[color=f7941d][h2][center]Sidney Malcolm[/center][/h2][/color]

A butterfly suspended in mid-air. Its wings spread, caught frozen in between flaps, brightly coloured like a kaleidoscope. Greens and blues and pinks and yellows and violets and even more colours in between. Beneath it, a sea of wild flowers just as vibrant, just as colourful and the wings, identically so even, trapped in a moment where the breeze had pulled at them, bending their stems and bowing their heads. It was only this shift in the flowers that allowed the butterfly to be seen at all, the colours that matched and camouflaged the insect moved aside to reveal it in a moment of inconsistency.

Just a moment, and then it would be gone again.

A stylus swished across the screen of the tablet, adding a dark line at the edges of the butterfly’s wing. Then it was gone, erased, as Sidney chose a thinner brush and repeated the motion; she wanted the butterfly to be visible, but not too obvious. No thick outline dividing it from the surrounding flowers, she wanted the incongruent colours to be the first thing people noticed, then the outline second. Something like that anyway.

Finishing the line work on the edges, Sidney moved on to the inner wing. These lines would be even thinner, dividing the wings up into patterns, each little section like the petal of a flower. Draw a line, draw another, erase it, draw it again, draw another, erase the first line, draw, draw, erase, start again. She set the stylus down next to her and swiped a finger across the screen, sliding the drawing away so she could look at her reference images again; butterflies, flowers, stained glass windows. Flower petals were uniform in shape, but also overlapping, butterfly wings were made up of inconsistent shapes, but the overall pattern was symmetrical and stained glass windows were usually made up of more angular pieces, but the placement of colours was a lot more purposeful. Sidney wanted a little of each of those qualities really, but nothing she drew looked right to her.

She ran a hand through her hair, brushing back the bangs over the left side of her face and huffed out a breath. On her left forearm, she caught a glimpse of the thing that had gotten her stuck in this rut in the first place; a brightly coloured butterfly drawn in faded marker ink directly onto her skin. A moment of fancy had led to her doodling it on herself yesterday afternoon, in between helping her parents get stuff setup for the festival, and she’d been in the mood to draw something unbearably colourful ever since. Sidney had sat down this morning looking to do just that, hoping to spend a few hours getting the groundwork out of the way before going out to meet her friends only to get caught up in it and now she was almost done.

Emphasis on [i]almost[/i]. Frustrating, but, as long as she could get this finished before the festival she… wait, when did it get so dark outside?

[color=f7941d]“Oh, shoot.”[/color]

Reaching for her phone, Sidney checked the time and jumped out of her seat. She rushed towards her closet, throwing the phone onto her bed and ignoring the missed calls and texts for now as she hurried to pick out something to wear. 

----

By the time she made it to the festival grounds, Sidney definitely felt a little frazzled; she just hoped she didn’t look it as she tried to flatten her hair and brush down the creases in her hastily donned clothes. In her other hand she held her phone, trying to type out a text one handed to William to find out where he was. It had been ages since they’d hung out and she had wanted to catch up at the festival, until she nearly forgot and missed the whole thing.

[color=f7941d][i]”Hey, W, where are you?”[/i][/color]

Send.

Putting her phone away, Sidney looked up just in time to avoid bumping into a familiar face. [color=f7941d]“Oh, Audrey. How’s it going?”[/color]

[@Gisk][@Teyao]