Page 49 of A Vicious Love

My mother’s disappointment was immediate. “That is not an answer.”

“No,” I said softly. “It isn’t.”

The dinner continued after that. And in the end I went upstairs with a headache that was not entirely fake.

The next morning, I went to ballet practice.

Pain was easier when it belonged to the body.

Madame Aveline corrected my alignment sixteen times before noon and told me my fear had moved into my shoulders.

I wanted to tell her fear had moved into everything. Instead, I adjusted my posture and tried again.

Between practices, I went to the Harlan Human Art Gallery. It was not called that officially.

Officially, it was the Harlan Museum of Classical Human Craft.

Everyone called it the human art gallery because everything inside had been created by hand before convenience swallowed the world.

Paintings with brushstrokes still visible beneath glass. Sculptures carved from stone, not printed from composite.

Old sketches where the artist’s mistakes remained in the paper like fingerprints.

I loved it there.

I loved that nothing moved unless a person moved it.

No holograms, adaptive lighting changing to flatter donors. No AI-restored compositions, or perfect replicas of extinct techniques made in minutes by machines that did not understand wanting.

Human discipline.

I entered through the side hall. I probably looked too plain for the gallery’s polished marble.

The old Harlan wing was nearly empty.

That was my favourite part.

I walked past oil landscapes and the glass case full of hand-bound books no one was allowed to touch.

Then I found my favourite painting. It was small compared to the others.

A girl in a yellow dress seated beside a window, her face turned away from the viewer, one hand resting on a closed book.

The brushstrokes around the window were rougher than the ones on her dress.

You could see where the artist changed their mind, the shadow had been deepened of the girl’s shoulder that had been softened after the first attempt.

I loved that most.

The evidence of trying.

I stood in front of it for a long time.

“What do you think of this one?” A voice spoke beside me.

Male.

I did not turn right away.