Shadows on the Floor

A/N: Umm... Don't ask. XD If you prefer, don't think that Skulduggery is thinking this. Imagine a stalker, standing in the doorway.

She hovered here and there, flitting from one to the next. A brush was in her hand, and she spread the color over the canvas, a small smile on her face. Her eyes, usually filled with crackling intelligence that attracted him and made him wary, now smoldered. The brown was intense, but not sharp. Not shiny, more... glow-y. It created it's own light instead of reflecting it.

Her hair was up, in a careless pony tail that had paints smeared in it from where she tugged the ends to tighten the space where her hair started to fall. He had always been hypnotized by her hair, even if she did absolutely nothing with it, even on the fateful occasions when it was smeared with blood. Brown and gold and the silver of the reflected light- Like sheets of glistening jewelry drawn up into a glorious waterfall with moss caught in the rocks at the top: She was painting some sort of forest today. Haunting, beautiful. The moss could not escape, but neither did it belong there, because paint was not naturally meant to collide with hair.

In his mind, he compared her painting to her. He could imagine getting lost in that forest, shouting at it to let him out because a forest is an impassive thing that cannot respond. But Echo, she could definitely respond, she could show him the path because Echo didn't trap him- she attracted him like a moth to a special light. But instead of zapping him away, she embraced him onto the cool surface of the glass.

Her feet moved while she painted, casting shadows since, in some odd experiment, the only light illuminating her work the hall light behind him. Her back was to him, and slightly to the side, and she moved like a dancer, from one part of the canvas to the other. Swirling a little excessively, she faced him, but she didn't seem to acknowledge he was there. That was fine. She knew he wouldn't disturb her because if he had wanted to talk before it was not important now. Not when she slid like a dancer to paint some leaves, painstaking detail that could only come from her and her smoldering eyes because while most painters focused on one aspect, she made sure that her entire creation was equally balanced, every bit the best she could make it.

The way she moved casted shadows on the wooden floor, darker brown upon brown upon brown- A color he would always associate with her. Brown and cream were defining colors in her home, brown walls and cream borders, like she could blend in with the walls if it matched her closely enough. But she could never blend in- no matter how hard she tried, she was like a spark, and if she rested among dry kindling she would start a fire. When she tried to be normal she stood out, somehow, like a Jaguar going among Lions, and if she tried standing out she just looked foolish.

That was the wonderful thing about her- if she didn't try, if she just was, she was impossible to miss. If she tried standing out or disappearing she could do so, but the moment she let down her guard and returned to normal, the oddness that came from her standing out brought her back down to the level of his radar, and if she stopped trying to disappear she rose almost reflexively to meet his challenges: The legacy of that was a chase across Europe that lasted the better part of 1000 years. 

But now she was his, his own little fire that he could do as he wished with, even though if he tossed water on it she would die and if he fed her too many sticks she would explode and he would also die. 

...That didn't mean he couldn't make her angry sometimes. A little anger was healthy, as long as it wasn't too much.