[ OT ] Sunday Free Write : Leave A Story , Leave A Comment - Another Call for Moderators Edition

Hey, all. I wrote a quick piece to [ this image prompt ] ( http: //www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/367jg6/ip_rainy_night/ ). Feedback appreciated. 
 
 ~ 
 
 Two art collectors spoke to Emma Wu at her art gallery, and she prattled with them for a while about the merits of charcoal and acrylics and insomnia because none of the three of them wanted to talk business. They left soon after acquiring her number. She privately hoped that they would never call. 
 
 The post-gallery blues descended as soon as Emma entered the SUV after packing every painting delicately into the trunk and back seat. Peter, as always, was all praise and envy. But she envied him in turn. And the collectors. And every visitor of her gallery who examined her artwork for both aesthetics and meaning—that ineffable something that differentiates a great artist from, well, an artist. 
 
 Emma is an artist. 
 
 ~ 
 
 Rain patters on the roof like so many tiny feet. 
 
 She drinks unsweetened iced tea straight from the carton, lets the bitterness permeate her mouth. The fridge light stings her eyes. She places the carton back on its shelf and closes the door. Dimness returns, drapes over her like a shawl. Her eyes adjust. Trees outside the second-floor window become discernable, albeit distorted by water trails smearing the glass. The stars are not visible tonight. Emma can not distinguish the clouds from the rest of the darkness. 
 
 Sounds of a television show come faintly from the bedroom: Peter, occupying himself while Emma sorts through her mood. 
 
 Momentarily, guilt distracts her. But solitude is an alluring companion. It beckons her downstairs, footstep by creaking footstep. She follows it into the dark, past the front door, and through the doorway of her art study. 
 
 She turns on a lamp. Incandescent light illuminates two blank canvases on easels, shelves of paintings and sketches and supplies that span the wall opposite the door, and a long desk on each side of the room. Above the desks, the walls become wide glass panels currently drenched by the downpour. 
 
 The rest of the room is wooden. Paint covers texture; the grain of the naked planks almost feels alive, how no two textures are similar. Like people, the artist part of Emma ’ s mind says. 
 
 She sits at the desk and looks up through the glass. The other part of her mind observes the streetlamps outside making patterns of the trees, staining them upon the windows as if the study is a church. The rain animates the picture, smearing it downward so that Emma, with undeserving finger, can touch it. 
 
 Nature ’ s canvas is so much vaster than any she could buy. 
 
 Momentarily—not for the first time—she wonders if she should paint the scene. But she realizes her thinking is wrong: when she wants to paint, she paints. 
 
 ~ 
 
 In particular, the collectors asked about inspiration. 
 
 She shrugged and said, “ Sometimes it comes to me, other times I have to yank it from my head. I never feel like I ’ m in control of it. ” 
 
 The collectors nodded and said they knew what she meant, that most great artists felt as though their inspiration came from on high: external forces shaping internal processes, biological fundamentals culminating in the careful, two-dimensional arrangement of colors upon canvas. 
 
 Emma is only a conduit for human evolution. Not even a culmination. 
 
 “ Yeah, ” she says, “ that ’ s exactly how it feels. It ’ s like I ’ m just channeling the art from elsewhere. ” 
 
 She withheld from describing the emotions after the painting or sketch is complete, when she remembers for the umpteenth time the gap between what is imaginary and what is concrete. 
 
 ~ 
 
 She creeps out of the study, pausing only to turn off the lamp and gaze back at the window-turned-kaleidoscope. 
 
 When she enters the bedroom, Peter smiles. He turns off the television and sits up on the bed, the blanket slipping to his lap. The curtains are drawn across the window. The only light comes from a reading lamp on the bedside bureau. 
 
 Emma sits on the bed, too. She says, “ I think I ’ m gon na go back to college. Maybe I can study medicine. My mom was a nurse. I think she wanted me to be more like her, anyway. ”
