Lyric's Tale 03: A Maple Ferry Story

She had clearly decided to enjoy the sun as both cover-up and shorts had been shed and she lay back in the lounger in her blue bikini, one knee up and one leg flat, supporting his sketchbook on her tummy as she flipped through it; page after page.

Looking around frantically Lyric spotted a small notepad and pencil on the kitchen table. The pad said "To Do" at the top and had a bunch of ruled lines down the paper.

Lyric tore off the top sheet from the pad and turned it over. Blessedly blank.

Heading back to the window, Lyric started sketching. Using the pad beneath the page he'd torn off as a backer, he sketched Evelyn from his point of view. Capturing her in partial-profile, reclined, reading, and relaxed.

Not knowing how much time he would have before she came looking for him, he didn't waste time on more than a cursory background to provide depth and scale, before racing to capture Evelyn, supine in her chair.

Fall of hair. Sunglasses perched on the nose, with a glimpse of lashes before cheekbone. Slope from neck to collarbone and then forward dive to breasts and arms and book. A full stop there, before climbing up to knee and then down leg to delicate ankle and toes.

Working with a tiny fury Lyric used the side of the pencil lead to add shading and texture, the tip to create lines and sharpness.

He finished.

He breathed.

Putting pad and pencil down on the kitchen table, Lyric sculled the dregs of his coffee and stepped out the back door clearing his through softly.

Evelyn turned around and pushed her sunglasses down her nose to look at Lyric from her lounge chair. "Care to join me?" She gestured at the empty chair next to hers.

"I think I'm done." Lyric said, fatigue clear in his voice. "I've had a weird day, and I still need to call Darcy."

"I get it." Evelyn responded, "Too bad though. You're good people, Lyric. I enjoyed spending time with you today, even if it was a pretty fucked up day for you."

"Thanks Evelyn," Lyric started, "For everything. You made today bearable." Lyric held out the sketch of her that he had just drawn in the kitchen.

Taking it in her hand, Evelyn cooed and melted a little, "Lyric! This is beautiful! I am beautiful!" She looked down to the sketchbook in front of her, turning the page to the next sketch and placing the sketch of herself in the book like a bookmark.

The look on her face changed from happy and at ease to shock, to anger.

"What the fuck!?!" She exclaimed.

Lyric looked down at the sketchbook to see what had caught her attention as she turned the page.

The sketch was a realism piece of a perfume bottle, the bottle had a unique hourglass shape, it was made from cut crystal and had a crystal stopper. The unique thing about this sketch was that the bottle was caught in two perspectives, as if it was sitting in front of a mirror.

Which it was, in real life, on the dresser in Evelyn's bedroom.

Lyric backed up towards the open door to the kitchen.

"You will stay. Right. Fucking. There. Lyric." Evelyn said as she got up from the lounger and pulled on her cover-up.

She walked across the five paces between the lounge chair and where Lyric was standing. Until she was chest-to-chest in front of him looking slightly up into his eyes.

"You will tell me. Now. How this sketch of this bottle," she held the sketchbook up to his face, "came to be in your portfolio."

"I. Uh. Um," Lyric stammered.

"You know damn well where that bottle is, don't you Lyric?" Evelyn asked.

Lyric nodded his head.

"You have never been invited into my bedroom, have you Lyric?" She continued her interrogation.

Lyric shook his head.

"Have you ever been in my bedroom?" Evelyn asked in a clear and calculating way.

Lyric took a long second before he responded, there was no way out of this but the painful one. "No."

"Then what the fuck, Lyric!?!" Evelyn looked up at him with concern, and while angry she seemed to have lost some of her initial venom.

Lyric sighed, and held up both hands as a peace offering, knowing better than to try and touch Evelyn in her current state.

"I'll show you." Lyric said as he shifted to the right so he could walk past Evelyn, and walked across her yard to the hedge to a point about where his hiding spot would be located. Evelyn followed him, shuffling along slowly, with reality just beginning to dawn on her.

Lyric reached the hedge and turned around to face Evelyn as she walked up to join him. Reaching down he shifted the thick cedar branches of the hedge down and to the right, exposing the cleared alcove smack dab in the middle of the hedge. A smallish, person sized nest.

"I'm sorry." Lyric said.

-

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The Antipodean here. Thanks for reading Lyric's Tale! I hope you are enjoying the story so far.

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