'Drawings' by Jade Kennedy

It started quietly on an autumn morning when the mists hugged everything to them and left nothing untouched. As the leaves fell taking a song from the weather, so too did the ink fall from her skin, those interweaving roses and ivy, thriving with leaves and hidden birds lost its place in her delicate frame and slowly started to fade away, falling from her in graceful reverence almost like a sensual dance.

More ink faded away. Her finger tips dripped dark reds and blacks leaving a trail of feathers, leaves and petals when she walked. She gave away those last birds and roses to others in the small hope of saving them, but they all wept through her fingers like sand, like so much lost time.

The draining of colour and all that adorned her didn't stop with her skin. Her hair became as dull and brittle as ash, her beautiful blonde colouring being carried towards the clouds by a storm over a river silvered with fish. Lips that lost their pink joyful tint were replaced with a grey hue rich in melancholy. 

 Within three days she stood before a mirror and watched her tears wash away the hazel from her eyes - a white canvas, beautiful, plain and colourless. Holding her hands to the sky she called on the gods that took her beauty and that which coloured her soul. Feeling her dry skin, as distant and lifeless as a broken shell - now, all that she is would have to come from the inside.