[What’s magic for me? 15]

“Come sit with me in the art room!”

“Okay”

The room was lined with artwork, the same flat, slightly grey paper with drawings on them. At least it gave some color to the beige on beige that the whole ward was painted with. Meera spotted a dozen more drawings by “Dan”, pages almost entirely filled with black crayon, and a couple where it looked like the black ran out and he switched to dark grey. 

Sama pulled out a box of crayons and a pad of paper and sat. The table wobbled as she worked, but it didn’t seem to bother her.

Meera shifted in the plastic chair, watching. She was never sure what to say, which things at home were important and which ones were just drama that would be forgotten. 

“When did you start drawing?”

“Mondays and thursdays we always have art. One of the doctors likes to look at drawings people make.“

“But you’re so good!”

“I got bored with stick people.”

“Stick people are boring.” Meera thought of the ones in the pictures in the hallway.

More silence, except for the wobbling of the table as Sama worked. Meera was surprised at her sister’s deft work, the crude crayons pushed just right to yield surprising hues, layered gently and  as if there was a plan.

A flower emerged from the page, then a tiger appeared behind it, looking as if it were pacing out of the empty page, then pacing out of the jungle that appeared around it.

Sama tore off the page, and hardly gave it another look.

The crayons leapt to the page again, every color pulled from the box laid out perfectly neatly next to its siblings, waiting. Meera recognized the pillars and blocks of the old temple their father had taken them to. As she remembered details, they seemed to appear on the page. The cracks on the stones, the vines and plants growing among them. In the empty spaces, goddesses and princesses appeared, with gowns flowing into the sky.

“That’s amazing!”

Another nurse clapped behind them. “Time to clean up.”

Sama shook the crayon in her hand at her without looking up, then leaning close to the page, kept drawing for a moment more, then slapped the crayon neatly into the line of them on the table, right where it had been picked up from, then scooped the whole pile up and slid them in the box at once, keeping their order.