bare soles crashing down on grass and stone with a series of inoffensive slaps, to a spot within Branwen's diverted line of vision.

Placing her bowl on the floor, Enid engaged in a star pose, legs spread with gall. Her small black fingertips tickled the descending cave ceiling.

There was silence.

She swept her fingers in a long semicircular motion, painting rainbows elicited from the void. She walked her filthy hands down the side of the damp wall and dotted the sides with her fingerprints.

"That actually looks kind of nice."

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

"That on the wall. I kind of like it."

Enid huffed in dumbstruck rage.

"Can I try?"

Enid stomped to the threshold of the cave, just before the rain barrier, and sat.

"You may not."

Branwen selected a finger-sized piece of charcoal and brought it to the cave's wall. She dragged the tip of it across the rock surface in a long, precise line. More deliberately, she dragged a straighter line underneath. Then a line intersecting the two.

"What do you think?"

There was silence.

Branwen gripped the charcoal in her fist, careful not to crush it. She trained it in an imperfect circle, smiling at her handiwork. Then another line. A body. Two diagonal legs, askew. One line across for arms.

"Look, Enid! It's you!"

Enid looked up. "No, it's not."

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

"I can't do it."

"Yes you can--just hold it in your fingers like this. Come along." Branwen picked Enid up and placed her down near the drawing, now developing into a mural, a black child-shaped imprint left on her body.

Branwen placed the charcoal in Enid's hand, laced Enid's fingers and her own, and wrapped them around gently.

"Don't let go." They drew a misshapen circle together.

"Look! You can do it."

"I cannot--mine won't 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.

"That's 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 doesn't catch badgers with a spear. The berries you ate were fermented," Branwen laughed.

"Now one does--I have made this decision."

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's you!"

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

"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 picked up ash from the fire pit and dashed her hands across the picture, and Enid scuttled to join in on the fun, slapping and punching the monstrous figure in the face with filthy hands.

Branwen hugged her knees next to the fire. Streaks from tears of frustration danced in the firelight, and she dragged her black hands down her arms.

Enid sat beside her sister and wrapped her arms and legs around her, enveloping her 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."

"I never saw me."