"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."
— César A. Cruz
~~~~~~~~~
The studio buzzed with soft sounds: coffee brewing in the back corner, styluses tapping against tablets, printers humming somewhere behind the partition walls. Zaya sat at her desk with her sketchbook cracked open, pencil loose in her hand, eyes focused but unfixed. The last few days had stretched her thin in a way she hadn't expected, not from exhaustion, but from intensity. Everything in her felt like it was shifting.
And maybe it was.
Her latest sketch was less a composition and more a fragment: fingertips slipping beneath fabric, the bend of a spine, the quiet charge in the space between two mouths that almost met but didn't. It wasn't vulgar. But it was honest.
She didn't hear Vivienne's heels until they were close.
~ Vivienne: "You have a minute?"
The young woman turned, startled but not unpleasantly. Her mentor, dressed in soft grey silk and structured earrings, held a sleek black portfolio under one arm. She looked sharper than usual, less the gently eccentric mentor, more the woman who knew doors and how to open them.
Zaya stood quickly.
~ Zaya: "Of course. What's going on?"
Her mentor stepped closer, her voice low, but her eyes alert with energy.
~ Vivienne: "Something came up. One of the artists dropped out of the Langford showcase. Short notice, as always. And they asked me to recommend someone."
Zaya's brows lifted.
~ Zaya: "And you thought of me?"
~ Vivienne: "You've been circling something deeper in your work. Whatever's happening in that sketchbook of yours, it's starting to breathe."
She handed Zaya the portfolio
Inside the folder was a slim packet detailing everything: the exhibition theme, the important dates, and the name of the venue. The title read "The Shape of Intimac." It was an upcoming showcase hosted by the Langford Private Gallery. It was part of a series highlighting Emerging Voices in Figurative Expression.
The opening was set for exactly two months from today.
Zaya read the title twice. Her throat felt suddenly dry.
~ Zaya: "Two months ?"
Vivienne gave her a look.
~ Vivienne: "Art doesn't wait for your perfect calendar."
She placed a hand on Zaya's shoulder, light but grounding.
~ Vivienne: "Don't try to please anyone. Just show what you've been afraid to say."
And then she was gone.
the young woman stood still for a moment, the folder still open in her hands, the bold serif title staring up at her like it had been waiting: The Shape of Intimacy.
She'd heard of the Langford Private Gallery before, of course. Everyone in her field had. It wasn't just another white-walled room where people murmured over wine and soft jazz. It was a gate, a test, a signal that an artist had stepped into the ring and bared something real. The Langford wasn't about pretty. It was about presence. Risk. Voice.
Emerging Voices in Figurative Expression.
That phrase alone carried weight. Careers had shifted from that phrase, some launched, some buried.
This wasn't a student show. It wasn't a curated favor. It was visibility in a room where people noticed.
Her heart thudded once, low and hard in her chest.
This could open something. A future. A name that wasn't whispered in small local circles, but said in boardrooms, printed in catalogs, invited across borders. But it could also close something, fast and brutal. If she got it wrong, if the work came off too raw, too indulgent, too much..., she could become that artist who had a shot and ruined it.
Her chest tightened.
She knew what she wanted to draw. What she had been drawing, in fragments, in private: The skin remembered, the breath caught, the gaze that held, but didn't demand. All of it had been whispering at the edges of her pages for months.
Now it had a stage.
Was she excited? Yes. But that wasn't the whole truth.
She was terrified and thrilled. The kind of emotional cocktail that only shows up when you're standing on the edge of something real.
Maybe she was ready. Maybe she'd been ready longer than she realized.
But before she could open her sketchbook and see what might finally spill onto the page, a man's voice interrupted the charge building inside her.
~ Mason: "Zaya, can I grab you for a minute?"
She looked up.
Mason stood a few steps away, dressed as always in muted designer layers, one hand in his pocket, the other motioning subtly toward the conference room. He was the studio's creative director. Always polite. Always watching.
She gave a small nod, closing the folder slowly, and followed him in.
The conversation was pleasant at first. Congratulations, Comments on deadlines, on pacing, on team expectations. But then his tone shifted, barely.
~ Mason: "Your recent sketches...some of them are getting... a little charged."
Zaya didn't respond. She waited.
~ Mason: "We value your creativity. Always. But just be aware of the kind of tone we set as a collective. The studio's known for clean design, emotional range, sure but there's a line between evocative and... suggestive."
The young woman's spine straightened in her seat.
~ Zaya: "So it's fine to draw grief and longing. Just not want."
Mason gave a small, measured smile.
~ Mason: "We just want to make sure the work doesn't alienate the broader audience. Some collectors are... traditional."
She nodded. Not because she agreed. But because she understood exactly what he was saying. And what he wasn't.
Back at her desk, she sat in stillness.
The folder from Vivienne lay open beside her, its pages flat against the wood. She skimmed the second sheet, submission guidelines, deadlines, a note about the panel of curators. Beneath it was the entry form: clean layout, sparse type. Just the artist name waiting to be filled in.
Her pen hovered above it but her chest tightened.
It should've been simple. Sign the line. Claim the opportunity. But the conversation in the conference room still echoed in her head, soft words with sharp edges.
Vivienne had told her to be fearless. To stop drawing around the thing and draw through it. And Zaya wanted that. Wanted to throw herself fully into the work that had been bubbling beneath the surface, quiet, sensual, electric.
But Mason wasn't wrong. If she pushed too far, too fast, she risked becoming the artist people remembered for the wrong reason. One misstep at Langford, and the doors that were opening might close just as quickly. And not just for now, for years.
Her fingers gripped the pen tighter.
Was she supposed to choose between her mentor's belief and her manager's caution?
Between her name on a gallery wall and a stable job that paid her rent?
The sketchbook sat beside her, its pages filled with tension, half-formed bodies, and emotion she hadn't yet dared to frame in full. It asked for more than safety.
It asked for truth.
She stared at the empty line again. Her hand trembled slightly from the weight of knowing this moment mattered.
She closed her eyes and breathed once.
She didn't sign yet. Instead, she slid the form aside and opened her sketchbook to a clean page.
If she was going to put her name on this, it had to mean something. And before she could make that decision, she had to draw without anyone else's voice in her head, just hers. Only hers.
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
The moment Zaya stepped into her apartment, she felt a sharp energy, like something had followed her home from the studio and now wanted to be dealt with. She closed the door behind her and let her bag drop into the corner, keys landing in the bowl with a familiar clink. The space was quiet, but it wasn't still. Her thoughts filled the air before she even took off her coat.
She slipped out of her shoes and moved through the apartment barefoot, making her way to the room she'd slowly transformed into a home studio. The scent of paper, graphite, and soft earth pigments lingered in the air. Natural light had faded, and the sky outside was painted in early tones of twilight, soft blue and deeper grey cutting through the blinds.
Without turning on the overhead light, she crossed the room and opened the tall drawer where her sketchbooks lived. She began pulling them out, one after another, placing them gently across her long wooden table. Some pages were loose, others bound in leather or spiral. Some were unfinished. Others full of tension and expression.
She stepped back for a moment and looked at them all.
What she saw wasn't chaos. It was evolution.
These were not safe drawings. They weren't pretty, polished renditions meant to impress professors or buyers. They were personal. The kind of pages she hadn't let anyone see in full except Cael.
Zaya leaned over and flipped one open.
She saw the memory of Cael's hands, not literally, but the way they had made her feel: a shadow of knuckles resting on skin, a silhouette of a neck, head tilted back, a mouth half open, not in speech, but in surrender.
Another sketch showed no faces at all, just the arch of a back and the suggestion of movement, of breath held in the hollow between two bodies.
She ran her hand over the paper slowly. Every drawing carried more than form. It carried sensation.
She hadn't always known what she was reaching for in these images. But now she did.
She returned to her shelves and began pulling references: magazine tear-outs, printed photographs, scraps of fabric that captured color and texture. She didn't want to recreate moments. She wanted to distill what they had left behind.
Softness. Pressure. Focus. Craving without chaos.
The silence around her deepened as she worked, and with it, a kind of clarity rose in her chest.
This was no longer about what her studio expected. It wasn't about pleasing mentors or passing quiet curatorial standards.
She picked up her notebook, the one she used only for planning and turned to a clean page.
She didn't hesitate. She wrote:
"I'm not here to be palatable.
I'm here to be honest."
Then she set the notebook aside and walked to her easel. The clean page she selected was thick, textured, and large enough to hold something meaningful. She clipped it into place, adjusted the angle of the stand, and stood in front of it.
Her hand reached for the charcoal stick sitting in the tray.
She didn't pick it up right away. Instead, she let herself feel the weight of this moment.
She wasn't just about to draw.
She was about to name something she hadn't dared to name before.
Zaya stepped closer to the easel, her breath moving slower now, steadier, as if her body needed to prepare for what her mind had already committed to. She reached down and finally picked up the charcoal: thin, black, and worn to fit the curve of her fingers. It left a soft smudge along her thumb.
The page stared back at her, blank and expectant.
For a moment, she didn't move.
She let her mind walk through every sketch she'd made over the past few weeks. Every unfinished figure. Every abstract suggestion of sensation. The way Cael's fingers had moved across her spine. The press of his voice in her throat. The difference between being touched, and being seen.
All of it had a weight. And now she had to give it shape.
She raised her arm.
The charcoal hovered near the top third of the page, waiting for the first stroke.
Her grip tightened slightly. Her body was awake in a new way now. Drawing didn't feel like routine. It didn't feel like habit. It felt like truth that had waited too long in her chest and now demanded space.
Her hand moved.
The first line wasn't rushed.
It arced, low and slow, like the curve of a shoulder drawn in moonlight. Then another, sharper this time, cutting beneath it like a shadow. She paused. Looked. Adjusted the angle of her wrist and continued, the rhythm growing more certain with each mark.
She didn't sketch outlines. She built tension.
As the page began to take form, Zaya felt her chest expand. Her jaw softened. There was no performance here. No need to explain.
For the first time in a long time, she felt like her hands and her voice were finally the same thing.
She stepped back to look at it.
It was unfinished. Raw. Suggestive in ways that weren't about sex, but presence. Want as architecture. Power as pause.
She reached for her pencil and wrote a single word beneath the corner of the piece:
"Threshold."
Then she leaned back against the table behind her, charcoal still in one hand, and exhaled.
The next two months would be a test.
But tonight, this drawing, this silence, this fire in her chest this was her beginning.