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I hadn’t taken many nonessential items with me on our quest to take down a certain irritating goat-man-ghost, but something I couldn’t live without was my notebook of random and mostly nonsense thoughts and doodles. Asra had helped me to form the habit of writing down whatever I was feeling or drawing whatever made me happy in order to help me reestablish my place in this world, and now it was almost second nature to reach for it and jot down my thoughts or doodle little pictures of Faust and Asra, little plants sitting on a windowsill, or, now, the changing landscape as we trek onward in the hunt for Lucio.
Mostly, however, I found myself drawing Muriel. Before, when his face was mostly covered, I would draw him with the hood of his cloak up and his face hidden in shadows, or with his hair down and covering half of his features. Now, thanks to Morga’s makeover, I could see all of him, and I filled even more pages than before with sketches and rough drawings of his face from different angles. I drew him with the flower crown from the palace gardens and sitting with Inanna by the fire. I tried my best to remember the details of his blushing face, but I could never get it just right.
One that I’m most proud of I had managed to draw without him catching me was of the time we went fishing in the river, the droplets of water running down his bare chest and the filtered sunlight glistening over his tanned skin had simply been just too beautiful not to draw. It was like a scene from a romance novel, perfectly written to make the readers heart burst, or some weird, futuristic game where you can choose different characters to romance and he was the shy and sweet but muscular and sexy mystery man.
So far, my doodling had gone undetected, but recently, especially because of his new hairstyle, I found myself drawing more and more each day. I new that he would find them eventually, but I was definitely not prepared for him to find my secret sketchbook so soon.
Morga had disappeared again, telling us to find our own lunch or starve, and we had just finished a lunch of fire roasted hare and berries. I was sketching again, starting with Inanna as she tucked herself by Muriel’s side for a quick nap before moving onto him. He must have seen me looking up at my reference too many times, and eventually he asked what I was doing.
“What’s that?” I froze. I wasn’t ready to explain the pages full of drawings of him I was hoarding. I was tempted to just slam the book shut and deny that I was doing anything. But . . . he was looking at me with those innocent and curious eyes, and the part of me that didn’t ever want to keep anything from him won out. I clutched the open book to my chest and, with an uncontrollable blush rushing to my face, I moved to sit next to him. Slowly, I managed to pry the book away from me to show him the page I was currently working on. Luckily there were no notes on that page, many other pages had confessions I wasn’t willing to make yet poured out onto them.
One of the pages was covered entirely by a landscape scene, specifically the scene that had framed Muriel’s face right after I had kissed him, but I didn’t know if he recognized it. The other had the drawing I was just working on as well as one other portrait of Muriel’s small smile and a rather unattractive, cartoon-like sketch of Morga yelling and waving her spear in the air. It must have caught his eye first, and he pointed to it with a small laugh.
“I like that one,” he said, and although I wasn’t brave enough to look up at his face, I could tell he was smiling. His hand moved down as he looked at the other two drawings on the page, the ones of him. He ran a finger lightly along the scar on his cheek in the larger portrait before moving down to the one of him and Inanna together.
“Is . . . is this how you see me?” I had to look to his face to see what he meant. His eyes were filled with mostly confusion, but there was wonder and curiosity beneath them as well. What did he see when he looked at them?
“I see a man who strong enough to be kind, to not run away anymore, a man who is gentle with me and doesn’t let me starve when left to fend for themselves by a certain well-meaning but mean spear lady.” Only because I know the pages before these are also bare of words do I turn the page back to show him the other draws of him. “I see a handsome face that I’m glad to finally see all of, I see forest green eyes filled with determination and compassion.” I blushed as I noticed that the largest drawing is a particularly detailed shirtless Muriel, and I look up to him to find him already looking at me.
“Why?” He asked, and I could only tilt my head in confusion. “Why did you draw these?” He doesn’t sound hurt or offended or self-conscious, just . . . genuinely confused.
“Because you’re beautiful,” I don’t even think about my answer, that much is obvious by the blush on both Muriel’s and my own face, but it is the truth.
“Can I . . . can I see more?” He looked away, staring down at the book in my hands. I nodded, and quickly flip to another page I filled earlier in our trip, one that I often looked back to. It had a lot of tiny doodles, small portraits of Asra, Muriel, Nadia, Morga, and the odd little man from our night at the inn, as well as a few detailed sketched I was rather proud of.
“Is that . . . Faust?” I had had a dream that Faust had turned into a large dragon, with massive wings and claws, but the same precious face. I even drew a tiny, almost indistinguishable person next to her for reference. It had made an . . . interesting drawing.
“Yea, that was from an odd dream.” We both laughed before I focused his attention on what I really wanted to show him. He didn’t look me in the eyes often, although it was becoming more and more common lately, but whenever he did, I tried so hard to memorize his face so that I could draw it later. I had made several attempts, but this was the one I was most proud of. It was a moment where he was calm, maybe even happy, and it showed in his relaxed eyes and almost smiling lips. The image was deeply shaded, showing how the sunlight fell on his face from an angle that highlighted his surprisingly sharp cheekbones. It was from before Morga had pulled his hair back, so a little less than half of his face was still covered by his hair.
“That’s one of my favorites,” I said, my voice much more quiet than I had intended. He stared at it for a moment, looking a little uneasy to be essentially staring back at himself.
“Why did you put these in your drawings?” He brought his finger to trace over the scars on the drawing, his face twisting in discomfort, “They’re . . .”
“They’re a part of you,” I said before he could finish, “and I quite like all of you, not just bits and pieces, Muriel. All of you.” I think I may see tears in his eyes for a moment, but he’s quick to look away and hide behind his hair.
“What about that one?” He quickly points to another drawing of him, one that’s unfinished. It was quite a common pose for him, eyes closed and head slightly turned downward, relaxed. “Why don’t you finish it?”
“I could just never get the angle quite right.” I had tried on many, many other pages, but I could never capture that moment. We went on like that for a while, him pointing at my different doodles and me telling him the stories behind them. Eventually, Morga found us again, and I had to tuck away my notebook in my bag.
Muriel looked . . . disappointed at not being able to see more. His eyebrows scrunched together and a small pout fell on his lips. I’d definitely have to draw that later. After he caught me looking at him, I wondered if his blush was because he now understood one of the reasons why I was staring.