Zachary closed his eyes.
“That’s it…,” Lauren uttered, “Now think about what you saw before. What was in the scenery?”
“I… I don’t exactly remember. I didn’t focus that much.”
“It’s alright. Even if it’s all vague, just try to picture something in your mind. A word, at least.”
All he thought of was the one word that described it. It was: nightfall.
“You got it?”
“I think…”
“Okay, now open ‘em.”
Zachary opened his eyes. The scenery was still the same as ever, grim and completely devoid of color. Nothing had changed.
“This is stupid,” He sighed and turned his head down in disappointment.
“Hey hey, we’re not finished yet.” She put her hand under his chin and raised his head back up to face the view again, “Last step was looking at the scenery itself. Look at what’s in it. The details, everything that you can grasp. And then describe it to yourself.”
“What are you—”
“Just listen to me, pretty please.”
A bit of that begging from her quickly refuted his urge to refuse.
Without any further delay, he turned his attention back to the view before him, staring only at the scenery, and solely that scenery. He tried to picture the right words to describe it whilst keeping his eyes open.
“You’re allowed to blink, you know.” Lauren chuckled.
Ignoring the feeling of embarrassment, he blinked and looked at the scenery once again.
It was a still scene of great islands in the ocean.
No matter how he went around through it, there was nothing more of note to it. If this was a matter of simply sightseeing to her, then he believed it was not the right one to fix his problem. Then again, he never did take the time to understand the purpose of sightseeing. His opinion on them was half-baked at best.
「Alright, shut up and let me look. It’s just describing what I’m looking at. How hard can it be? I’m a writer. I’ve written several stories. I can do this.」
He tried to scrutinize it with care.
There was the amber luminescence of the sunset seeping through a plethora of gigantic clouds, which almost covered up the whole sky from above. The sunset sky was basking with twilight, radiating its light directly in the eyes of the onlooker. Looking at it at that moment, Zachary shut his eyes to shield himself from the light.
「Ugh… This is too hard.」
To be fair, staring directly in the face of the sun with one’s eyes open was incredibly obnoxious. That’d be the case had it been the scorching sun of the morning. But this was simply the warm light of nightfall, and, as he realized behind his closed eyes, it barely brought any heat. He slowly opened his eyes back up and looked at the scene again. There was nothing wrong, he was still fine.
「Stop worrying and start looking.」
Other than the tree-filled islands in the distance, there was something that came to light the moment the ray of the sunset was recognized. There were mountains, several of them, way into the background. With the last hour of twilight on the horizon, the sun leisurely descended, shielding half of its appearance behind the farthest mountain, and illuminating it with an aura of romance. And with that same light, it shimmered down onto the ocean, posing a reflection that turned back onto the clouds.
And there it was.
“...?” Zachary tilted his head in confusion.
On the far left to the clouds, right above the giant burnt tree that almost blocked the view in the corner of his eye, was a strange illuminating shape of what looked like a bird.
It was the course of the moving clouds. They painted the illusion of a dove with great wings flying off in the distance, up to the free and boundless sky.
「But what’s the point?」
This was nothing more than the beauty of nature and the wilderness during nightfall.
This was when he was hit with the answer.
“Twilight in the wilderness…” He uttered these words under his breath as he gaped in astonishment over the revelation he came to.
Before he knew it, he had described nearly half of what the scenery before him had to offer. Most importantly of all, however, was that he cracked the secret to what it was all about.
A scene “unhuman.”
A simple scene of sublime nature.
「Serenity…」
But this— this wasn’t the only thing that had changed in his perspective.
The scenery — the ocean, the mountain, and the light of sunset — were starting to shine brightly in his eyes. There was color in them.
It was as if a black and white image had transformed to one with selective color at a specific object of interest. A world deprived of color finally had a colored piece. It wasn’t the whole world, that much was true, but it was still something.
In its own twisted way, it was beautiful, offering quite the mesmerizing scene.
“Earth to Mr. Ashworth!” A voice suddenly ringed in his ears. “Earth to Mr. Ashworth, are you there?”
It was Lauren. She was calling out to him this entire time yet he couldn’t hear a single thing. Entering this world of more color seemed to have taken quite the time off reality.
Zachary looked at her with the shock still in his eyes and then looked back at the painting. Its light and color were still there.
When he woke up from that trance, he was still in this… new world.
This wasn’t something temporary, it was the next step to his dream, taken right at that moment. He couldn’t help but laugh after all this. All of this time he was searching for a part of an answer, and it was as simple as coming to appreciate a moment stopped in time.
That was the secret to the first path of an author: grasping the smaller picture.
With that knowledge, he figured out why Myung was the key to the full answer. Her stories were all about the bigger picture, with hidden meanings within. She understood it, but most of all (to do that), she understood the smaller picture first.
“This is amazing!”
“It’s breathtaking!” Lauren replied genuinely with similar joy, “Imagine what it would be like if we saw the whole world like that. If we came to appreciate all of it.”
Zachary came to understand her a little better with that discovery. She was astounded by this place because of all these varying objects of color within. It truly was a museum of art to her.
To test this newfound “ability” of his, he looked around for any visible color within the room. Sure enough, there were certain objects individually painted in vibrant colors. These were colors that were previously believed to be unimaginable in his eyes.
“So this is why…,” Zachary chuckled, “This is why you run around like a child.”
“Who are you calling a child?” Lauren pouted.
She crossed her arms and looked the other way in displeasure.
It didn’t take another second before she spoke again, “By the way, being a child is not so bad. Children have the widest imagination, as they say. And we need plenty of it right now.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“Wow… okay,” she felt a sense of defeat knowing that he had gained the upper hand on her for once, “Anyway, come on, it’s time to move onto the next step.”
She walked farther into the room.
“There’s more?”
“You bet there is—” She held her tongue for a second before she counted a set amount of numbers on her fingers, “Well, it’s only this last part.”
Her smile widened, turning into something mischievous.
This was the moment she was waiting for the most.
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