Chapter One: The Beginning

I look up from the worn grey stone floor that I sit on and watch the masterful hand creating a new world on the canvas set before the artist in silent wonder.  The mixture of colour, a stroke of the brush there, defining an existence, a place I have never seen nor will likely ever go, it's amazing I think. I sigh aloud, as more life is painted into the canvas from the hand I watch create it.

'What is troubling you my spark?'  The painter asks me as I continue to watch their steady hands work, mesmerised by their talent to create.

'Nothing much but also everything,' I reply obtusely and my gaze continues to be drawn to the painting.

'Oh, is that all my love?'  The painter chuckles quietly at my musing.

'I wish I could paint,' I said quietly, wistfully and breathed in the essence of the art created before me.  The oils, turpentine and varnish surrounding us both are all strong smells but they are familiar, they are a comforting presence that I don't know of in reality.

'Really? And what would you paint my love?'  The voice quietly asks waiting for my reply, their breath hitched, waiting for my response, the sound of the brush against the canvas stilled.

'I would paint a canvas of fire, a world on fire, a being of fire, someone I worship and long for,' I dreamily say as my hands flutter up into the air and then drift down to the ground where my fingers draw patterns of chaotic swirls in the dust on the floor where I sit, my mind supplying all the hues that fire can burn in as I drew.

The painter's breath is shakily expelled at my answer, 'Maybe this time my spark,' the painter replies and starts to paint again, 'but you are young and still have far to go...but maybe this time you will find...'

The painting I look at grows hazy before my eyes, the voice I listen to and yearn for goes distant to my ears and the hands of an artist, my love, I feel this conviction deep within my heart, disappears with the mists of the dream that I wake up from as warm tears fall unbidden again from my closed eyes and down my cheeks caused by such a deep mournful sorrow that I do not understand the cause of, the moment I wake.