“No, no, it’s okay.” Stella collected herself, and smiled. “Come on upstairs.”
It was the first time Nate had seen the inside of Stella’s bedroom. Stella seemed to realize this as she was opening the door, and gave Nate a self-conscious smile. “Not much has changed since I was in high school,” she admitted.
The room struck him at first like a little wooded glen, someplace a fairy might live. There were hangings on the walls, the sort of thin, machine-printed things a teenager might get at the mall, but they were beautiful rich colors, with big, twining trees printed on them in black. A little wire-metal tree stood on the dresser, with necklaces and bracelets hanging off of it, twinkling in the light from the window.
The bed had a gauzy canopy. Stella caught him looking at it and blushed. “I put that up myself when I was fifteen,” she said, sounding a little defensive.
“It’s you,” Nate said. “Don’t apologize for it.”
It really was. He wouldn’t have chosen to decorate a room like for himself—it was feminine to the core—but it was kind of like stepping inside Stella herself, and he could feel a rush of warmth at the idea.
“Anyway,” Stella was saying, “I have a sketchbook, it’s over here—”
Nate’s attention was instantly drawn to the book lying on the bedside table. Stella picked it up and then stood there, holding it a little awkwardly. Then, she seemed to make a decision, and thrust it out towards Nate, abruptly sincere. “Here.”
Nate took it with careful respect, and opened it to the beginning.
He was struck almost immediately by how bright the picture seemed. It took him a moment to realize that the drawing was done in pencil, nothing else, and the impression of light was just a clever manipulation of shading and empty white paper.
But he could swear that this pencil sketch of a sunrise had actual light pouring off the paper. It was astonishingly well done.
“This is amazing,” he said honestly.
Stella’s breath caught. “You really think so?”
“Of course I do,” he said, flipping to another fantastically detailed landscape. The trees looked almost real. “You have to know that you’ve got a talent.”
“Well...” Stella trailed off. Then she lifted her chin. “Yes,” she said. “I
know. I just don’t—not everyone has an appreciation for drawings like this, that’s all.”
Nate wondered if anyone she’d dated in the past had put down her skill, and had to breathe deeply to keep from clenching his fists and wrinkling the nice paper. “Even if it’s not someone’s thing, it’s obvious that these are really good,” he said quietly. “I can’t imagine why anyone would say anything bad about them.”
Stella smiled a little. “Thanks.”
Nate flipped to another page, and was faced with—himself.
It was his panther form. Stella had only seen him shift the once, but she’d somehow still managed to draw him exactly as he knew himself, with hints of the blue highlights on his sunlit coat. He had no idea how she made that so clear without any color at all, but he could see it.
His panther form was crouched, ready to leap, and there were sleek muscles coiled under the fur. The motion was there, in potential, prepared to jump off the page. Nate looked up again, and now Stella was watching him intently, all shyness gone. She obviously wanted to know what he thought.
So he let a smile tease at his lips as he said, “You got me exactly right.”
And if there was a hint of smugness in his voice—well, his mate had drawn him as a beautiful, graceful, powerful creature. What wasn’t to be smug about?
Stella’s self-consciousness was melting away. She gave him a little flirtatious smile back, and said, a little breathlessly, “I know.”
Nate snorted a chuckle and flipped to a different page.
This time, it was himself in human form. It was an excellent likeness—he wouldn’t have expected anything less, at this point—but what really caught him was the eyes.
The way he was looking out of the page...he reached out before he could stop himself, brushed his fingers against the corner of one of those eyes.
“That’s what I see when you look at me,” Stella said softly. “Tenderness, and this kind of...fierce joy. I don’t know how to describe it better than that.”
“You don’t have to,” Nate said, still looking at the picture. “That’s what I’m feeling. That’s exactly right.”
He set the sketchbook reverently aside, and then, once he didn’t have to worry about keeping it intact, he used that intense strength that Stella had drawn him with.