Beautiful Things.

Crushed colored pencils from a previous work rested at her side, along with the slim shavings and rubber shreds of eraser. She’d been hunched over, foot holding down the side of her poster board, for hours now and she certainly felt her work was paying off.

It was a rare moment of acceptance, she decided as she began to work on delicate shading with just the side of her pinky finger. Rubbing against the grain then with the grain and creating just the right shade of a soft grey, she realized that this was what she was meant to do. Leaning back for a moment to flick her eyes up and down the thin pencil strokes, judging the work, her hands trembled. This was what she was planning to submit to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, after all, and she just wanted it to be perfect; it would suck if she didn't get accepted into the school of her dreams.

She wrinkled her nose as the shrill sound of her wall phone rang. Wiping her hands on her peachy thighs, Veronica stood to dart off to her kitchen. Grabbing the cordless phone off its hook, she answered in her customary fashion; "Hey, Ronnie Markham speaking."
"Ronnie, there's something brilliant coming up and you've got to enter in." Ronnie smiled at the familiar nature of her overly excited friend, Adele, and shook her head slightly. She reached up to pull her hair down from her ponytail, resting her tailbone against the smooth granite countertop.

"What is it, Addy? Another concert?" She snickered slightly, remembering how Adele had become obsessed with some boy band and had begged Veronica to enter her name in a contest to get front row tickets with Meet and Greet passes. She'd not won, and Adele had moped about it for days before becoming distracted with some boy toy.

"No, it's an art thing. It's gonna be hosted in the Ballroom on Church in Orlando, and you've got to enter a piece of work by Friday. Prizes are like, anywhere between a hundred and ten thousand, and there's gonna be some scouts from a few places coming through." Veronica grew rather interested, remembering that it only looked better on papers if one placed or even won at an art show. It certainly couldn't harm her cause, for if she lost she could just omit she'd entered on her application.

"Can you find out more information about it? I was sort of in the middle of a piece, and I've not been able to get internet up in the apartment yet." Ronnie's parents had purchased an apartment for her when she'd come back home. They’d gone ahead and paid the rent for a year as a present for getting ahead of her past, telling her she would have to pick it up after that if she remained in Florida. She thanked her friend as she ran her hand through her hair, hanging up and setting the phone on the counter.

Ten thousand dollars could certainly be useful. She could get some decent brushes and better paints with it, maybe even have a little extra to blow on oils. Perhaps, she could even spoil herself with her favorite acrylics, Golden Heavy Bodies, and real sable brushes... Ronnie was convinced into doing the contest already. Turning on her heel sharply, Veronica found that she couldn't walk fast enough back to her poster.

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She couldn't say that the sound of taxis startled her, nor could she say there was smog in the city air. The fresh breeze from the Gulf eighty miles away and the inlet a bit less kept the air fresh and salty, and traffic was running smoothly here. That's what she loved about Orlando, she decided as she studied an elderly couple on the other side of the street- everything was so calm, almost timid. If she was in Miami, it'd be entirely different, but as of now it was so perfect.

Ronnie slid into her favorite store, one run by a kind elderly lady and a few kids from the college campus: Sam Flax Art and Design. With a nod to the woman behind the counter, she went to gawk at the art supplies she'd only been able to purchase a few times, as she grabbed the small tub of brush cleaner she'd come into the city for. She'd decided to work on a watercolor piece, instead of the one she was showcasing in her portfolio for the University, and she'd practically wrecked one of her brushes in the process.

Which reminded her; she'd need a thinner fan brush to fix the ridges of the fur on the current piece, which depicted a snarling wolf with terrifying intensity in his eyes. Or so her sketch showed, anyways. She slid into the proper aisle, just smiling to herself at the scent of everything. She could smell spray paint from the aisle over, the warm touch of paint brushes in her hand, and she could see the colorful mess from someone dropping oil pastels that the solvent hadn't fixed quite yet.

She knelt for a moment, taking a plastic pouch and undoing the clasp at the top so she could study the bristles and see if it was the proper type. She was a little surprised when she heard someone speaking to her, causing her head to snap up so quickly that her neck popped rather loudly. "Can you help me pick something out for my girlfriend?"

It was a skinny, awkward boy with a huge blush on his face for asking about this. Veronica laughed and nodded, asking him what sort of work she did. He responded that she focused in sketching, and so she led him towards an aisle and showed him some of her favorite erasers and graphite pencils. Leaving the boy to himself to debate upon just how much he wanted to spend on this girl, Ronnie darted back to her aisle with her brush in hand, humming as she decided it would do just fine.

Grabbing the brushes she wanted, including one that cost the price of a family of four’s movie tickets for her next project, Ronnie headed to the counter and smiled as she checked out, tipping with a few singles before taking her bag and heading out towards where her car was parked. She paused, though, and decided that instead of completing the walk she would head across the street and down some to the Lollicup Cafe, to slip in and grab a small dessert and coffee.

Doing so, and drinking from the warm cup slowly, she walked out and towards her car again, a poorly painted little Trans Am with various stickers slammed on its bumper. The car was a beast, she smiled; it had survived fender benders from when it had been her brother's, and quite a few bumps in Orlandian traffic. Some people were idiots behind the wheel, she decided as she set her cup between her legs for a moment before starting the car. As a loud rock-sounding song burst from the radio, she spun the dial down before singing along with a bounce in her seat, heading home.