Dreams of Fire

[Thalia]

She couldn’t remember how she’d ended up on the metro, but she’d been on the same train for more than an hour following the same endless circuit, waiting for the shadow of trepidation to retreat. Her feet were drawn up on the faded seat, her fingers picking at the fabric of her canvas shoes. Rust red stained the beds of her nails, and licked like orange flames on her hands and up her forearms. The paint splattered her jeans, and scarlet inked the side of her head, soaked into the hair at her temple like a head wound. The powdery scent of acrylic belied any injury, though her eyes held the fragile, glassy look of shock. The faint, streamline hum of the engines masked the tremble in her limbs, and she could almost imagine the icy shivers of fear were nothing but whispers of the cold evening freezing aboveground. She’d forgotten her coat. Her arms were bare, goosefleshed with chill.

The weight of disquiet, though; the nauseous, uneasy prickle of foreboding; that had no explanation, and had driven her from the solitude of her studio without a destination, just so long as it was away away away. The tattered remains of the painting already misted in her mind, just the mess of blood and fire like the heavens writhed, and that perfect moment of crystal clarity already forgotten. Sick of looking at her ghostly window-reflection as the train rattled on in darkness, she closed her eyes, pressed her forehead to her knees. The cab was mostly empty, and those that came and went at each stop so far had paid her little mind. Moscow was not short of eccentrics.