[attr="class","crachel"] 399 words

[attr="class","crachel"]@open

random store time

This morning she realized her mistake.

After taking a quick look around her apartment, it was clear that she was running out of room to live. The need to try out this new scroll she mastered caused a ton of new paintings to fill in all of the empty space. Some were a little better than others, but she couldn’t bring herself to simply get rid of the bad drawings. They might have had some value for learning how to improve. And so the pile of artwork kept growing and growing, until she could not bring home any more.

It did not take very long to come up with an answer for the problem. All she had to do was go out and sell a few of the older drawings to clear out the room. She had not tried something like this before, but it seemed better than simply filling a dumpster with all her hard work. Each piece deserved a chance to be treasured.

Who was she to decide which ones lived or died?

She set up a stall vaguely close by the normal shop where she worked—the tattoo place. The pieces were grouped based on the scenes they mimicked: some showed the swirling waves and sea life of the docks, others the massive vistas of an empty valley. They were supposed to model the different places around Sundial, at least until the extra ‘I made this up’ section. If watched long enough, a few spots shifted and moved around to signal the busy world at the time she made it. Moving ink was still new to her; having a whole painting that worked like that was too much effort.

When the first person approached to ask about the prices, she noticed that she forgot to think of one ahead of time and said the first thing that came to mind.

“Oh, right. It’s all 5. Each one costs the same.”

Further than that she didn’t specify, and went off to make a new sign. Her squid friend showed up to help twirl the sign around to attract attention. One side simply showed the number ‘5’ while the other had ’we take requests.’ Despite trying to walk away with less art than she started, she could never turn down a chance to practice more.

Although, it would help more if he could hold the thing steady with those noodle arms. Some poor witch just got hit in the head with the sign.