Zinnia Ramey ‡ Alessa Gillespie (letmeburn) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2014-06-14 23:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | zinnia ramey |
Who: Zinnia Ramey
What: A visit to Silent Hill
Where: Silent Hill, Maine
When: Saturday, June 14th, afternoon.
Rating: PG-13
The city got too noisy, sometimes. Normally, Zinnia could shut it out with light blocking curtains, sometimes some earplugs, well enough that she could keep working. Other times, though, it kept intruding into her world, into her brain, the paintings she created. When concrete towers began invading, creeping onto her canvas, it was time to get away for a little while.
She couldn't pack up a canvas and all her oil paints, but she could take a sketchbook and charcoal, and that was good enough for a draft before the final work. Once she had the design in her head, and on paper, it wasn't going to go away, or be ruined by skyscrapers and pigeons. That was all she had in hand when the took the MTN from L.A. to Maine, and then a bus to take her as near as she could get to Silent Hill. The rest of the way, she had to walk. Walking wasn't usually Zinnia's favorite thing to do, but she didn't drive, and no cab was going to take her to a place that technically didn't even exist.
The transition to the Otherworld hit her in a tingle that was always surprisingly pleasant. Alessa had resented being trapped, but over time the place had become home, and she had made it into her own image of how the world should be. The fog wrapped around her, the only kind of hug that Zinnia could really tolerate without her heart squeezing in her chest, even after all the years where no one had hurt her. It moved away when she waved it, though, leaving her a clear path when she wanted one. She didn't have a destination in mind. She'd know when she found the right spot. Her fingers would itch with the need to sketch, and she'd sit and immerse herself.
Monsters dragged by her in the street, but Zinnia ignored them. Someone else might have needed to be afraid, but they knew her. They knew who she was, what she was, and they knew what she could do to them if they even tried. This was her world. Nothing could hurt her, here. Sometimes, she didn't know why she ever bothered leaving.
She ended up at the church. It shouldn't have been one of her favorite spots, and on a level she hated it, but some of her best work came from here, from the deep, angry, painful parts of Alessa, waking up the deep, angry, painful parts of herself. Charcoal flew across paper, page after page of ideas, half developed concepts. Time didn't pass, or flew, she wasn't certain which was happening, or if it was both at the same time. After a while, she wasn't even sure if she was in her body anymore, or if she was traveling the city while her hand still drew the things she saw, the things she imagined.
Then, the last page, and she fit in one more sketch on the back cardboard of the sketch pad before slowly, reluctantly, putting the charcoal down. She flipped through her sketches, fingers smudging a line here and there, correcting a mistake as well as she could, though it would all be fixed in the final draft, for those that made it that far. It was all rough edges, now, but she could see in a few of them something great.
The real world couldn't be shut out forever, though. She packed her things, said goodbye to Silent Hill once more, and began the long walk back to civilization. She lingered, looking around, taking it all in. It would never be enough to last until she could make it back next time.