shades.

They're arranged according to shades, going from light to dark and then fading into the next colour. Sharpened to a point, and all at the exact same length, the collection stretches from one end of the table to the other.

She's on the far side of the room, closest to the window, bending down so that she is eye-level with the colour pencils on the table's surface. The door opens and another steps in. She watches the girl for a while, as she darts from one spot to the next adjusting the colour pencils by infinitesimal degrees.

"What's wrong?"

The girl barely looks up from the dark shade of red she's got her index finger on.

"Nothing."

"Nothing or nothing you want to tell me?"

She stops. She pulls a colour pencil out of the entire spectrum of colours in front of her.

"I don't know, you know. It's like, it's supposed to be red, but it's not. It's more like a brown. And it's not maroon. It's not...I don't know. I've got all the shades of red here, and all the shades of brown and this is in between."

The other girl waits, her arms folded and her legs crossed at the ankles.

She stops staring at the colour pencil in her hand and looks up at the other.

"I don't know."

"You don't seem like you want me here very much so, I'm just going to go."

She looks down at the dark shade of red again. Or brown. She can't quite make up her mind.

"I'd actually like to stay but, y'know." The other says, shrugging, before backing out the room.

If you wanted to stay, do something, do anything, make something right, talk, figure something out, try, anything,

if you wanted to, you would.

You would, and you would've done it.

It's a palate of colours, bleeding into each other almost. There are spritzes and dashes, intensity that soars and dips.

There's also an empty space.

It used to be a dark shade of red. Or brown.

We couldn't make up our minds.