Power - Prologue

It was hers, her own. Her private sanctuary...

Her dorm room.

The floor could not be seen here. It was too covered in things. Her things. Her own things, in her private sanctuary. These things were few, but they were hers. She didn't have to deal with her parents anymore. They had died a few years ago and with them had gone her pressure to become what they wanted her to be rather than what she wanted to be. Empty cans, bottles, plastic dishes, papers, bags on the floor. All hers... she knew she had little. She knew she was barely living. She didn't care...

Bony, half-starved hand traced over a canvas. Finally, she had been able to afford a new one. Paintbrush in her teeth as she stared at the blank whiteness, so many ideas for another great creation in her mind but unreachable, unthinkable, inconceivable.

Frightening.

Frightening was the thought of the single mistake that could ruin it all. Frightening was the thought of having to play her clarinet on the street corners for another month to have this opportunity again. She shivered.

Architecture. She shuddered.

She loved it but did not desire it. Treasured it but felt no need to take it. Yet architecture was the only reason she was there, at that school. Architecture paid her tuition, and disappointed she had declared herself a major in the field simply so she would not have to pay for tuition and housing. Her true love? Painting. The brush was her only romance.

Erratic, eccentric. She knew her thoughts were such. They always had been. Broken, thrown together. Like a badly put-together puzzle. Dark.

Forbidden?

A shade of blue, perfect. She was in the zone. The painting was coming to her. Beauty lent her its inspiration and a smile crept across her face. Her black eyes lit up as she drug her free hand though her short, dark hair. Bottom lip quivering, starting to tremble as her brush continued to grace the canvas.

"By God..." she nearly screamed. "I have it!"