If there had been a course offered at the Academy for budding artists such as herself, the little lady would have been enrolled years ago. Her pencil strokes were emotive but precise, her likenesses so accurate, it was hard to imagine they had been crafted by a girl of only fifteen years. And this drawing, despite the movements of the model, was turning out to be one of her best. The expression in Nyx’s face was enigmatic – thoughtful and dark – and the light threw shadows over her face that intensified the mystery there. The tail, even, looked expressive. Alethea could feel the eagerness swell in her, her focus narrowing to a point.
Leto, meanwhile, sensed something in the fox’s eagerness that was like fear, but couldn’t place it – foxes did not have the same language as wolves. Helpfully, she rolled partially onto her side and place her foreleg over the quivering familiar, drawing her toward her chest, her eyes blinking drowsily. Alethea noticed none of this, fixated as she was on the artistic process. But she did notice the smile, faint and fleeting, that passed over her subject’s face.
Alethea smiled back, assuming the girl was responding to her thanks. Nyx’s question seemed to confirm this assumption. Thea’s eyebrows lifted in curiosity, going over in her mind every face she could think of, and the likelihood that they would endure her pastime. “Who?” She asked in return, buying fully into the game.
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