Paint a picture

Posted on Mon Oct 9th, 2023 @ 13:28 by Rebecca McMillen & Claire Cavendish

Chapter: All Hallow's Eve
Location: Art class, Avalon Institute
Timeline: Tuesday, November 2nd, 1992
1781 words - 3.6 OF Standard Post Measure

There was a soft tapping on the doorframe to the artroom. Claire didn't want to intrude on her staff, especially in between classes, knowing those precious minutes were well spent on either preparation or just enjoying the peace and quiet. "Miss McMillen, do you have a moment?" She slowly ventured into the large classroom, not expecting the fresh teacher to not have time for her. "I just wanted to take a moment to talk to you about what happened at Halloween."

Rebecca was using the time to tidy up. No point in grading assignments when the measure of success was personal. No. No this was a place where the points didn't matter. This was a safe place. She perked at the tapping. Soft, gentle, but to one that talked with rats, it was audible. "C'mon in." she mushed her words together as she gathered the loose supplies.

A pause in her routine would do some good. "Oh, Miss Cavendish.." formality begets formality. If she was Miss McMillen, then Claire was similar. "Just tidying up, need anything?" a keen eye would notice the small stack of tiny little canvases on her desk. Maybe just for quick doodles. Maybe just for practice. Maybe.

"Halloween." she paused, her posture slumped a bit. "Is everyone else alright?"

Claire slowly nodded. 'Alright' was enough of a weak premise to be able to agree to it. Everyone was well and truly shaken up, and some of them were properly injured. "I just wanted to check in on you." There was a lot going through her mind, but she needed a moment to sort her thoughts and be able to address all of those things. She took a seat at a nearby art table, an empty sheet of white paper in front of her. There had been plenty of writers and artists that had insisted that a blank page was a scary and exciting prospect. The purple head mistress didn't have a knack for the visual arts. "How are you?" Her gaze lifted from the matte white and came eye to eye with the diminutive blonde.

Rebecca leaned against the table that Claire had chosen, then finally opting to sit at her level. "I'm..." she was silent for a moment. "I'm taking it out on the paintings. I make a few, small. Really small. So I can just, vent. Relax, I guess, on a canvas too small to make out the details if you're, well, not me. I .. I don't know how I'm doing. I'm used to people lashing out. Used to being mistreated. That's why I left. But I came here because this place, this place said it was for us." she was holding back, a clenched fist and the inability to look Claire in the eye anymore.

"I can't lose another home, and I won't go back. I..." she took a breath, and finally managed to look back at Claire, dabbing at her eyes with a paper towel with a little extra color to it. "When the adrenaline and the rush wore off, I realized how dangerous it was. I... I didn't like feeling that afraid. I'm used to feeling small, but that.. that was different."

A lump immediately formed in the head teacher's throat. She got up and put an arm around the mousy woman. "You won't have to." Claire gave an encouraging squeeze of the shoulders and just let the hug linger for a moment. She immediately wondered what the artistic vision of all of those emotions would look like, especially on mouse size. And there was a stray thought about the size of brushes and globs of paint. "We were out of the frying pan into the fire on that one." She spoke softly to the young woman she held close.

Rebecca's expression softened at Claire's sidehug, and she leaned into the purple headmistress. "Trial by fire, I suppose. I ..." she paused to find the right words. Her hand came up to rest softly on Claire's, "Thank you. I.." deep breath, "I like it here."

"Here feels good. I'm with people who understand, people who WANT to understand. People who care. I like it here." she explained, everything just flowing, "I just.. " she searched for the words that her feelings were holding. "I felt afraid, even though I knew I was surrounded by friends... whoever they were, they came to our home."

"Was that the Merry Men? Or Robin Hood or whoever?"

Claire stepped back from the hug and laughed a bit. "Merry Men.. I suppose." She hadn't really given that too much thought, but it was true that if the leader called himself Robin Hood then the rest of them were his merry men. "Does that make me The Sheriff?" Her brow furrowed, "I don't even know how to get to Nottingham from here."

"If you call me the Pied Piper, I might not ever forgive you." Rebecca said, the humor spreading to cover the seriousness of the moment before. "Oh, oh geez it feels good to laugh. But no, Robin seems a real charmer, and his friends are fun too." she shook her head. "And, well, I don't like the notion of someone breaking into my home and threatening my friends, I just... I have no idea what we can do about it." the mousey blonde slowly stood and made her way to the front of the class, and collected a few small mini-mini-canvases from her desk and showed them to Claire. These must have been something she did just a few hours after the assault. While the memory was still fresh in her head.

The canvases were each small. Very small, but no less colorful than a standard sized canvas. No details, just swaths of color, like one would do if they were painting angry. Vibrant colors, angry swipes, like having a fight with the canvas. Lots of greens, nothing definite. A few blotches to maybe represent people. A swish of blue, a field of color. A scribble of a figure, bright hair, and ...

She was holding a stick.

"Something to get it out of my system, but nothing big enough to worry about the kids seeing it and worrying about me."

It was a stark reminder of Claire's aging that she had to squint to make anything out at all. "It's a healthy way to manage your emotions, perhaps we should offer that to some of the students as well." The head teacher knew there was plenty of kids that had been stressed about the whole ordeal and creative outlets were great to help mitigate some of that stress. "If you want we can make an impromptu extra-curricular. Post it on the bulletin board."

"I can bring over a magnifying lens or some reading glasses for you." Rebecca quipped, with a smile starting to form and stay. "I'll post it right away. Everyone's welcome." she extended the notion. "And, hey, thank you. I'm... I'm not really used to having people worry about me, and I know everyone and their uncle would say 'don't worry about me' or 'I'll be alright' but no. Thank you. It's a new feeling, having someone honestly concerned for me." she took a breath and released it, not realizing how tense she was until she could just.... relax. Her tail, tight against her and hardly mobile this entire conversation had finally relaxed as well. There was even a twitchy twitch near the end of it.

A twitch which Rebecca silenced by gently grabbing her own tail. "Oh shut it you, giving away everything..." she returned her attention to Claire, "I do feel a lot better."

"I'm glad to hear it." Claire always worked to make Avalon an inclusive and warm environment. It wasn't just for the students either. Many of the staff had been in positions where they had been out in the cold for too long. And the UK winters could get quite cold indeed. It was nice to hear that being put into words by a relative new addition to the faculty. "Don't wait for me to seek you out, either, if you have any worries or troubles, please come to me." She reached out and gave a gentle squeeze of the art teacher's shoulder. "We'll make it through, and there's a better world at the other end of this, as long as we stick together."

"I'll do my best, if things get overwhelming. I'm..." she looked away slightly, "Not used to having friends. Rats make good listeners but terrible therapists." she offered, "So, this is all rather new to me. I'll try to reach up before I start to drown." she said with a nod. "That's why I'm here. Looking for better." a soft smile, a hand on Claire's.

"You can have one of the paintings, if you want. I'm in a better place now than when I painted them."

"That's very nice of you." Claire smiled and looked over the paintings that individually couldn't be larger than a postage stamp. She saw one that was particularly colourful. She couldn't quite make out what it represented but she liked the colours. "I don't think I have a fitting frame, though." She joked.

For a moment the head teacher just looked at the small canvas, she then took a deep breath. "I also wanted to talk to you about the location you visited on Halloween." Her expression turned more solemn. "Do you know where you ended up?"

Rebecca gave a soft smile, "Maybe we'll get lucky and find a tiny carpenter?" though the next part brought the mood back. She remembered VERY well that place. That time. The people there. She'd never forget. An ant, among gods. "No. I don't." she offered truthfully, she had no idea where she had wound up. And if you put a map in front of her with that manor circled she STILL might not be able to find it.

Also, she knew what the words "not to be implicated" meant.

Claire nodded at that, it was a relief at least that Rebecca didn't seem to want to pursue that particular bit of knowledge either. "Alright then." She wasn't quite comfortable with all the secrecy and backroom dealings but it was a large part of why the institute was able to survive. She needed to make sure the identity of the anonymous benefactor remained unknown to the larger public. They didn't go through all the trouble of keeping it under wraps to have it all come apart due to a mistake on her part. "Thank you for the painting." She held up the small watercolour of her choice. "Looking forward to more happy memory ones in the future."