There were so many things she could see, smell, touch, hear, and taste. Everything displayed around her looked as beautiful as the visual image she created in her mind. Even if this image would never be like the original, she could still sense all the important qualities that were portrayed in her illustration.

This incredible feeling was the moment when she felt alive.

As an artist, Silva first had to use these senses to create a visual picture that would then be presented in the painting. She had to clear her mind from all other distracting thoughts because that was when her imagination took over. She realized that there was a great meaning in thinking about nothing, and that very meaning was where she could finally find peace in living.

And then, when she was able to clear her mind and create her visual picture, Silva could finally start on her artwork. She could use so many colors now than before, and that opened many different possibilities to apply to her painting. She could only paint in black and white before with her ink and quill, but now that she had these various colors, she could create an image that was even livelier than what she had drawn before.

She had forgotten her ink and quill at the church and wasn't able to draw anything for several months, but when she discovered that she could make her very own coloring substance, she was determined to make it a reality. She could never just toss that part of her aside because if she did, she would lose her purpose as an artist.

Silva remembered when she first became interested in the visual arts, and it was a unique world that made her feel at ease. She always felt like she could understand nature, and that came from the sounds and sensations of all sorts of wildlife. This environment was like her home, a place where she belonged. It was a wonderful feeling for her since she was an elf in a country of humans. She wanted to express these feelings into something that could be seen with her own eyes, and that was when she discovered art and its very meaning.

When Silva was a child, she would always wander around the forest that was close to the church either with her close friend Mary or by herself. She was alone in the forest one day, and what she had found that day had always remained in her memory for as long as she could remember. She had accidentally wandered off the trail that she and her other friends built to keep themselves from getting lost. However, her curiosity had other plans.

At first, she wasn't concerned about her problem, and preferably, she continued to stroll in the woods because she liked being there. For a while, she would stare at plants and flowers with attentive eyes. Then, she would use her advanced hearing to distinguish the creatures of the forest. As time passed, it wasn't long before she became very hungry, and she began to run through the forest, desperately hoping to find the church again.

Then she found a clearing in the forest, and she had hoped it to be the church, but as she ran towards it, she saw a vast color of blue instead. She noticed that it was a small lake that gushed forth into a river to the west, and Silva had never seen it before nor heard of it from the priests and nuns of the church. Out alongside the lake on the opposite side of Silva, there was a secluded cabin made of wooden logs and planks, and by the shallow part of the lake there stood a small pier with a rowboat tied to one of its pillars.

All these builds were unrelated to what Silva was mostly focused on, and that was the reflection of a man that was positioned on the top of the lake. He had a round wooden board in his left hand and a tool in his right hand with black-shaded bristles on one of its sides. There was also a stand that seemed to be hovering above the water, and this stand was holding a white and thin piece of wood in a rectangular position. Silva had no idea what any of these items were, and she also had no idea how they were hovering above the water as well as the man himself.

Even as all the things Silva saw were strange to her, there was something else besides the man that looked even stranger than anything else. It was hard to get a clear view of this creature, but Silva noticed that the creature was very tiny. It had wings like a butterfly, and it also had golden-colored hair and was wearing a white dress.

Silva was curious to know what this creature was. As she sneaked further to take a closer look, she was seen by the man on the water. Silva was scared of the man at first, and she hid behind a tree to conceal herself from being seen again.

"You can come out, child. You have nothing to fear," the man declared from the lake.

Silva decided to listen to the man, and she slowly crept away from the tree to see the man and the winged creature looking at her again. Then Silva realized that she was floating in midair! Her body was moving without her permission, and it continued to hover off the ground until she reached the middle of the lake. She had come closer to the man and the winged creature, and when she had finally stopped floating, she was standing on the water without sinking in.

She had now gotten a closer look at the two, and she saw that both the man and the winged creature had pointy ears just like her, but the man also had some features like the humans in the church that Silva was living with. He had long gray hair that was tied up in a ponytail, and he was wearing a tattered leather tunic and tattered leather pants. His clothing and secluded cabin, which was located deep in the forest near Rolnik, made Silva think that he was a hermit of some sort.

"Well, this is quite a surprise," the man said as he took a good glimpse at Silva.

The winged creature also flew around her, gasping from seeing Silva's ears. "My goodness, she is an elf!" The winged creature cried out. "Have you gotten lost, my dear? You seem to be very frightened indeed."

"Stop pestering her, Kiki," the man told the winged creature with a chuckle. "It seems that your very appearance is frightening her the most." The winged creature named Kiki started to pull on the man's cheek as he laughed at his remark.

"You quit that, Myriiel!" she retorted back, wings fluttering in discontent. "I am one of the most dazzling Vila in all of the land! You are just an extremely bad artist and cannot portray my beauty properly!"

The man named Myriiel scratched his head as Kiki said this. Silva moved her view to the white piece of wood on the stand, and on that wood, she saw an illustrated image of the creature that was talking before. She was so entranced by the various array of colors displayed in the painting, and without any hesitation, she pointed at the painting and said, "It's very pretty."

"Well, now look at that!" Myriiel exclaimed in delight. "It seems that she does like my piece of art!"

As he was continuing to congratulate himself, Kiki shook her head in refusal. "No, she was talking about my beauty, not your disastrous display!" she tried to explain. "Weren't you, dear?"

Silva couldn't help but laugh at them as well, as she liked their back and forth and cheerful tone quite a bit. "I think that they are both pretty," she responded, and they both complied with her answer with a smile. Myriiel noticed that Silva was very interested in the painting, and he held out his hand that held the brush to Silva.

"Would you like to try?" he asked her, and Silva shook her head in embarrassment.

"I don't know how," she said silently, but Myriiel seemed not to care.

"Oh, that does not matter in the least!" he exclaimed.

As Myriiel said this, he turned the white wooden board around, and it was now blank with no colors except for white. "How about I teach you as you paint?" he offered. "Then it would be like we were working together to make an even better work of art!"

He gave Silva the brush, or as he called it, the paintbrush, and then he held the round wooden board with his other hand. There on the board, Silva saw so many different colors from red to violet, and she remembered these from the sisters' teachings.

"This is called a palette," Myriiel explained to Silva, then pointing to the wooden stand where the palette was. "It contains all sorts of colors that are used for your painting. That wooden stand is called an easel, and it holds your painting as you put these colors on it."

"A paintbrush, a palette, and an easel," Silva repeated, and Kiki nodded from beside the whiteboard. "Yes, my dear, and then you use all of these items to create your illustration! How about you paint a portrait of me like the one you saw before?"

Silva directed her attention to Myriiel again, as she had no idea what a portrait was. "A portrait is a drawing or painting of a person," he told Silva. "You can take a good look at Lady Kiki if you want. She is a fairy princess, and she takes pride in her appearance. Perhaps she will like your painting better than mine!"

"Perhaps I will," Kiki snorted. "It does not take much to best Myriiel's paintings."

Myriiel scoffed at her, but he brushed his other comments aside and knelt beside Silva and held up the palette so that she could reach it with her brush. She noticed that he was a very tall man, and that explained why he was almost as tall as her even though he was bowing his legs on the water. Silva saw the fairy Kiki fly away from her previous spot, and she landed on the top of the whiteboard in some sort of pose.

"Before we begin," Myriiel stated, "I must share with you what an artist does before he or she starts working on their piece."

He held up his hand as he said this, and he counted his five fingers to Silva. "There are five senses that are given to all living beings that are born into this world," he explained to the little elf. "We can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, touch with our hands, smell with our noses, and taste with our lips. An artist first needs to feel all of these senses, and only then after they do so can they create a visual image in their mind, and once they create that image, they can reveal it in their own piece of artwork."

He then told Silva to try feeling all of these senses first, and even though his teaching was somewhat confusing, Silva tried to do it anyway. She first used her eyes to see everything that was around her, and she noticed that there were so many colors that spread out as far as her eyes could perceive. There was the clear blue water she was standing on, the leaves of green that grew in spring, the rich brown color of oak wood, and so many more.

The one that stood out the most was the golden-colored hair of the fairy Kiki, and Silva tried to keep that color in her mind, but she also tried to gather all of the other colors around her and use them to create her visual image like the hermit man had said to her before.

She then closed her eyes and used her advanced sense of hearing and the quietness of the forest, and this helped Silva discover sounds she had never heard before. There were cries of many different animals living in this forest, and Silva recognized most of these since she made frequent visits to the forest. However, many other sounds around her were nearly too far for Silva to reach. Even the slightest rustle of a leaf or a slight ripple of a wave would echo in her ears.

It was hard for Silva to focus on one sound because then she would be bombarded with others that she wasn't particularly focused on. She considered all of these additional sounds to not be that important for her painting, and she decided to go to the next sense and tried to use her nose to take in all of the different scents.

"You can't seem to focus," she heard the voice of Myriiel say to her as if he could look at all of the thoughts in her mind. "You see and hear too many things and you toss their worth aside, and that is a sign of impatience. An impatient artist does not create artwork of value. You must learn to find meaning in every entity that you can detect with your five senses, and only then can you create a visual image in your mind."

"Do try to go easy on the child, Myriiel," Kiki said to him from her position on the top of the whiteboard. "She is not nearly as old and sensible as you are."

Myriiel scratched his head again like he was scolding himself, and he turned to Silva since she had opened her eyes and had come back from being deep in thought.

"Yes, perhaps I am criticizing you too much," he admitted. "But what I am saying is something that you should remember, and it is not just intended for art. Everything has a meaning, little elf."

And so, Silva tried to find meaning in everything, and she closed her eyes for a second time. It was difficult because of how small and insignificant some of these things were to the world, but for some reason, Silva could begin to understand the meaning of some of these things. There were instances where she could feel the warmth of the lake water, or that she could take a whiff of the fresh air, and as she did so she would notice that it produced a sort of pleasant ambiance that spread throughout the entire forest. These different instances instantly made her feel better inside. Perhaps this was the feeling of relaxation that she had never felt before, and it was a good feeling.

She opened her eyes again and saw Myriiel gleefully grinning at her, and he held up the palette of colors again for Silva to reach with her brush.

"It seems that you have found tranquility," he announced. "Now use that very peace that resides in your soul to create your visual image. Remember, when you are painting a portrait, there must always be a focal point that catches the observer's eye at first glance. Use Lady Kiki as your focal point, and then illustrate her surroundings that were encountered by the spirits of your soul."

Silva did just that, and she started by lightly touching the paintbrush on the yellow color for the fairy's golden-colored hair. To experiment on the color and what it would look like, she pressed the brush on the whiteboard, and she noticed that it dripped a bit on the whiteboard before stopping its movement. Myriiel sighed as Silva did this, and he held her arm that was holding onto the brush as if he was helping her sway her brush back and forth.

"I should have told you this before," he began to say, "But we call this type of art an oil painting. The colors on the palette in front of you consist of different oil paints that are made from mixing coloring pigments and drying oil. This causes the paint to act more like a gooey liquid, and if you press your brush on the whiteboard with more force, it will cause the paint to drip on the board. Try to lightly move your brush with gentle strokes to keep the paint from dripping too much, or else you'll get a mess of different mixed colors as a result."

Silva was a bit puzzled by his long explanation, and she had several questions that she wanted to ask him. "How do you make coloring pigment?" she asked out of curiosity, with her eyes starting to widen as well. "And how do you get this drying oil? Is it hard to make? What stuff do you use to make it? How- "

"Easy there, little elf," Myriiel responded in laughter. The fairy princess Kiki let out a sigh as well, as it seemed like Silva had gotten too fascinated with the visual arts and oil paintings.

"Let us focus on this painting first," he said instead. "If your interests in this continue to increase after your first illustration, then I will provide you with a parting gift that can help you begin to embark on your journey into the world of art. But first, remember what I have told you about your brush strokes for your painting."

"You do have a home to get back to, my dear," Kiki added. "I am sure that all of the people taking care of you will be very worried if you stay with us for a while."

Silva had forgotten all about getting out of the forest and going back to the church since she liked talking with the hermit man and the fairy, and she also was very intrigued by art and how beautiful it looked. She knew now that if she had never run into these mysterious and strange people in the forest, she might have never found her purpose.

With Myriiel's instructions and the visual image in her head, Silva continued to use different colors that portrayed everything around Kiki. She used the colors she had seen before and put them in the painting by lightly touching her brush on the board just as Myriiel had told her.

She also mixed different colors she had learned at the church, like how red and white created pink, how blue and yellow created green, and many other combinations that she had learned. For the bright sun above her, she used yellow and orange together, and for the sky, she mixed blue and white to create a lighter blue color that was opposite of the regular blue she used for the water.

She also found out that when she did what Myriiel taught her about the brush strokes, she noticed that the paint would dry up faster than it did before. This made it easier for Silva to mix these colors that added more improvements to the overall landscape of the painting.

She continued to use her senses and her visual picture for every stroke she did with her brush, and she realized that she enjoyed taking every different aspect of what she saw in the real world and altering it into a picture. She wondered if this was what every artist felt like when they created their artwork, and she was so inspired by this idea that it became, in a sense, a focal point in her very soul.

She didn't even know how much time had passed because she was so absorbed in what she was doing, but when she finally finished with her painting, she closed her eyes and opened them again to see what her final creation had looked like. What she had seen in front of her gave way to an unpleasant feeling in her heart.

It was a portrait of her mother.

An elf maiden with golden-colored hair was shown in the painting, and she had a white dress just like the fairy princess, but what distinguished her from the fairy princess were her eyes, and they were colored red. Silva noticed that the red paint from her mother's eyes started to drip down. As it did so, it made the white dress look like it was covered in red.

"Mother...is that you?" Silva had said silently, and what came after that was an empty void of nothingness and a foreboding shadow of despair.