a rainbow painted black

A seven-year-old Shania wrinkles her everything into a raisin at the first smell of acrylic paint, acrid and aggressive. It's what Ghondor determines to be the best, as they ignore the finest of print decorating each technicolor tube and focus on the banner at the head of the art supply store's display rack.

"Water-based...fast-drying..." Ghondor looks up somewhere around the ceiling, frowns. "Acrylic's like plastic, right? That's gotta be good for us kids."

But the prices are exhorbitant for just one tube of red oxide, and Shania stares longingly at the cheap watercolor set that promises all the same wonders without (as the big-sticker label demonstrates, explicitly) any of the toxicity of what must be the grown-up's discerning choice.

Ghondor shrugs, knowing that she's got other things she can spend her pocket money on, if Shania's happy with this, and turns to examine the selection of stress balls at the checkout.

Now Shania frowns again, fixated on the scuff mark her friend had just so carelessly generated. There are others, on the faux-linoleum (vinyl...ain't that like plastic?), but this one is obviously fresh and disturbs the shop as it had been when they'd entered it in a way that doesn't sit right with Shania. She squats down, attempting to erase it with the sleeve of her hoodie, only to come up with a forearmful of smudged-up dirt and dust.

Clutching the watercolor kit to her chest, Shania hands her past month of savings to the cheerful-but-checked-out clerk and scrambles out of the store as if she were guilty of defacing public property with the spray paint locked behind acrylic display cases.

Watercolor is a splayed-on-the-floor ankles-up activity, so Shania mostly ends up with splashes of pigment across her wrists, since she'd positioned her stomach on the rug in front of her bed and laid the paper flush against the metal floor. Her project shapes into an abstract landscape of blues in the sky, greens and browns below, and birds of myriad colors populating the midground. She's a little frustrated by the lack of direction, but for now, her picture-world remains untainted by the complexities of human life, and lines that can't be blurred over.

In high school, however, Shania finds herself working at that same art supply store for spare cash, since her parents buy her everything she needs (clothes, food, school supplies) but are significantly stricter, and somehow indistinctly so, about things she wants. This is just fine by Shania, who'd rather procure those things for herself, and feel a sense of ownership, for once. But the art supply store just happens to be there, as the former clerk has a family now, and she spends more time with the stress balls than the paints.

Until one day, as she's checking out a particularly earnest customer's order, she adds up the price of three, four, five tubes of acrylic out of habit, even though she needs just one to make up the invoice.

"Do you use these often?" she asks, hoping this subdued level of interest suddenly shown won't scare off the clientele.

"Not as much as I'd like, but yeah," they respond. "It's fun seeing what you can do before it dries, unlike with oil paint where you're just sitting on your arse for days, waiting."

So it's not just children who're impatient. Shania summons up a rare full smile as she hands off the paper bag of treasures, and picks out a pile of five colors and a medium-size canvas - oh, and a palette, and a couple brushes - for after her shift.

The acrylic does look awfully plasticky, once it's out, but maybe she's not using a thin enough layer. A red-brown robin sitting on a nondescript branch against a pale blue sky is a simple enough subject that'll look good even if it does have a raised texture to it, after all. Shania doesn't think to use an apron, the first time, though, so a thick stripe of brown arrives on her chest as she's trying to unload the brush.

Not good. This isn't one of her tops handed down from Titania, but instead one her mother had begrudgingly agreed to purchase when Shania had pointed out the pinholes forming near the bottom hem of the shirt.

Just as Shania's about to stare despondently at the array of non-returnable merchandise in front of her and wish she'd never walked into that store with Ghondor all those years ago, she pulls at the shirt so she can get a better look at the stain.

Maybe if it dries she can peel it off. Or maybe this'll be her designated painting shirt from now on.

At least isopropyl smells better than turpentine.