"Watercolor isn't finger paint." he said as she dabbed her finger in a bowl of water and swirled it on the cake of red watercolor.

She looked up from her lined pad of paper, tried to focus on him, cocked her head like a sparrow and painted a streak of weak, red pigment down the bridge of her nose towards the mischievous grin that was dancing on her face.

"It's not war paint, either. Not strong enough." She blinked at him for a few seconds more, then returned to her intensity, from where she hardly heard or cared when he took his offended nature out of the room.

Hours later as she straightened out her spine and shot her hands over her head for a satisfying stretch, she caught a glimpse of herself in a old-timey, tinny mirror nearby. The paint had dried back to it's original powdery state on her nose and she looked like a little girl who had been playing with her mama's rouge. Ghosts of conversations past floated by in the light of her daydreams like dust motes in a ray of sun; all she could do now was wait...and resist the urge to make watercolor fingerprints all over the boring cream colored walls.