"Now remember, unlike acrylic paint, oil paint doesn't dry quickly. This means that you'll probably find it easier to blend the colours together. Although, you might also remember that oil paint can only be erased by white spirit, and you'll find some of that in the cupboard at the back of the room if you wish to use it. Today I would like you to have a go at starting to paint the pencil sketches you should have finished off yesterday." Eleanor wasn't ashamed to admit that she wasn't necessarily paying attention. Her mind had a will of its own, dragging her away from the situation at hand and depositing her off into a wasteland of her own thoughts, everything surrounding her blurring into something of complete insignificance. Almost as if she wasn't there at all. But, then again, art never had been her favourite subject. She only took the subject to make her dad happy; he was so passionate about it that it seemed wrong not to take it. He had sacrificed so much for her, determined to give her the best life he could even as a single parent. Especially as a single parent.

She found her thoughts unconsciously drifting towards the previous night. It had been occurring constantly throughout the day, no matter how much she attempted to keep a harsh reign over her thoughts. They had a mind of their own, scrambling to focus on the obscurity that she had been trying to avoid. She didn't quite know what was wrong with her, or why she appeared to be so addicted to a mystery that had barely begun to unfold. An enigma that she knew would end badly for her. But there was something about her peculiar death caller that had her undeniably intrigued. And, try as she might, she couldn't figure out why. She didn't even like mysteries. She liked being in the know at all times; lack of knowledge made her feel vulnerable and exposed. Was that why she kept calling him back? To work out who he was and end this nonsense once and for all? Or was she just simply terrified of his premonitions, seeking solace in talking to him because he was the only one who knew of her impending death? Or was she just so desperately in need of answers about his identity that talking to him was the only alternative? Or...was she scared of him, calling to ensure he meant no harm?

No.

She wasn't scared of him.

She knew that much.

For some unexplainable reason, she trusted him. Which was utterly ridiculous but she...she couldn't help it. It was something that came as natural as their teasing tone of conversation. Something about him was so familiar. Safe. Something so much like home that it was hard to work out. Almost as if the answer was staring her right in the face. Like...like last night when...when she had called him because she had been scared. Terrified out of her mind that this could be the day of her death. Why had she called him? Why not Nate, or her dad? She couldn't kid herself with the lie she had told herself upon the impulsive dial of the phone call. That she had only called to ask if these were indeed the conditions of her death. She still couldn't explain her actions and, perhaps more concerningly, she couldn't explain why she believed a word that left his lips. She had had no reason to. All of it was just...just ludicrous.

She allowed her disbelief to prevent the threat of her death from truly sinking in.

Deciding it was actually time to pay attention, she thought the best solution to be to put on her glasses. Dad was always reprimanding her for not wearing them. Although she wasn't exactly blind without them, they did help her eyes to focus a little better. Perhaps wearing them would leave her thoughts less likely to drift off into fairyland.

Focusing on the teacher at the front of the room, she used a blind hand to reach onto what she thought to be her easel, where she had set her glasses to rest at the beginning of the lesson. Unfolding the wide, thick-rimmed glasses and placing them over her eyes, she was confused to see that her vision worsened, the canvas in front of her becoming blurrier with the addition of the lenses covering her eyes.

Furrowing her eyebrows in confusion, she removed the glasses from her face, becoming even more bewildered to find her own glasses still folded neatly on her easel. What in the sweet hell? Glancing down at the glasses in her hand, she noticed their shade of brown to be significantly lighter than her own black ones.

Hearing muffled chuckles from the person seated on the stool next to her, she turned to face none other than Liam McAllaistar, eyebrows raised in modest amusement as he glanced down at the glasses in her hand. "Care to tell me why you feel the need to try on my glasses, Skittles?" His voice was low, disguised from the ears of the teacher as he leaned over to murmur in her ear.

Eleanor's eyes widened in realisation, ejecting the glasses from her hand in a mixture of shock and embarrassment and frantically shoving her own glasses onto her face. He had caught the glasses easily, setting them onto his own face as a deep rumble erupted from his chest, lips pressed together tightly as he attempted to stop himself from bursting out into fits of laughter. And, Eleanor, for once in her life, couldn't come up with a snarky comeback, pushing her glasses up her nose a little as she watched him struggle to contain himself. She was sure that, if she had a pale complexion, she would be blushing furiously.

Turning away in embarrassment, she picked up her paintbrush and dipped it into the palette of paint she had created for herself earlier. Knowing what a disaster she was as an artist, she had taken the necessary precautions to roll up her blazer sleeves, slide on an apron and tie up her hair into a tangled high ponytail. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Liam still chuckling to himself, sliding off his blazer to hang it on the empty easel behind him. As usual, he refused to wear an apron, only rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and adjusting his tie in preparation. Eleanor had never been more irritated upon the discovery that Liam McAllaistar was brilliant at art, putting his constant desire to sit next to her down to wanting to rub it in her face.

Taking what she considered to be a good enough skin colour, she started to gently stroke it onto the canvas. Somehow, her right hand was already covered in paint. She had already accepted the failure her painting would become due to the pure awfulness of the rough sketch already protruding from the pure whiteness of the canvas. She was painting a portrait of her dad, from memory. He was laughing, taken from her mind's eye as a remembrance of all those mornings they would make coffee together early in the day, arguing over who made it too strong and too weak. God, she missed him.

After a few minutes, she was already starting to get frustrated. She couldn't get the colours to blend, leaving the wrinkles around his forehead looking more like stab wounds and his skin magically transformed into a luminous pink. Why couldn't she have inherited her father's artistic talent?

To make matters worse, Liam's piece already looked like something that should have been hanging in an art museum. He had already completed the gentle backwash of a deep night sky that faded perfectly into a golden sunset, towering buildings on each side of the canvas that had yet to be painted and a busy road in the middle. He was currently millimetres away from the canvas, slightly pushing the glasses up his nose as he slowly began to fill in the deep red of the car in the centre of the image, somehow getting it to look like the streetlamps were bouncing off the metallic vehicle. She could faintly hear him humming under his breath.

Before Eleanor could look away, he had caught her gaze, eyebrows quirked up in surprise and a small smile on his face as he took in the fact that she was watching him. He wasn't smirking. "See something you like, Skittles?"

She narrowed her eyes at what his words seemed to be implying, the comforting flare of her irritation returning as she struggled to refrain from splattering all of the paint in her palette over him. "No I was not staring at you, you idiot."

"Then are you having a love affair with my glasses? Because you tried them on and now, well, you're staring at my face and if you weren't staring at my face then you must have been staring at my glasses. I have to warn you, Ellie, before you form an emotional attachment, that they are very much taken."

"What? No!"

"Then what were you staring at?"

Eleanor was beginning to wonder if the general chatter of the classroom would drown out the sound of his screams as she strangled him. However, she figured that her dad would be pretty disappointed if she was convicted of murder. Especially at such a young age. 

Deciding that admitting to admiring his artwork was far better than admitting to admiring his face, she gestured towards his canvas with her hand, not meeting his eyes as it was truly a crime to give this arrogant boy any form of compliment. "I wasn't looking at you. I was looking at your painting. It's...good."

Her statement was followed by silence. From him, at least. The rest of the room continued in its routine orbit. Eleanor could faintly hear the art teacher instructing a student in the best way as to how to blend two conflicting colours together.

Confused at his lack of self-confident remark, she turned her eyes to meet his figure, only to find him sitting there. Still. Jaw unhinged and hanging open. Hand over his heart. Eyes comically wide. Eleanor scoffed at his dramatics, coming to the conclusion that she would never again give Liam McAllaistar a compliment. It appeared to fuel his ego so much that it led to the combustion of his last remaining brain cells.

"Oh my...my good heart...I...I need some time to process. I...surely I must be hallucinating...did...did the almighty Eleanor Clarke just give me a compliment?"

Eleanor rolled her eyes so hard she could have sworn they went to the moon and back, turning back to her disaster of a canvas and continuing to inflict further damage upon it. Although she was very much aware that the painting could not be salvaged, she much preferred it than listening to Liam rambling on about how humbled he truly was to finally be in her good graces. 

"Skittles?"

Her dad's forehead had somehow become a river of red, blending in all the wrong places with the dark brown of his hair.

"Skiiiitles."

The left eye was so much bigger than the right eye.

"Skiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitles."

Maybe she could somehow salvage some of her modesty if she labelled her artwork as really, really abstract. But, then again, even abstract art wasn't this bad. 

"Skittles."

She dipped her paintbrush into the water, swirling it around until the two shades of pink diffused into one another, water transformed into a dark shade of red that somewhat reassembled the colour of a rose.

"Your painting is really bad, you know that?"

She spun on her stool to face him, paintbrush raised as a weapon as a look of exasperation ambushed her features. Wide eyes. One raised eyebrow. Slightly parted mouth with a clenched jaw. "Yes, Liam, believe it or not, I had managed to work that out for myself. I'm sorry that all of us can't be talented artists like you."

Liam only smiled, raising his hands in defence. "Okay. Okay. Message received but...at least let me help you out, seeing a canvas murdered as easily as this truly breaks my heart." She reduced her eyes into slits as he rose from his stool and moved to stand behind her, keeping her remarks in check. As much as she was disgusted at the thought of him helping her with anything, without his help she had no hope of passing this class. "For starters, you're doing it all wrong."

Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Of course you would say that."

He shrugged, lips quivering as he attempted to hide his smile. "It's the truth." Taking the paintbrush gently from her hand, he dipped it into the palette, gathering the skin colour she had created onto the brush. Then, still standing up, he leaned over her seated form and gently went over the mess of colour she had previously designed. "The trick," he said, using his free hand to adjust his glasses, "is to be patient with it. You can't just expect it to be perfect right away. You've got to build up the base layers of colour before you start adding in detail. It's like...with music, I guess. You come up with the base first, like the theme of the song and then you start adding in the details, the lyrics." Eleanor watched in pure awe as he transformed her disaster of a canvas into something that marginally resembled a human being. Liam smiled down at her. "Here," he handed her the brush, "you have a go."

They carried on like this for a while, mostly in silence apart from when he occasionally gave her a word of advice, telling where it was best to blend and guiding her hand so the brush made the right kind of strokes against the canvas.

"This might be a bit far fetched but...is this painting of your dad?"

She laughed. "It's definitely improved if you can tell who it is."

He shrugged with a smile, stopping briefly in his commentary of her painting to advise her to change to a slightly different shade of pink. "You look like him."

Eleanor nodded in agreement, tilting her head to the side as she really took in her painting, slightly stunned by its vast improvement. It was nowhere near as good as Liam's, but brilliant by her standards at least. Casting her gaze to his canvas, she found herself wondering where he got his inspiration from. None of his artwork had a particular theme. Each canvas was completely different from the last. "Where does the inspiration for your paintings come from?"

He raised his eyebrows at the question, slipping off his glasses and attaching him to the collar of his shirt as he moved to sit back down at his own stool. He rolled down his sleeves, staring at the canvas as he spoke. "Believe it or not, most of them come from dreams." He laughed. But there was something in his voice. And it wasn't humour. "Nightmares usually, this one," he gestured towards the canvas, "is one I had a couple of weeks ago."

"You get nightmares a lot?"

He rubbed the nape of his neck with a paint covered hand, not meeting her curious gaze. "I guess."

They didn't speak for the rest of the lesson and, when the bell rang signalling the end of the lesson, he had left the room before she could even rise from her stool.