He decided to learn how to draw.

Well, he already knew how to draw, everybody did, but how to draw more realistically. He’d upgrade from shakily drawn, naked stick figures to smooth stick figures with rectangle clothes!

It would only take paper or a screen if he wanted to use a finger! He could even use a pencil to draw in the dirt if he ran out of paper and/or erasers!

It was great, and he decided to start that very same day.

He chose a window and pulled a chair from the kitchen to it.

In his lap was a clipboard, paper, and a couple erasers. He held a pencil in his left hand as he stared out the window. It was only late afternoon on an early summer’s day, but the sky was stuffed with heavy clouds, their dark bodies blocking out all but a few of the sun’s rays.

Basically, staring out the window didn’t give him any inspiration. It just made him sad that he was stuck in his house/ the area around it.

He closed the curtains and just drew a leaf from memory. It was just a teardrop with a line in the middle, standard fare.

Then, he went to the garden and took a photo of a leaf for a reference. He’d heard about learning how to draw specific things by drawing, looking at a reference and drawing, and drawing from memory again. He figured he’d just repeat until successful or time to go to bed.

By the time he went to bed, he’d drawn over a hundred leaves and considered himself a master at drawing baby radish leaves. Maybe they were fully grown, but he didn’t really research and didn’t trust himself to pull them out at the right time. Even if it was his first garden that he grew by himself, and even if it was just radishes.

Really, it was because he cared about nature, and didn’t want to harm… Yeah, no. He was just a bad gardener.

Anyway, this time he left the blinds up and the door open when he went to rest. He hadn’t forgotten what happened the night before, after all.

He went into his soft bed and closed his eyes. He felt calmer, now that he could leave his room. He’d had nightmares as a child about fire consuming him and all he loved after a month of fire safety, and that fear had only halfway faded. Now he could leave in case of a fire! Wait, wasn’t leaving your door open a fire hazard or something? Eh, it didn’t really matter.

He’d just closed his eyes when a huge THUD! shook his entire house. The blinds fell down and the door swung shut. He felt the quake going through his entire body, slamming his heart and his lungs together and yanking them apart once it left.

Metaphorically, of course.

He climbed out of bed and attempted to open the blinds, but to no avail. It seemed the universe was against him looking out the window at night, for some reason. Who knows why? Last time, he saw shadows, but the blinds just stopped him from seeing details. He could still see that things were happening. What was going on outside that he wasn’t allowed to see?

He tried opening the door, but didn’t expect much. It didn’t open, to none of his surprise. He sighed and went back to bed. The night was still relatively young, and yet the light he could see through the blinds was muted and faint. As he stared at them, it only brightened as the night carried on.

When the shadows returned, much later than before and much faster than before, he just turned onto his side and went to sleep.